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.
315 results found
-
Allow barcode search for a course reserve citation
Often professors fail to come to the Library and remove their personal books from Course Reserve, leaving the Reserves supervisor with many such books and no idea to whom they belong. In Voyager, she could go into the Reserves module, scan in the barcode, and it would bring up the course, instructor, and the rest of the course's reading list, so she knew immediately whose book it was. In Alma, scanning in the barcode in Alma brings up only the brief bibliographic record. If she goes to Fulfillment/Course Reserves/Citations, all reserve items appear, and she could search by title to…
20 votes -
Borrowing Activity Letter
Currently, Alma limits the borrowing activity letter to list only 100 loans.
It would be great to have the letter list all loans without a limit.
19 votes -
Delay for hold notification - up to 5 digits
Even if a library is closed to the public, the staff are working.
When they scan a returned loan, a notification is sent but the patron cannot retrieve his document due to the closed library.
It would be beneficial for us to be able to delay the notification for a week.
We would like to get up to 5 digits the delay for hold notification. Currently, it's 3 digits max, 999 minutes (16 hours).19 votes -
Make it easier to create sets of courses
The only way to create a set of courses is to get the course IDs from analytics.
This is a problem for Sandbox where we have no access to analytics - especially for those of us with generic data.
eg...
1. Include the course ID when downloading a list of courses to Excel with All Fields selected (and make the course ID an option to view in the table.
2. Enable save and create set when viewing a list of courses
3. Enable course code to be used when creating a setThis would be very helpful now that we…
19 votes -
Make the focus and displayed function configurable
in the Function "Fulfillment" - " manage user services" - "Patron services" - "submit request"
a popup screen is shown "Submit request". After select a title there are 4 action buttons:
"Patron Physical", "Booking", "Cancel", "Digitization"
(in this order).- Please put the Action "Cancel" at the first or last (better) place!
- Can we configure which buttons are shown (Digitazation, and Booking we not offer as a service)
- the action button "Digitazation" is the prefered action (focus is on that function), can we configure which action is the prefered action?
Michael Voss (HUB)
18 votes -
Option to sort reading list citations by publication date
Instructors sometimes want to sort citations in a reading list by publication date. We would like the options “Date – ascending” and “Date – descending” added to the “Sort by” dropdown in Alma and to the “Order citations in all sections” dropdown in Leganto, so that either library staff or instructors could make this change.
We know that data in this field can take on different forms because of the way it is entered in the bib record. For instance, it could be e.g. "c2000", "2000", "2000-2001" etc., so some normalization may have to occur
18 votes -
Clear Process Type (Transit) of all Items in Set with Job
Often books get skipped during scanning-in and are reshelved while still having a process type of "Transit." This leads to hundreds of materials over time in the stacks showing as not in place. A set with only these items can be created, but a bulk clearing of this field isn't yet possible.
Any of these would work:
1. create a job that clears the Process Type (specifically books marked Transit that have already been reshelved but were skipped during the regular scan-in process)
2. scan-in all items in a created set
3. scan-in multiple barcodes at once (separated by ;…18 votes -
Add Circulation History Log to Alma as Patron History in Patron Records
Staff would benefit from having a circulation history log, as in Aleph, to track transactions much easier. That would greatly assist us in billing, since we do it manually. It is also useful for resolving patron issues with fines and fees issues, as well as overdue fines. It could be included as patron history on patron records. We used the log for handling a number of issues.
16 votes -
Confirm button for adding manual charges and/or ability to edit/delete manual charges
It would be helpful to have a confirm button when adding manual charges, just as you do when waiving charges. Also, can we have the ability to edit or delete manual charges? We add charges for replacement costs for lost books, for example, and with no confirm button it can be too easy to mis-enter an amount, and as there is no functionality to edit or delete a charge you then have no option but to waive a charge and start again.
17 votes -
Differentiate Returns screen from Patron look-up screen
Our student workers at circulation keep on trying to scan student IDs in the returns box or item barcodes in the Patron services box.
