More PO line options for Create Purchase Request
Purchase Requests functionality is great idea (ACQUISITIONS --> Purchase Requests); unfortunately, the usefulness of this new feature is limited because it appears that it can only be used with certain PO Line Types (Print Book - One Time, Electronic Book - One Time; Print Journal - Subscription; Electronic Journal - Subscription). We cannot use the purchase requests workflow for physical media, for example, because there is no option for a requester to choose a "Citation type" that would map to a PO Line Type of Visual Material. We cannot use the purchase requests workflow for streaming media, because this is no option for a requester to choose a "Citation type" that would map to a PO Line Type of Electronic TItle - Subscription (which is the PO Line Type we use to order streaming media). We cannot use the purchase requests workflow for databases or packages, because there is no option for a requester to choose a "Citation type" that would map to a PO Line Type of Electronic Collection.
Please make it possible for the approver or purchasing operator to choose a PO Line Type.
As of March release you can select a material type for purchase requests in Alma. The field previously called Requested Format has been renamed to Material Type and moved to the Resource Information section.
The accompanying modifications for the Primo Purchase Request Form will be added in an upcoming release.
For more information please see Alma Release Notes at https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/Release_Notes/2020/Alma_2020_Release_Notes
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Veronika Leitner commented
Unfortunately the alterations from March 2020 still don't give us the option to simply choose the PO line type by hand. This would have been the best solution.
For us the PO line type is erroneous for every POL created out of a purchase request - we don't use the "Physical" ones, we use "Print Book" and "Print Journal".
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Mary ODea commented
THANK YOU for this. We receive A LOT of requests for streaming video titles.
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Julie Wright commented
I agree with this idea. We are also finding the use of Purchase Requests very limited as the options for the POL type seems to be hard-coded to four (Physical - One Time, Physical - Subscription, Electronic Book - One Time, Electronic Journal - Subscription) and we have not been using the two for Physical - instead we use Print Book - One Time and Print Journal - Subscription. Plus as pointed out we also use others like Music Score.
Given that a) we cannot change the POL type once the order is created, and b) we were able to choose which POL types we wanted to use by disabling those we didn't in a mapping table, it would be good to see this resolved.