Because Alma does not have the granularity to separate an Interested User request and a regular hold request, our Interested User hold process does not work.

When the “Non-Requestable Processes Fulfillment Unit Rule or Change Order” is configured to prevent “in process” items from being requestable, any items that have an Interested User that are in our Technical Services Work Order are treated as “in process” and therefore, the interested user request is blocked. While we do not want most “In Process” items to be requestable, we do want our Interested User requests to be fulfilled.

Because of this configuration, the following workflow does not allow Interested User hold to process: When the item is marked “Done” from the Technical Services workflow, two actions occur (per Ex Libris): the first action is checking for an interested user and an attempt to create a hold request. The Second is to clear the “in process” type and move the item to the next process type. Because of the order of operations, the item is still “In Process” when Alma checks for Interested Users, so the hold is not allowed, due to our Fulfillment Unit Rule.

If there can be a way to either differentiate between a “regular” hold request and one from an interested user, perhaps that granularity can be applied so that the Interested User hold function can work without changing our Fulfillment Rule. Or, if the Interested User check and hold request can be made after the item is cleared from the “in process” type, then the hold would apply.