We are disappointed with the technical support service provided by Ex Libris. We strongly believe that Ex Libris should provide customers with more effective, prompt and interactive service.

There should be an option to call or chat online in real time with a support person who has a sound understanding of the product in question. This would be in line with all system vendors we have previously dealt with.

We appreciate that there will be some issues that are designated as bugs or enhancements and will require more in depth investigation. However, a direct call/chat option with a properly trained support analyst would quickly and efficiently separate these issues from more general product queries. We are aware that there are many call-logging options used widely by other companies, such as FastCall, TenFold and RingDNA, which can be used to allow customer calls/chats to be registered directly in Salesforce. We believe that Ex Libris should implement this improvement as soon as possible.

Please vote to show your support for this idea and feel free to add comments relating to your experience of this issue.

I suggest that if the "not needed by " date is reached then the patron request is cancelled.

The only function of “date not needed by” for patron physical item requests is to prevent items from being put into transit from other locations if the transit cannot be completed by the required date.

However this is not clear to patrons and users ask us why we send Hold available notices when they already indicated a date when they would no longer need the item.

Staff also waste time locating items that Patrons have indicated are no longer needed, only to waste more time when they take the unused item off the Hold shelf when it eventually expires.

Request for Alma item barcode be included in the data that is published to Primo as part of the Alma publishing functionality to enable barcode searchability in the Primo keyword search. We have discovered that items migrated from our previous ILS do contain the item barcode(s) in the MARC 945 $$i and is written to the search:general field of the PNX. As such, those items are keyword searchable via their barcode in Primo. However, for items created in Alma, the item barcode is not written to the bib record and is therefore not searchable in Primo. Adding the item barcode manually to the bib 945$$i for each item as part of our processing is not a viable alternative.

We would like an enhancement to Alma publishing that would add the item barcode to the data published in the "AVA" field. This functionality would improve workflow for staff when they need to search a record in Primo without having to navigate out of the items screen in Alma to retrieve the OCLC number, the MMSID or the ISBN, or to pull up the record in Primo when the book is in-hand without needing to key in the title or ISBN.

Examples of migrated records with the item barcode in the 945 $$i:
http://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/CC:ccalma:CP71153242760001
http://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/CC:ccalma:CP71188416360001451

My libraries circulate various pieces of equipment from microphones, to musical instruments, to 3D printers, to lockers, and the current physical material type table does not suffice without adding a slew of item policies or location codes, which is messy and makes the resulting analytics more painful than it should be.

Ex Libris support states that "The [physical material type] codes cannot be changed, because Development needs them for statistics across libraries." However individual libraries will have items that they need to distinguish between either for fulfillment rule purposes or our own statistics.

I would like there to be about 15 generic material types added to this table that will allow libraries a bit of flexibility in dealing with this category. Similar to how Primo has blank PNX fields that can be used to create additional facets, etc. that best fit the needs of the library and its users.

When using Lender Due date for RS items (Fulfillment > General > Other Settings > ignorelenderdue_date = false) the date for Pick up from shelf is the same as the Due date. This is, according to ExLibris, working as intended, but we have a few issues with the workflow.

This makes the workflow more manual and difficult than needed, given that we have to manually check RS items that is not getting picked up by patron within a couple of weeks. Having the RS items on Hold shelf for up to 4-6 weeks is poor use of time - for the patrons, the book and the library.

If we could set a Hold shelf expiry date for RS items that is shorter than Due date, it would make it easier for the circulation desk personal to remind patrons that they have a book waiting. This will give the book more time at use with the patron, and less on the hold shelf. It will shorten the waiting time for other patrons, as the book will be returned earlier to the owning library if it is no longer needed by the patron.

The best would be if this process could be automated, e.g. by TOU policy. (Much like the Hold Shelf Period policy that exist for TOU type Requests.)
If it’s not possible to populate a Hold expiry date automatically, a data field in the receiving RS items pop-ups would be helpful. (Pictures added.)

We would like to be able to copy multiple lines from MARC records and paste them into the metadata editor so that multiple MARC fields are pasted into the record in one action. This would help us enormously with our workflow of importing MARC authority records from LibrariesAustralia into Alma.

For us, this is necessary because the LibrariesAustralia headings are not in the community zone and are unlikely to ever be included there and Alma does not allow for Z39.50 import of authority headings.

We have this functionality of copying and pasting multiple fields in the LibrariesAustralia Cataloguing Client and other library systems allow it. At the moment we need to paste each line one by one into Alma and it is slow and repetitive. This process is a step backward from previous functionality.

The new shortloancourtesyreminder & shortloanoverduereminder cannot be configured for multiple locations. For institutions with several hourly loan locations (for example Boston College maintains 2 and 3 hour loan periods for Course Reserves and a 4 hour loan period for some technology items) this dictates that the reminder notice has to be set based on the location with the shortest loan period. The overdue notice must be timed to make sense for for the longest loan period.

