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.
121 results found
-
Please add restrict request function for fulfillment network requests in Primo VE between institutions.
We are a library consortium facilitating interlibrary loans through a fulfillment network with Network Zone, rather than AFN.
It allows patrons to find items from other institutions directly and request them. Our goal is for patrons of Institution A to use Institution A's Primo VE to request books from Institution B.
If Institution A has the book available for borrowing, requesting the book from Library B will not be possible.
Implementing the above feature in Alma to restrict requests in this manner would not only save shipping costs but also reduce waiting times for patrons.
We previously submitted this requirement,…
118 votes -
Open / Closed Stacks Request Possibilities Priority
Currently, when a library owns a title in several copies, and that some of these copies are dispatched between physical locations attached to both closed and open stacks fulfillment unit, all copies behave like open stacks.
In other terms: if we have two items, one in open-stacks and one in closed-stacks, title-level requesting is blocked as long as the open-stacks item is available. Hence, open stacks configuration takes precedence over the closed one.
We would like that whenever an available item is stored in a closed stacks location alongside other open stacks available items, users still can request the item…
44 votes -
Request limit
It will be useful to limit the number of request for a specific library. Likewise for loan limits.
If an institution has more than one library then it may want, for example, to allow a patron to borrow from several of them. Then the order limit should be correspondingly larger. However, if the loan limit is larger than the request limit, this situation can be confusing for the user. For example - a patron has a request limit of 10, and loan limit 5 in Library A and 5 in Library B. However, for the moment he can request 10…15 votes -
On Hold Shelf letter should display pick-up library rather than owning library
Currently, if a student places a request on a book from a different library to be picked up at their "home" library, the On Hold Shelf letter comes from the owning library with the owning library's branding, not from the pick-up location, which is what they are expecting. This is confusing to students because they are not expecting an email from a different library and often ignore it.
The On Hold Shelf letter email should have the pick-up library information/branding, not the owning library's information/branding.80 votes -
Booking request - possibility to configure a blocked period
We are using the booking request for technical equipment which has to be prepared for lending previously. We want that an item can not be booked shorter than 3 days in advance, so the team is able to prepare everything. This ist not configurable yet.
24 votes -
Adding a parameter to block the request queue for physical items at the title level
The request queue can be confusing for library users, as such requests are often canceled due to lack of copies. With title-level requests, the library should be able to decide whether or not to allow a queue for physical item requests. It should be possible to create a parameter for this to allow blocking the queue.
3 votes -
Improve job "Requests - Handle Expiration steps"
The job "Requests - Handle Expiration Jobs" updates requests and at present, the output of the job informs only on the number of outputs. The job can block on a request-ID which then must be manually handled.
In order to save time and better inform the lending libraries, it would be helpful to have at least an information on any Error-causing request, with it's request-ID. Ideally it would be great to also have an output of successfully handled requests in form of a list, which can be exported to Excel.Improve the job "Requests - Handle Expiration Jobs" with output…
4 votes -
Free text box in request forms
In the same way that there is a generic tick box built into all of the request forms, it would be useful to have a generic input box where we can request additional information about the request without having to contact them afterwards (such as purpose of loan).
9 votes -
Ability to make bulk bookings in Excel and import (similar to updating calendars in Excel)
We use the booking feature for student study rooms, but occasionally some (though not all) of these rooms need to be booked off for special events, i.e., convocation, reserving time for reference interviews, etc.
Our library could benefit from the ability to create these bulk bookings in Excel (copying/duplicating rows) as we would when updating our hours of operation.
Excel columns might include the barcode for the room, the barcode for the special patron account we use to block off rooms as needed, dates, start/end times, and a yes/no for whether the booking may override normal booking rules/restrictions.
1 vote -
Show Additional ID under Manage Patron Services > Request
The Royal Danish Library has placed the pickup number in Additional ID. In order to have easy access to the number, we would like to see the number under Manage Patron Services / Requests. We would like to have an extra column (Additional ID)
33 votes -
XML Expansion for "Ful Resource Request Slip Letter" with Data about Reshelving Status and about Expected Date when Item will be Reshelved
For fetching requested media at the stacks we are making use of the "Ful Resource Request Slip Letter" in printed form which we customized according to our needs.
