What’s on our mind: Interactive inventory
Last updated on: 8th July 2025| 11th June 2025 | Jacob O’Mara | Koha
Interactive inventory is a new plugin has been developed by Open Fifth for Koha that provides a drop-in alternative for the inventory module. As always, this is open source and free for anyone to use, download and modify as they wish.
Why might I want to use the Interactive inventory plugin?
On initial viewing, the plugin contains many of the same fields that you would expect to see when comparing to the core inventory – for example, the parameters and filters. However, you will notice some new status resolution preference options towards the bottom of the form that are interactive specific. These include options such as whether you would like a modal to pop-up for issues found or if you would prefer for these to be automatically resolved in the background, still with notifications to inform you on when these have been actioned.
Beyond this, the main motivation behind the existence of this plugin, lies within the workflow for inventory. The core inventory workflow requires you to upload all barcodes either as a list or a file of scanned barcodes prior to then receiving any feedback on the inventory state of the shelf. This means the librarian has to do two passes through any section they’re inventorying as they will need to go through the shelf once to scan and then a second time to resolve any issues the tool finds. This interactive plugin implementation for inventory aims to resolve this by providing you instant feedback on the status of an item in real-time, removing the need to back-track and hopefully saving you time.
Where can you download this from?
The plugin is available on the Open Fifth github repository located at: https://github.com/openfifth/koha-plugin-interactiveinventory
You will be able to find the latest version within the releases section on the right hand side where you can download the .kpz. This will install in the exact same way as any other plugins you may have on your system If you are unsure on how to do this, please do reach out as we would be more than happy to support.
Let’s go through what you should expect to see on installation…
On running the plugin, after install, you will be greeted with a required setup form for your next inventory session. As mentioned above, it should look familiar to anybody who has previously used the core inventory module and will look something like this:
This will allow you to tailor your inventory session to the shelves that you are planning on scanning, as well as what item types you are scanning for.
Once you are happy with your selections, submit at the bottom of the page and allow the inventory to setup your current session. Depending on the size of the area you have chosen to scan and the size of your catalogue, this can take a little bit of time as it is required to load all expected items from within the parameters you have selected on form completion.
At first, it will appear quite minimal with the text box to enter your barcodes and two buttons to the top right: one for scanning barcodes with a camera and one for submitting the barcode.
You have two options for how to enter barcodes – either this manual section, as screenshot above, which should allow you to use your library scanner to scan barcodes and enter them into the text box above or manually type them if you feel so inclined.
If you don’t have a scanner available and don’t fancy typing out all the barcodes manually, there is another option available for you. If you click onto the camera icon, to the right of the textbox, you will be greeted with an inbuilt barcode scanner that utilises your camera on your current device.
As you can see from the above screenshot, you are greeted with the information regarding the last item scanned. You can also click on any of the previous scans to reshow that same information. If there were any issues with this item, you would also be provided with a detailed view of what those issues were and how/if they were resolved during this session.
On scan, you will be able to resolve issues such as:
- Incorrect lost status
- Unresolved return claims
- Item is currently checked out to a patron
- Has an in-transit status
Which again, will either be resolved automatically or with a pop-up modal based on your preferences from the previous page.
At any point, there are two buttons on the bottom right of the page that house additional features; both the ability to show what you would expect to see at the current shelving location, with the shelf preview, or open up the dashboard to view the full readout of the current inventory session as well as the option to manually adjust the statuses of any items you have or are expecting to scan based on your filters from the setup form.
When you are happy and finished with your inventory session, you just need to click the end session button at the bottom left. This will bring up a small summary, though not as detailed as the dashboard, and the option to export to a CSV file. You also have the option to mark any unscanned but expected items as missing, which will occur when you click the end session confirmation button in the modal.
Features highlight
- Barcode scanner – to allow use of mobile phone or laptop if your library does not have a scanner available
- Session management – feel free to navigate to other pages whilst still being able to return to your current session within 24 hours, granted you are on the same device (as stored in the session data)
- Automatic or manual status resolution
- Dashboard overview
- Multiple filters and parameters tailored to your needs
- Continuous improvements being made
This is a plugin that is still in continuous development, so please do continue to test this and raise any issues that you may come across – you can do this either by raising a support ticket or adding to the issues section on the github page directly. Thank you for giving this a try and for testing this out, we would really appreciate your feedback and look forward to hearing from you.