In our test configuration we used the following time parameters:

​shortloancourtesyreminder - 105 minutes
shortloanoverduereminder - 241 minutes

However, this creates a situation whereby patrons borrowing from some locations will have already incurred an overdue charge before the overdue notice is sent.

In order for this functionality to provide the service is designed for, it must be robust enough to support different loan periods.

https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/ProductDocumentation/010AlmaOnlineHelp(English)/030Fulfillment/080ConfiguringFulfillment/110General#ConfiguringFulfillment_Jobs

Acquisition librarians want to extend the current "interested users" functionality in order to serve the end user in a better and faster way. The current "interested users" functionality is not sufficient enough, to become useful and really benefit from this functionality we would like to extend it with:
• The ability to sort the interested user list.
Use case: some users (e.g. academic staff) have priority and should get the issue first!
• Make it possible to create hold requests on these items regardless of the existing fulfillment policy:
Use case: some libraries don't allow requests for available items, but this means they're not able to request items for interested users during receiving. (Apparently in the beginning of going live with Alma this was possible...).
• Make it possible to automatically loan the issue to the first interested user when receiving! This way limited routing functionality is made possible for (print) journal subscriptions.

There are lots of tables in the Alma UI that come up which can be sorted by a couple of the column heads but not others. For example in Letters Configuration, you can sort by "Letter" or "Description," but not by "Enabled," "Channel," or "Retention Period." Being able to sort by column headings is a basic function of a table.

In the example above, it would be helpful to be able to see only those letters that are enabled, or to sort so that all the email letters are grouped together and all the SMS letters are separate from them.

So much of what we do in Alma is arranged in tables like this, so it would be great if they could be made more user friendly.

For those of us working with continuing resources:

When viewing a list of physical items, the sort routine defaults to Library/Location. The items do not appear in any particular order when the results are loaded. Often I change the sort routine to Description or Receiving Date to view the most recent serial items and order them chronologically for viewing.

It would be nice if the sort routine "sticks" so that every time I open a list of items, the sort mechanism will stay on Description (not default back to Library/Location)

This would be especially helpful when managing items in the Receiving module "Received Items List," as we constantly must sort by Description to make sure no serial issues have been missed, and that the most recent issue has been received.

This is very helpful when checking PO lines in the Claims list. From the PO line details page, I click under Ordered Items>View Items. The List of Items sort routine often "sticks" here so that every time I View Items, they are automatically sorted by my previous choice (Description, Receiving Date, etc). This is the only instance I have seen the sort routine stick!

Please, Alma, remember my sorting preferences!

Acquisition librarians want to add automatically the "item policy" and "temporary location" to predicted issues to speed up their work and limit the number of clicks. At this moment the added value of prediction pattern functionality is being restricted by the lack of functionality (parameter setting) …
Use case: It’s not possible to add the item policy/temporary location as a parameter to continuous pol’s. If issues are created via prediction patterns the item policy/temporary location should be indicated automatically based upon parameter settings on pol level. This would save a lot of time and additional clicks when receiving the issues.
In addition this should also be possible when items are created based upon templates via the “receive new items” button.

Sometimes providers change a journal’s publication frequency throughout the year. So, the prediction’s pattern selected / elaborated at the beginning of the year doesn’t work anymore in Alma. One part of predictions (date of receipt) will be ok until the change but all other predicted items will be false. Now, we can revise the prediction during the year but we must erase the items already received. We can also leave the prediction defined at the beginning of the year and edit manually the false items from the time of the prediction change.

It would save a lot of time if Alma could change the description (number, date, …) only for the items that are impacted by a new publication during the year. We would just have to fill the « Next prediction item’s information » with the new frequency.
This enhancement would save a lot of time to catalogers.

More academic libraries are checking out high-traffic electronic items (laptops, Wi-Fi hotspots, etc.) and often have a long list of patrons with holds on these items. It would be useful if we could manage the queue for user holds/reserves more effectively. We should be able to renumber/reposition users in the queue (presently you may only bump someone up to the very top of the queue or profile a priority if users are from different user groups). We should also be able to manage the queue without having the item available; presently that is not possible. We often have 12+ users on a hold list at a time for laptops...and the users are generally all the same user category (students), so the present Alma functionality is just not helpful. If a laptop comes back and needs to be repaired, it is a big deal to manage the hold queue, so the next person in line is not bumped back to the bottom because that item needs repaired. Managing the queue should be a straightforward thing.

I would like a check-box in the item record that would allow staff to suppress individual items from discovery in Primo. This could be used for libraries that want to use only a single discoverable "dummy" item for placing requests on physical journals in Primo as well as libraries that prefer not to have items discoverable by patrons until they are done with processing and are available on the shelves. In an ideal world, if a holdings record only had suppressed items, the holding record would also not display. Moreover, if all items on all holdings attached to a bibliographic record were suppressed than the bibliographic record would also be suppressed.