Unfortunately, the data fields that contain
- the information that the requested item might currently not be at the stacks because it has just been returned and is therefore very likely on its way back to the stacks (Status = awaiting_reshelving)
- and the information when the requested item is expected to be reshelved ("reshelving_time")
are not provided in the XML data of the "Full Resource Request Slip Letter".
This information, when be presented…
42 votes -
Enable 'School' address to be used for Personal Delivery
Currently, only addresses of the 'Home' and 'Office' Address Types can be used for Personal Delivery. Consequently, we can't use Personal Delivery and have to rely on a local workaround instead.
We would like to see 'School' addresses usable for Personal Delivery, with options in the Request Terms of Use to enable us to show only the Address Types that we use and therefore that we want our users to be able to see. E.g. we use 'Home' and 'School' but not 'Office', so we don't want our users to be able to choose that option.
Also, when the request…
13 votes -
No request from available library
We would like to see an intermediate option between "No Requesting from available holding" and "No requesting" which will prevent requests when any holdings in a library have an available copy. Our reason is that using "No requesting" relies on a user knowing which other libraries they are entitled to use and going to visit them. In practice we find that our users have a preferred library. The "Available holding" setting is problematic since our historic data is often one item per holding.
3 votes -
Change / improve the Booking process for staff and patrons
Hi all,
We wish to submit a proposal to change the current booking process for staff creating a booking request in Alma AND for patrons creating their own bookings in PRIMO VE.
Now, Alma’s option to submit ‘’ Booking ‘’ requests requires us to first search an item, select it and then enter booking times for each piece of equipment desired, which is very time consuming.
When patrons book equipment, they often need up to 10 or more pieces of equipment for the same booking period. This is quite inconvenient and increases the risk of mistakes in the process.
In…
41 votes -
Be able to restrict certain libraries to particular user groups only
We need to restrict who can access one of our libraries by user groups. We need to restrict one of our libraries to only be used by users with a certain user group. We want to restrict who can collect a hold request by user group for one of our libraries.
1 vote -
No requesting when available items in institution
We would very much like there to be an option in Alma fulfillment units (On Shelf Request Policy): "No requesting when available items in institution".
The meaning of which would be that if there is at least one (requestable) item available at any holding, the user will not be able to make a title request. The system will consider all items in the institution, not just one holding at a time.
Currently we use the "No Requesting from available holding" option which means that when all (requestable) items on one holding are checked out, then the user can make a…
6 votes -
Show barcode field of requests in Manage Patron Services
Please add the ability to see the barcode of a requested item (where available) on the Requests tab of the Manage Patron Services screen. It is possible to see barcodes on the Monitor Requests & Item Processes screen but not this one.
4 votes -
Not "Notify user" when canceling a "Patron physical item request"
In most situations we don’t want a request cancellation to be sent to users when we cancel a patron physical item request (Ful Cancel Request Letter). But since the checkbox “Notify user” is checked by default, the letter often gets sent by mistake, resulting in users thinking they will not receive the requested material, when in fact they will. We want the checkbox to be unchecked by default. Maybe this could be a configurable option in Alma (whether the checkbox is checked or not) so that each library can decide this for themselves?
7 votes -
Add the ability to group select items in the 'Monitor Requests & Item Processes' view, the same as we can in 'Expired Holdshelf'
It would be useful to be able to group select items in the 'monitor requests and item processes' so that transit labels for them can be printed in bulk. Currently these have to be done individually per item. The ability to group select items already exists in the 'expired holdshelf' view so would (hopefully) be easy to implement
3 votes -
Improve discoverability of rejected requests in the Monitor Requests page
We often have to locate cancelled patron physical and digitisation requests in the Monitor Requests page. However, these requests are difficult to locate as they can only be retrieved by Title (a non-unique field) and cannot be filtered or sorted.
Please add:
-A filter for request status which includes 'rejected'
-The ability to sort requests by date created or date updated so that recent rejected requests can be seen at the top of the page
-retain the requester id. The main search term we use to locate a rejected request is the requester name or id. However this is removed…12 votes
- Don't see your idea?