Alma
Your feedback matters to us. Help us improve Alma by telling us what you’d like to see using the message areas below. You can also can support something already posted.
We would love to be able to respond to every idea that is submitted, but this is not feasible. We are, however, committed to responding to the most popular ideas—those that have received the most points.
For more information please review our FAQ and guidelines. Thank you.
112 results found
-
Permanent physical location for items in process
We have found that when working through items in process/Monitor physical item requests that the permanent location is not included when exporting to Excel. This is very inconvenient when a staff member is trying to locate the item.
1 vote -
Consider only the opening days and hours when calculating the transit time
The Transit Time Rule for Physical Item Requests calculates the transit time in calendar days.
As a result, days and times when the library is closed are also indicated as estimated delivery times for the requested media.
These times are also displayed in Primo and thus give users incorrect information.
Would it be possible to consider only the opening days and hours of the libraries when calculating the transit time?7 votes -
Allow patron to create "Alias" that prints to Ful Hold Shelf Request Slip Letter
When item that has a request is returned at the circulation desk, a Ful Hold Shelf Request Slip Letter is printed. There is a Patron name on the Print.
There should be a possibility for a Patron to choose an "Alias" (Name or Number) that would be printed to the Letter.This could be an Address -field that patron can update in Primo. Then it would be printed to the slip letter.
3 votes -
Deliver Digital Documents: add notes
We would like to add notes to the quick flow “Fulfillment > Deliver Digital Documents” (as is possible via the longer workflow of “Scan In > Manage In Process Items”). This way, we can swiftly deliver digital documents - regardless of file size - with a note to the patron. At this moment, for a note to be delivered to the end user, we need to take the more extensive route through “Manage In Process Items”. Here we are limited to file size and have to break up large files (as the file size limit is 25 MB and URLS…
70 votes -
Allow booking requests only on the quarter hour and half hour
If your booking resolution policies are set to "Minute", users can select any minute in the hour as a start and end time. We would like a configuration option that allows us to limit booking request start and end times to just the quarter hour and half hour.
7 votes -
Sort booking requests by Start Time
When monitoring resource requests on Fulfillment > Monitor Requests & Item Processes, a "Sort by" button with an option to sort by Start Time would ease the handling of booking requests.
The booking requests are currently sorted by Request Date, which is not very useful, and can not be sorted by any other field.A "Sort by" button actually does appear on Fulfillment > Pick From Shelf.
Another option could be adding the Start Time on the drop down menu of the bar "Requests" on top of the page.
62 votes -
Add block action for patron digitization requests in User Block Definitions
The configurable blocked actions for user blocks in Alma are:
01 – loan
02 – loan, renew
03 – loan, renew, holdIt is therefore possible to configure that blocked users are not allowed to place requests at all.
We propose a distinction between the different request types in blocked actions.
Blocked users should be able to place hold requests, as it can be checked at the latest at the time of loaning whether there is a block, and users then have to take care of the unblocking (e.g. by paying fees) in order to be able to loan the…
115 votes -
Monitor Requests & Item Process Activity Status Filter
Add Activity Status: Rejected to "Monitor Requests & Item Processes"
It would be extremely helpful to have the Activity Status Rejected on the "Monitor Requests & Item Processes" Activity Status Filters. If it could be added as an option with Active, Completed and All, that would remove a ton of extra time and labor for our fulfillment processes.18 votes -
Show 'chapter/article title' and 'chapter/article author' in completed digitization requests and in Analytics
For copyright reasons, we need to track whether users have requested an article from an issue or a chapter from a book from which they have already received a scan.
Completed digitisation requests in Alma do not show the chapter/article title or chapter/article author, only the overall title requested. The data is not available in Analytics either.
This means that we are reliant on a local spreadsheet to track what users have already requested.
We would like to see the data available on the completed requests and in Analytics.
70 votes -
Consultation in Alma FF
There is no easy solution in Alma FF to indicate that an item has been consulted in the library and that it can be reshelved.
