We also find prediction pattern management and receiving overly complex, time-consuming, and prone to error due to the high number of manual steps and clicks involved.
At Vanderbilt we update the volume holdings as well as receiving items because the list of received items isn't always helpful. Unfortunately these are two separate processes that require searching for each title twice.
There's also inconsistency in what displays. In the Receiving workbench the items received are sometimes different from the items in place in the Holdings. I can't tell why these don't match.

I don’t believe the cloud app “Update items using Excel load” would be helpful in this case. It appears to be yet another manual workaround, and not significantly faster or easier than the manual corrections we already perform.

As a national library, we manage prediction patterns and predicted items for approximately 4,000 journals. In our experience, publication frequencies often change during the year, requiring updates to the prediction patterns.

Here’s our current workflow when the publication frequency changes mid-year:
1. Delete all predicted items that haven’t yet been received.
2. Since we use two holdings for each journal, we must update the prediction pattern for both—either by applying a new template or manually adjusting the pattern. We usually use templates because it is seen as to difficult for everyone to be able to write their own prediction pattern.
3. We then need to update the “next predicted item” information for both holdings to ensure the correct year and volume are used.
4. We must open predicted items for each holding to trigger the generation of new predicted items.
5. After that, we have to delete the newly generated predicted items that correspond to issues we’ve already received.
6. Finally, we must manually update the description for each predicted item, as they do not automatically use the description template configured in our system. We typically use a cloud app for this step.

This idea highlights a broader issue with the prediction pattern functionality. The entire process of creating and updating prediction patterns and predicted items is overly complex, time-consuming, and prone to error due to the high number of manual steps and clicks involved.

In my opinion, prediction pattern management should be integrated into the continuous POL, allowing prediction patterns to be created and applied across multiple holdings (all holdings connected to the POL) in a single streamlined process. While I’m not sure what the best solution would be for handling mid-year changes, I believe a major part of the problem lies in how labor-intensive it is to create and maintain predicted items in the first place.

Thank you Rebecca for this information!

So, the need is for items that were already created, but were not yet received.
Can the 'Update items using Excel load' CloudApp be utilized for fixing their description? see https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/appcenter/item-updater-by-excel/

Thanks,
Tamar

Hi Tamar, I think the intent behind this suggestion is more flexibility with existing predicted items/patterns, not post receipt cleanup. Currently, if you predict a years worth of items, for example, a weekly periodical, and 2 months in, there is an unexpected combined issue or skipped issue, the enum or chron for all subsequent issues is completely thrown off. You then have several options but all are labor intensive.

1) You could delete the all incorrect expected items for the remainder of the year, create a new/updated pattern with that exception built into the $$y, and then re-create expected items. You then have to delete the duplicates of the issues you've already received.
2) You could manually update each item for the rest of the year as recieved, which slows down the whole point of having expected items in the first place (ready for quick/accurate receipt and description). Then, when the year is over, you could ensure that the following year's pattern is correct.

Solving this problem would require Alma to be able to correct the existing items that have NOT yet arrived using updated pattern information, without disrupting already recieved items for that year. The manual options mentioned above are easy for something like a quarterly publication, but a daily or weekly publication can be very inconvenient, especially if the publisher is not consistent about it year after year.

If Ex Libris ever does decide to review print periodical receiving (though that seems increasingly unlikely) I hope they'll consult people with experience working with serials. The system as it is now is so badly designed it's almost unusable.

It would be helpful in many ways to change the option on predicting issues to allow predict next ___ issues. For instance, if in May a monthly journal became every other month, you could delete predicted issues May - Dec, create the new pattern, and then predict the next 4 issues, so that you could do the following year's predictions at the same time as other journals.
See this idea: https://ideas.exlibrisgroup.com/forums/308173-alma/suggestions/12875748-ability-to-create-a-chosen-quantity-of-predictions

Six months under review and there's been no update. Perhaps we could make some progress if Ex Libris would accept some feedback from users.

Dear all, thank you for posting this idea and for your helpful comments - we are in the process of assessing the complexity of this request, and will update the idea accordingly.

With this under review will users be able to offer suggestions? The number of print serials we receive has diminished greatly but the current system requires a lot more management than what we had in the past.

5 years later the need is still there. More than 400 votes so far. Time to implement ?

Wow - the idea ist from 2019, the last serious comment from Oct. 21 and nothing happened. Does Ex Libris ever react to suggestions here?

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Thank you for this post!

This is a good idea but what's really needed is a thorough revision of the way Alma handles print serials. Print serials, especially periodicals, haven't changed since we used NOTIS, but Alma has made every part of the process unnecessarily complicated to the point that where we used to be able to train student assistants to help now it's a specialized skill. We also can't claim reliably or display print holdings as clearly as we could previously because of Alma's poor design in this area.