I suggest that if the "not needed by " date is reached then the patron request is cancelled.

The only function of “date not needed by” for patron physical item requests is to prevent items from being put into transit from other locations if the transit cannot be completed by the required date.

However this is not clear to patrons and users ask us why we send Hold available notices when they already indicated a date when they would no longer need the item.

Staff also waste time locating items that Patrons have indicated are no longer needed, only to waste more time when they take the unused item off the Hold shelf when it eventually expires.

The new shortloancourtesyreminder & shortloanoverduereminder cannot be configured for multiple locations. For institutions with several hourly loan locations (for example Boston College maintains 2 and 3 hour loan periods for Course Reserves and a 4 hour loan period for some technology items) this dictates that the reminder notice has to be set based on the location with the shortest loan period. The overdue notice must be timed to make sense for for the longest loan period.

In our test configuration we used the following time parameters:

​shortloancourtesyreminder - 105 minutes
shortloanoverduereminder - 241 minutes

However, this creates a situation whereby patrons borrowing from some locations will have already incurred an overdue charge before the overdue notice is sent.

In order for this functionality to provide the service is designed for, it must be robust enough to support different loan periods.

https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/ProductDocumentation/010AlmaOnlineHelp(English)/030Fulfillment/080ConfiguringFulfillment/110General#ConfiguringFulfillment_Jobs

More academic libraries are checking out high-traffic electronic items (laptops, Wi-Fi hotspots, etc.) and often have a long list of patrons with holds on these items. It would be useful if we could manage the queue for user holds/reserves more effectively. We should be able to renumber/reposition users in the queue (presently you may only bump someone up to the very top of the queue or profile a priority if users are from different user groups). We should also be able to manage the queue without having the item available; presently that is not possible. We often have 12+ users on a hold list at a time for laptops...and the users are generally all the same user category (students), so the present Alma functionality is just not helpful. If a laptop comes back and needs to be repaired, it is a big deal to manage the hold queue, so the next person in line is not bumped back to the bottom because that item needs repaired. Managing the queue should be a straightforward thing.

Currently the library can turn borrowing history on or off, but the choice applies to all users. For privacy reasons, and in order to avoid subpoena situations, we have it off, but some users do want borrowing history on as a convenience, and are not concerned about privacy risk themsleves. Why not allow those users to opt in to borrowing history, and allow the default otherwise to being off?

By the way, this "opt in" approach is how most public libraries in Eastern Massachusetts are set up, so our users expect this level of service from us also.

It is hard to explain that we leave borrowing history off because in our system turning it on exposes all our borrowers to a privacy risk. When users can't make this personal choice and control their own privacy settings at the university the way they can in their local cities and towns, it makes our library and our online system appear very "web 1.0".

We would like desk operators to have the option of selecting from a list of predetermined check out periods for items in certain collections.

Boston College Libraries currently provide approximately 80 laptops to community members, which can be borrowed for a fixed loan period. For many patrons this static loan period is either too short or too long, adding some loan period choices would enable us to easily meet the needs of more patrons.
Currently in Alma, offering a variety of loan periods would require the creation of additional locations and terms of use. Doing so would enable us to move subsets of our inventory to each location, however, this is an inherently a rigid way of inventory control. What we are looking for is a more flexible system that enables our entire laptop inventory to circulate for a variety of loan periods.

The imagined workflow:

1. Patron comes to borrow a laptop.


2. The laptop is loaned in Alma


3. The operator is presented with a dialog box with a series of loan period options (configured at the library level) - for example (4 Hours, 1 Day, 4 Days, 7 Days).


4. The operator asks the patron which loan period meets the need and makes the selection in Alma to complete the loan.

Thank you for considering this request.

Configuring Alma to deliver an exclusively off-campus service in response to the Coronavirus pandemic included the extension of due dates for us. We were thankful for the 'Bulk Change Due Dates' functionality, which we were able to use to push back the due dates of a majority of items on loan (until 1 June in the first instance for us). We encountered problems though when it came to any items borrowed by patrons whose records were due to expire before that date. The items wouldn't go beyond the patrons' expiry dates, which under normal circumstances would be exactly how we would have Alma work, but in this situation was inconvenient and required us to do a manual workaround. Likewise, the due dates of any items on loan that had been recalled due to policy (e.g. having reached the end of the maximum renewal period) or requests were not extended, so again we had to deal with those separately.

Recognising that the way Bulk Change Due Dates works currently is suitable for Alma users probably a majority of the time, could tick-box options such as 'Disregard patron record expiry dates' and 'Include recalled items' be added to that screen please?

The Activity Report letter automatically tries to send when “Renew Selected” and “Renew All” are selected in Alma Patron Services. This is problematic for a few reasons:

1. The letter is triggered even when the letter is disabled in Letter Activity configuration. It generates a ‘fail’ message for staff.




2. The letter slows down processes dramatically depending on how many loans are attached to the account.




3. A workaround is to use the letter opt-out functionality, but we'd have to continually update all of our users with the opt-out in order for this to work well for us.

I would like to see this functionality updated so that disabling the letter is enough to not trigger the letter automatically. This functionality should also be fixed so that the letter does not slow down processes when there are many loans attached to an account.

Hi,
We have dedicated librarians working on digitizations, and sometimes the item they have on loan and like to scan is not suitable for the digitzation process (notes, underlining etc).
They would then like to request another item. This request will be rejected in Alma due to policy. An item can not be requested when you already have a an item from the same bib record on loan. They would, of course, like to keep the original item on loan until they have checked if other items are more suitable.

You are able to request if the items have different policy (enablerequestduringloanfordifferentpolicy value is true in the Customer Parameters Mapping Table), or if the items are differentiated from one another using the description field https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Alma/KnowledgeArticles/ConfiguringAlmatoAllowMultipleRequestsonA_Title.

This is not the solution for us.

We would like an additional option to these two under Block preferences in Alma:

24 Item of the same title is already on loan for this patron. Parallel loan is prohibited. Actions= Override by operator

25 An item of the same title was recently loaned to this patron. Actions= Override by operator

?? Item of the same title is already on loan for this patron. Request is prohibited. Actions= Override by operator

Boston College would like to be able to configure Alma so that work orders are auto-created for materials in a designated location when they are placed on loan.

Here is the desired workflow:

1. Item is loaned.


2. At the same time, Alma automatically places a work order on the item.


3. When the item is returned to the managing circulation desk the work order is triggered and the item is routed to the correct work order department for processing.

The purpose of this request is to improve the management of the laptops that Boston College Libraries loan to patrons, and to facilitate the implementation of an online laptop availability tool.

The process for printing Pull Slips has multiple failure points. Suggestion: Use the Print Slip Report as the data source for a mail merged Word document Pull Slip.

Creating email pull slips is too reliant on multiple systems working at all times. All of the required systems (servers, printers, scripts…) are potential failure points. These failure points often require staff from other departments to resolve. When there is a failure at any of the many points, the result is an inability to process Pull Slips through the normal workflows.

Suggestion: (1) Execute Print Slip Report, (2) Open Word document Pull Slip, (3) Insert Merge Fields to the Word documents from the Excel report, (4) Print.