Online Help | Web App

Equipment Lending Library records

The Equipment Lending Library component allows you to keep track of the miscellaneous items that users can borrow from your organization for temporary use. Library items can be anything that can be loaned out, such as manuals, training materials, spare keyboards and monitors, computers, software, etc. Despite the diversity of the types of physical items, the Equipment Lending Library component allows you to describe each of them in a unified fashion.

Information about each library item is stored in the database in the form of equipment lending library records. Once you define equipment lending library records for your physical library items, you can then "check out" these items in Alloy Navigator Express to anyone. If you indicate such check-out details as the borrower’s name and check-out and due dates, you'll never lose track of who has borrowed an item and for how long. You can quickly open up a user’s person record if you need to remind a borrower about returning an item. When a borrower physically returns an item to your organization, you can "check in" the item back to Alloy Navigator Express.

NOTE:: You "check out" and "check in" library items by using the appropriate workflow actions that are typically available for the equipment lending library records along with other actions. These workflow actions are configured by your Alloy Navigator Express administrator. For details, see Working with Equipment Lending Library Records and Equipment Reservations.

The ability to "check out" a library item typically depends not only on the current availability of the item (whether or not it is "checked out" to another user), but also on its scheduled check-outs in the (near) future. This is where the Reservations come into place. Main purpose of Reservations is to schedule the process of borrowing ("checking out") Library Items and to limit the ability to check out the item for all users except the one who reserved it.

NOTE: Reservations of a Library Item are displayed on the Reservations tab of its record.

Library Items are displayed in the Equipment Lending Library grid. To access it, select Equipment Lending Library > Equipment Lending Library from the navigation menu. To open the details of a particular Library Item in a separate window, double-click the corresponding record in the grid.

The top pane of an open equipment lending library record window displays the name, ID, and the status of the library item. Below the top pane, the following tabs are available: