Bulk Holds — the CLI

This is the Bulk Holds command-line tool, as used at the Cincinnati & Hamilton County Public Library. The four pages below are written for any Sierra site; At CHPL carries the details that are specific to one deployment.

Bulk Holds places holds on a list of items, so they can be routed to branches through the holds system. You give it a spreadsheet; it does the rest.

This is the CLI — bulk-holds.exe, the one that arrives as a zip folder you unpack yourself.

Start here

• Tutorial — your first run, about twenty minutes, on a spreadsheet you make up yourself. Places no holds. Do it once before anything else; the other pages assume you have.
• How-to guides — recipes for real work: all items to one branch, each row to its own branch, and what to do when the tool refuses.
• Reference — every option, exit code, file location, and the spreadsheet contract. For looking things up; it does not teach.
• Explanation — why the tool runs in two steps, why a refusal after yes is correct, and what the temporary card is for.

The one thing to know up front

The tool always runs in two steps, and you cannot skip the first one.

The first step changes nothing: it reads your spreadsheet, asks Sierra about every item, and shows you exactly what it would do. Only the second step places holds, and it will only place the holds the first step showed you.