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.
1697 results found
-
Add Detail for Payment Method=Accounting Department in Vendor Record/Account
Payment Method=Accounting Department is used to route invoices through our campus check feed/ERP export. However, at the campus financial system level, there are multiple options for how the vendor gets paid, including PaymentPlus, ACH (via Paymode-X), as well as paper check. It would be good to 1) record this information as a detail of Payment Method=Accounting Department, 2) be able to modify specifics via a table as needed for institution variations, as well as 3) have the fields available via Analytics. Ex. Campus has made a change in issuing checks, and we would like to communicate this change to our…
13 votes -
Add an ability to change the "owning library" at acquisitions level
Organizational mergers or splits of libraries can occur at any time, necessitating the management of changes in the library landscape even after the migration process.
They involve the transfer of collections and data between libraries. While Alma supports the transfers of holding and item information between libraries, there are currently (as of Dec‘24) technical limitations when it comes to moving acquisitions data. This functionality is not yet supported by Alma.
We therefore propose implementing a solution that facilitates the seamless transfer of purchase orders, invoices, as well as linked vendor data and budget transactions between (owning) libraries within Alma. There…
13 votes -
Auto Populated Copy ID Number Added to New Item Records
I'd like to propose streamlining the Alma item record creation process by enabling automatic population of the Copy ID field with "1" for new items. The system should also allow for easy modification of this default value for subsequent copies (2, 3, 4, etc.).
Currently, the manual entry of "1" is often missed, leading to errors and requiring time-consuming batch corrections. Implementing this auto-population feature would significantly reduce data entry time and the need for monthly clean-up reports, ultimately improving efficiency and data accuracy.
This idea was previously suggested by Leona Hughes on June 24, 2020, but was closed: (Automatic…
13 votes -
MD editor save marc tags chronologically
Upon save any MARC tags that are in the wrong chronological order are saved in the correct order.
13 votes -
Alma TPRS integration Resource Sharinng - request bib / request fields missing
Currently there are a number of fields not mapped correctly for TPRS-ALMA integration.
We would like this to be enhanced. See #08113211
====ISSUES==============
Subtitle field data entered in TPRS not appearing on the Alma side.Missing values for Author initials and Additional Person Name.
(Borrowing) Book Request (Alma borrows from TPRS) - Alma sends Data "Place of publication", this value did not land on (TPRS)?
13 votes -
Invoice Line Price and Additional charges data made available in Analytics
There is a need in our Acquisition department, and in the Collection Strategies department, to better understand what we spend on tax and freight for individual funds. In past fiscal years we used separate funds dedicated to the freight and tax funds. In this new fiscal year and going forward all funds, as has been practiced with endowment funds, will have freight and tax encumbered and invoiced within the fund itself. This is to align with the campus's new financial system. In order to track freight and service charges per fund in any fiscal year going forward we need to…
13 votes -
Portfolio Bulk Load file limit too small
The file limit of 10MB is too small. If we're using the Bulk Load, it means we're dealing with very large amounts of portfolios. Having to split those files is cumbersome.
12 votes -
Make "Send Query to Patron" option available in other areas of Alma
The Send Query to Patron function found under Fulfillment - Resource Sharing - Borrowing Requests - More actions (on item) is a great tool for notifying patrons within a request without having to cancel the request to send a note. Can this be made available elsewhere in the system (e.g. Pick from Shelf, Patron Requests, Network Activity, etc.) for quick and easy access to the function?
12 votes -
Addition of DOIs and Proprietary Identifiers as Title Identifiers to Analytics Criteria
In Analytics within the Subject Area "Usage Date" the "Book DOI" (Counter R4 Reports) or "DOI" (Counter R5 Reports) are not selectable as Title Identifiers.
The same is true for "Proprietary Identifier" (Counter R4) or "Proprietary_ID" (Counter R5).
Since this information is sometimes listed in the corresponding columns of the COUNTER Book reports, it would be helpful if this information could also be retrieved in Analytics.
