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.
161 results found
-
Make Manage Fulfillment Activities the same thing as Manage Patron Services
I found this idea buried in a comments section and felt it deserved its own idea since my team keeps encountering the same problem.
Iain Gray said: "After finding a user it would be useful if when clicking on Manage Fulfillment Activities you were presented with the same screen as though you had used the Manage Patron Services screen. Instead you do not see the option to pay Fines and Fees from here and have to re-enter users details again."
I'll add that it would be great if Manage Patron Services and Manage Fulfillment Activities were the same page…
62 votes -
More information on Process Type Transit
In 'Item history', you can see when an item was checked in and out of transit, but not for whom or whereto. If something goes wrong with the transit, you can't get any information about the inactive/completed request.
59 votes -
Flag items requested by another user in Patron Services screen
Our desk staff would like to be able to see at a glance which of the items a user has on loan has been requested.
We often have a scenario where a user presents at the desk with a blocked account. We can tell that one or more of the books they have on loan must have been requested, but need to 'View queue' for each of them to find out which ones have a request placed on them.It would be useful to be able to see this information at a glance.
Perhaps a column in the loan list in…59 votes -
Add all patron-delivered letters to Selected Patron Letters opt-in/opt-out choices
It would be very useful to list all letters that are delivered to patrons in the Selected Patron Letters options. Letters like Loan Receipt and Borrowed By are conspicuously absent, but we have many patrons who don't want to receive an email every time they check something out. Others patrons do, so we don't want to globally disable these letters.
The fact that Selected Patron Letters includes letters that require patron action (Overdue Notice, Recall letter) but not letters that are more informational (Loan Receipt, Borrowed By) seems backwards. Regardless, all patron-delivered letters should be available for opting in/out.
59 votes -
Autocomplete
It would be extremely helpful for ALMA to have an autocomplete feature when searching for title, author or even call number. Many times you can be off by one letter and ALMA won't find the item.
58 votes -
Configure courtesy loan letters by location or item policy.
It would be nice to be able to configure courtesy loan letters by either location or item policy, so that letters aren't generated for a 2 hour reserve.
56 votes -
Enter 12 hour time with AM/PM
We have already changed our display to 12 hours in the General configuration (General/Other Settings/systemtimeformat is changed to hh:mm:ss a and it operates correctly.) However, there are still many cases when Alma requires us to input a 24 hour time.
For example, when we check out an item and need to change the due time, there is no way to input 12 hours with AM/PM. (Screenshot example: http://screencast.com/t/9B9XC2qbl) We must enter 24 hour time. This has caused an ongoing problem of inputting an incorrect due time (such as "17:00" when we mean to input 7PM), causing stressful…
55 votes -
Activate recalls by user group
Allow libraries to modify recall rules based on each user group.
Currently recalls can be turned on or all for all user groups only. It would be beneficial for many libraries, especially academic, to be able to modify recall rules by user group. As an academic institution, we would like the ability to allow certain patron groups to recall books, but block recalls by our visitor and community patrons, or patrons at other institutions. This would help prevent situations where a student working on a project or thesis from having their books recalled by a visitor patron who would like…
54 votes -
Waitlist functionality for short-term loans
It would be helpful to have a waitlist functionality for short-term loans (i.e. for reserve items). This would allow patrons to put their name on a list to be next in line once a short-term loan item has been returned. Alma would send an email/text to the patron when the item is returned telling the patron they have a specific window of time (e.g. 5 minutes, configurable by the institution) to check out the item. During that window of time no other patrons can check it out. After the window of time has expired the next person on the waitlist…
54 votes -
Add "Scan In Items" functions to "Return Items" processing
We would like to build "Scan In Items" features to the "Return Items" function, i.e. "Return Items" should be able to process requests, expired holds, and items in transit between locations the same way as "Scan In Items" does. This includes the radio button for automatically printing slips (configuration should be able to define a default)
54 votes -
Ability to change the default for reading room to NOT FINAL - Second Attempt
In August 2018 Release we got a solution for the original idea, which made things worse for us. Previously the default for the reading room was set to "Final" check in. The original idea suggested to change this to "Not Final" to help avoid a scenario where for example resource sharing items are returned accidenty to their home campus when users are not finished with them.
As of August 2018 Alma remembers the last selected choice and keeps it for the next action ("sticky approach"). Since eventually every book loaned in the reading room has to be returned "final", now…50 votes -
Make Add an Item Work Order Configurable
When an "on-the-fly" item is created, loaned and returned by a patron, the item is automatically flagged for routing to the Acquisitions Work Order/Workflow.
In our institution, the ACQ Department does not work on these items, and this should not be the workflow that the materials are routed to, but we are unable to change the work order type.
We'd like to be able to configure or change the work order type for these materials, and also for the check-in process to more clearly delineate and note that the item is an "on-the-fly" item in particular. In the current process,…
49 votes -
When paying specific fees by selecting fees from the list of fees, the sum of the selected fees should be calculated and displayed immediate
When paying specific fees by selecting fees from the list of fees, the sum of the selected fees should be calculated and displayed immediately before leaving the list when entering the select button. As of now the sum is displayed only after leaving the list via the select button, which is too late for a correction of the selection.
48 votes -
Enhance Physical Locations List export for "Suppress from Discovery" and other tags
At the moment there is no easy way to create a list of all physical locations set to "Suppress from Discovery".
It's not in the export, it's not in Analytics and it's not in the data you can get via API.
I would expect this information to be included in the export you can download in Alma. Same thing goes for "Accession Placement", "Call Number Type" and all other fields that are available in "Edit Physical Location".
At the moment the export is rather short as it contains only Code, Name, Location Type and Fulfillment Unit.
46 votes -
Fulfilment find patron
Fulfilment - enter patron name & select from list - should not have to additionally click 'Go'/enter to display record
46 votes -
Preventing Change of Due Date (Recall) when placing Physical Item Request
When placing a physical item request for an item that is checked out, we typically want to recall the item, but there are sometimes exceptions to this. For these exceptions, we would like to have the option, while placing the request, to prevent the recall and simply add the requester to the queue without changing the due date.
45 votes -
Add institution address information to XML for Ful Transit Slip Letter
When an item is placed in transit to another institution in an AFN, the institution name is included in the XML of the Ful Transit Slip Letter. However, no address information for the institution in included in the XML, so it's not possilble to add that information to the Ful Transit Slip Letter. SUNY has added resource sharing partner address info to our resource sharing shipping and return letters, and that has proven to be very helpful. We would like the address of the library where the item is held to be added to the XML for the Ful Transit…
44 votes -
Ability to remove default suppressed filter from resource locate
When using resource locate within reading lists to link a citation to a title the default search filters out suppressed title records.
This could be changed by adding mms_tagSuppressed to the Locate Citation By Fields table (Fulfillment Configuration > Courses > Locate Citation By Fields). Allowing it to be disabled.
This would be useful for us as we regularly use suppressed records where the physical item is not held but a representation of a chapter or article is and the representation will not be discoverable by primo. This prevents a title with no holdings appearing.
44 votes -
Recovered missing/lost item notification
When an item marked lost (or missing) is checked in on Alma (i.e. found), we would like a notification (via email or otherwise) be sent automatically to the circulation supervisor.
43 votes -
Automatically populate date and end time in booking request form
When placing a booking in Alma or Primo you need to choose a starting date then a starting hour followed by a starting minute. You then need to choose an end date then an ending hour and an ending minute. This is a lot of clicks to place one booking.
It would be nice if the end date, hour and time could be automatically populated based on the Terms of use of the item (so if the loan period is 2 hours and the start time is 2:30 then the end time could be automatically populated to say 4:30). If…
42 votes
- Don't see your idea?