When items are placed on the hold shelf and are briefly consulted in the library, there is no easy way to directly reshelve them in Alma FF. The workarounds are far from ideal and are very labour-intensive when facing a large amount of physical requests: cancel the request (but this is not correct and influences our request statistics) and reshelve via the expired hold shelf, update the expiry date to yesterday (but this requires a…
159 votes -
Enhanced “In Transit” flow/functionality
We encounter a lack of important functionality to efficiently follow-up on In transit requests (physical item requests to another pick-up location). We would like the functionality to be extended with the following additional features:
1. A patron facing letter when the requested item is placed “in transit” by the owning library, so that the patron is better informed of the status of his request.
We want to create a situation that once a requested item is being transported, there is in fact no way back and a fee needs to paid.
2. To make it impossible for patrons to…122 votes -
Include past digitization request information in borrower request tab
In the Manage Patron Services area, you can see current and past loans, current and past returns, but once a digitization request has been processed, it is no longer viewable from the borrower record.
Being able to see past digitization requests from each patron would help immensely with being able to identify when a patron has already received material from a certain resource. Being able to see previous request details in a list (including title, author, barcode, pages already provided) will help identify if providing additional requests from the same title may exceed the allowable copyright limit for material from…59 votes -
Expired Hold Shelf to Alma mobile
It would be practical to get the Expired Hold Shelf lists to Alma mobile so we didn't have to print them on paper.
128 votes -
More humanity in the letters: add the name of librarians who take care of the requests
Automatic processes in Alma make library staff save time and efforts, but also significantly reduce human interactions with patrons (very few emails are personally sent by librarians to patrons). Lots of Alma letters sent to patrons are nameless and only signed by generic service names like "Acquisitions Department", "Circulation Desk", "Library ABC" etc. (see @@department@@ in the Labels). Some staff members suffer from this dehumanization in the processes.
We want to give a name and a face to a request when patrons get notified and would like to enrich some Alma letters with the name of the librarian who took…
118 votes -
add modification date to "Monitor Requests & Item Processes"
It would be helpful to have the modification date, not just the request date as filter on the "Monitor Requests & Item Processes" page. Now it's almost not possible to find items which are e.g. stuck in hold shelf processing.
The request date does not allow to filter for items/requests which have been processed recently.10 votes -
Block the patron (several days) if they do not pick up a physical item that was requested and that they have reserved on the hold-shelf
Create a new TOU request type Policy type to sanction the not pick up of the item from the hold-shelf
31 votes -
On-shelf requests for specific user groups
We have limited human resource for picking up the items for on-shelf requests. Therefore, we hope this service is only available for patrons in need, for example, disabled patrons or distinguished professors/researchers.
Therefore, we need Alma to support “specific user groups’ to “request for on-shelf items”, and “pick up in different library/campus only”. It would also be nice if we can limit the number of on-shelf requests in a period of time.
This will definitely help librarians to provide precise service efficiently!
146 votes -
Send borrowers an email when they place a request
It would be good if, when someone places a request on Primo, they could be sent an email receipt to confirm what they have requested. (This is an idea for both Alma and Primo, as I assume the email would be sent from Alma).
Not only would it be useful for users to have confirmation (a lot of webforms will send users a copy of their completed form, so people half-expect one from Primo/Alma), but it would allow libraries to include important messaging.
eg. at the moment, January 2021, we're in lockdown again, so the email could ask people to…
35 votes -
Work Orders: package of required enhancements
Work orders are useful but often cumbersome and don't work as required. A package of enhancements/fixes would make them much more useful and useable:
• Adding notes when creating work orders in bulk. This would enable having fewer work order types as explanatory notes could be used instead.
• Makes notes more (immediately) visible when scanning in (pop up message?). Again would enable fewer work order types as items could be easily catergorised according to explanatory note upon receipt at managing department.
• Select recall/not recall at work order placement (like pick from shelf), not baked into type (and in…231 votes -
Store information about request history
It is currently not possible to see whether an item has previously been requested, only that it's checked out. I want (often) to be able to tell: how many times throughout the history of this item has it been requested and in what way (page from shelf, recall, something else). It's super weird to me that this isn't present in the fulfillment history at least, and probably in analytics.
44 votes
- Don't see your idea?