I would like to make the highlight around the Returns box anyway a different, bright, distinguishable color. It would make it easy for a student to glance at the screen and think, "bright yellow, I'm on the returns window." See attachment for a preview of this option.
(I realize our students should just pay more attention to what they are doing, but they don't.)17 votes -
Blocks tab on User Details screen should display system assigned blocks as well as librarian assigned blocks.
The blocks tab on the User Details screen should display system assigned blocks as well as librarian assigned blocks.
It is confusing for staff if a user is blocked but the block doesn't show on the user details screen, only via Manage Patron Services.
This idea is partly related to "Make Manage Fulfillment Activities the same thing as Manage Patron Services" (https://ideas.exlibrisgroup.com/forums/308173-alma/suggestions/36274744-make-manage-fulfillment-activities-the-same-thing) - one of the ongoing issues with Alma from a staff point of view are the number of different screens things are under, and not in a particularly intuitive way. Waive a fine here, pay a…
17 votes -
Set different reshelving time for specific collections in a library
The August release added a temporary Awaiting Shelving status which can only be configured at the library or circulations desk level.
We circulate all of our collections through one circ desk, but have a much shorter reshelving period for course materials (less than an hour) than for the general collection (up to a day). It would be useful to set different time to reshelve periods for these collections.
17 votes -
Ability to see all holdings when viewing citations in a reading list
Currently a maximum of 3 Holdings is displayed for citations in a reading list. This means operators won’t see the details of all copies the library holds if there are more than 3 types of Holding. Viewing complete information is important for operators reviewing a reading list.
Furthermore, this default display of 3 Holdings is based on Availability therefore operators are likely to see information for materials held in lesser reference collections (these are always available!) rather than information for stock held in more popular lending collections.
Libraries should be allowed to set their own limit.16 votes -
Allow Alma to allow renewals if a certain number of copies are "In Place"
We circulate short loan laptops and equipment but have a threshold that needs to be in stock before we will manually renew for users. As a result, we need to mediate renewals. It would be great if Alma could do this automatically so we could allow self-renewals of short loan equipment.
16 votes -
Retrieving Returns from Advanced Search
Currently there is no option in Advanced search to detect all the recent Items returned on a specific day.
There is an existing function in Alma thats possible to detect only LoansPlease add this feature to be able to retrieve Retuns in Advanced search and not just from analytics (there the data is updated only to the previous day and not the current) .
16 votes -
Work order email notification option
We use work orders to request items from our other branches to be loaned out via interlibrary loan.
When the branch is unable to find the book, they click Mark as Missing on their Pick from Shelf list.
Unfortunately, this simply deletes the work order and doesn't notify us that the work order was deleted. We have to go into our Monitor Requests queue and actually scroll through all the completed requests to find the ones that were marked as missing.
I would like to request that when creating a new work order, there is an option to add an…
16 votes -
Enable Alma to add to the letters a "Reply to" in the email message header
reply to can only be added as a text line, it would be much better if it was added in the header
16 votes -
Reduce 24 - 48 hour window between the time a Course and Reading list are created in Alma and the moment it appears in Primo
It is very difficulty to judge whether or not processing course reserve material are successfully completed until a full day and sometimes longer have lapsed if/when publishing in Primo is a concern. This happens - failure to publish in Primo - inspite of Course Reserve becoming available as loan-able in Alma.
15 votes -
All items loan and hold requests history - in citation view.
The new information available in the 'Other details' tab of items is great, can we also have this information made available in the citation view 'More Info' tab please?
15 votes -
Block payment and payment of fines at a circulation desk other than the library that owns the fine
In our institution, we have 34 libraries and our students can circulate among them. We think it's a problem when a user can pay their fines at another library, not on their own campus.
Regarding the payment of fines, we suggest that there is a way to block the payment and / or payment of fines at a circulation desk other than the library that owns the fine.15 votes
- Don't see your idea?