12 votes -
Display loan limit for patrons at Manage Patron Services Screen in Alma
At present, there is no indication at the Manage Patron Services screen (when you go to a patron's account) of the loan limit for the patron (i.e. allowed to borrow 8 loans; of which 2 loans may be from the SL collection, etc.). This information is only available at Configuration - Fulfillment - Loan Limits.
12 votes -
Select partners from multiple pages when adding to rota or template
When adding partners to a borrowing request rota or rota template, you have the ability to add multiple partners at the same time but only if the partners appear on the same page of the partner pick list. Whenever you move to a different page of the pick list, selections on the previous page are lost.
Alma already has the ability to remember selections across multiple pages in other functional areas (e.g. selecting portfolios for activation from a CZ collection).
It would make creating a rota more efficient if this ability could be extended to the add partners list.12 votes -
Add feature to change the background dark and the letters white in Alma
Please develop a way to change the background dark and the letters white. Reworded in hopes of getting an update on the previous idea from 2019. At that time it was stated this feature would be on a future roadmap, but we haven't seen anything yet. This is an important feature for those of us who spend a lot of our work time in Alma.
12 votes -
"Purchase Request Status Letter": take the sender from library address
The "Purchase Request Status Letter" takes the sender from the label "addressFrom" on the Letter configuration.
We would like to suggest that the sender for this letter would be taken from the email address of the library that manages the request.
This behaviour already exists for other acquisition letters, for exemple the "Interested In" letter.
12 votes -
Packaging PO Lines into a PO: properties
Currently PO lines are packaged into a single PO if all the following properties match:
- Vendor account
- Owner
- Currency
- Continuity – One-time/continuous
- Acquisition method
- Source type
- Ordering Library
- FundWe order from some suppliers in different currencies. Therefore, the match criteria "Currency" is unfortunately not ideal for us.
It would be great if you could adjust the criteria here for your own institution.Thank you in advance!
12 votes -
Index POL Renewal Notes for Search
Please consider indexing the "Renewal Note" field on POLs for searching/advanced search. Having that data in Analytics is great, but it'd be very helpful to find it when searching Alma as well.
12 votes -
RS Lending, Overwrite Renewal Restriction
Rapido participating libraries aren't able to manually change the due date in the Resource Sharing Lending request record or update the "due back" date for the item in process when the borrowing library is RapidILL. When RapidILL libraries contact us as the lender and ask us to renew something, there is literally no way to do this. This is probably true with other broker partners that don't allow renewals. Lending libraries should be able to update/overwrite due dates in Lending request records and manually change the due back date for items in the ILL lending process.
12 votes -
Create a job to send a notification letter to users when their expiry date is near so they can request to renew their library user account
The option to notify users whose accounts have or will expire of their options for renewing their library user account would help us to stay engaged with users whose library user account will expire soon (or has recently expired). Users who want to continue using their library account can renew it prior to the expiry date, thus reducing any barriers to accessing their account and using library materials.
A notification letter could be created to support this type of messaging. It would be great if a job could be scheduled to send to users whose expiry date is upcoming. It…
12 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 -
Attach multiple courses/sections to a reading list more quickly
We use a single reading list for many sections of a course, and also reuse these reading lists from semester to semester. Attaching courses to a preexisting reading list is a very slow process which must be done one at a time. I'd love in the reading list courses tab, when you click "Associate Course" and then "Select from List", you were given the option of a checkbox so that many course sections could be added to a reading list at once.
Alternatively, in bulk upload of courses, if you can attach a NEW course to an existing reading list,…
12 votes -
Fulfillment: User receives an email when an item that has requests on it is issued to them and the loan period is shorter than normal
In our loan Terms of Use the Recall Period and Requested Item Due Date are set to 3 days. If a user requests an item, but then another request is placed on the item before they collect it from the library and it is issued to them, when the item is issued to them they are not informed that there is another request on the item so the loan period is only 3 days. The first the user knows about this is when they receive the overdue notice on the day after the item was due. Most of our libraries…
12 votes
- Don't see your idea?