Work orders are useful but often cumbersome and don't work as required. A package of enhancements/fixes would make them much more useful and useable:

• Adding notes when creating work orders in bulk. This would enable having fewer work order types as explanatory notes could be used instead.
• Makes notes more (immediately) visible when scanning in (pop up message?). Again would enable fewer work order types as items could be easily catergorised according to explanatory note upon receipt at managing department.
• Select recall/not recall at work order placement (like pick from shelf), not baked into type (and in selectable in bulk as well as individually).
• Select/override priority level at work order placement (individual and in bulk)/make it easier to manually advance work orders in queue, AND:
Different priority levels for different work order types.
• Allow managing departments to manage multiple work order types (like circulation desks can) - increased versatility and flexibility.
• Where circulation desks (and hopefully managing departments) manage multiple work order types, make it possible to view all in-process items and have work order type immediately visible.
• Alert on scanning into work order managing department if higher priority work order/request exists.
• Enable cancelling specific work orders/work order types in bulk (can currently only cancel all physical item requests on a set of items in bulk). This would improve versatility and flexibility.

Realise this in not a single enhancement, but no single enhancement will make that much difference. The whole work order system needs to be looked at start-to-finish for real-world usability.

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.

Currently, after running a normalization rule on a set of bib records, the bib records display the 5XX fields out of order, e.g. 500, 546, 506 etc. This occurs even after running the CnmarcBibReSequenceTask as fields between 500 and 899 are not sorted, or sorted only by hundreds (this was the information given to us by a member of staff when we reported the issue on the ExLibris Customer Portal).

Having all fields in the correct order would ease any future cataloguing needed on these records, or when staff members view the record for work purposes.

I've attached an example screenshot.

Problem:
It is not possible to easily find IZ bibliographic records that have associated PO lines but no inventory. The All Titles Advanced Search has an option to search for “Has inventory | equals | no”, but those results include bibliographic records that have related holdings records (bound withs), as well as bibliographic records that have holdings records but no item records. We want the ability to easily find bibliographic records that have only a PO line associated with them.

Use Case:
The ability to find bibs with only PO lines attached is necessary in order to keep the database tidy. Examples include:
bibliographic records that migrated with PO lines or order records attached but no inventory.
bibliographic records where inventory was relinked but the PO line left behind.

Potential solutions:
The NZ has a job (Identify records that are not used in the Network) that provides operators with several options for defining which records are considered “unused”, including those with no inventory and not part of a boundwith relation. One potential solution to the problem is to have a similar job in the IZ that would allow us to find bib records with PO lines but also exclude holdings records with no items.

Another potential solution to this problem is to have a new search index (and corresponding indexed field) in Alma that would allow an advanced search for bibliographic records with attached order records but no holdings/inventory records.

When scanning the patron's barcode or searching for a patron in Manage Patron Services, can a pop-up notification be configured to alert staff that there are items held for the patron on the hold shelf?

Currently, you have to look at the User Notes section on the right hand corner of the screen and it's gray text that does not draw attention. You can also look in the request tab if it is dog-eared but it will display all requests statuses; not just when an item is on shelf ready for pick up.

Since patrons don't always check their email and let staff know that there is an item at the library to be picked up- staff can miss items that are on the hold shelf to check out to patrons when they are visiting to borrow other materials. An alert to check the hold shelf would be very helpful to staff. Our older ILS, Aleph had this so I don't understand why Alma does not.

Making testing and training in an Alma Standard Sandbox based on Ex Libris provided configuration is very difficult since this configuration may be very different from the one in the customer's production environment.

Currently Ex Libris is offering two types of Sandboxes for Alma:
(1) "Standard" - by default included in Alma subscription pricing. This sandbox contains Ex Libris provided data and configuration
(2) "Premium" – for addition subscription fee – this sandbox includes a full copy of the customer's data and configuration

Refresh of the Alma sandbox environment is possible up to once a quarter, upon request. In the case of a Premium Sandbox, Ex Libris updates the customer’s Premium Sandbox with the most recent data and configuration copied from the production environment. In the case of Standard Sandbox, Ex Libris resets the Sandbox data and configuration to the original copy.

We would like Ex Libris to propose an improved Standard Sandbox so that customers can export the configuration from the production environment with a job in order to import it in the Standard Sandbox. This Standard Sandbox would still contain Ex Libris provided data, only configuration would be copied from prod to sandbox. A Standard sandbox containing the customer's configuration would be very useful for staff training, testing of setup scenarios, new enhancements, integration with other systems, etc. This service is already proposed for Primo!

As someone who manages serial subscriptions, I would like the ability to choose the quantity of predictions I create for any given holdings record. This would allow for quicker navigation of list of items, and reduce the number of inaccurate predictions.

It is not always desired to predict an entire year’s worth of predictions (which currently is the only option). Depending on the publishing frequency and the number of copies of a subscription, we can have 11 pages of predictions in a list of items, in addition to the received items. This greatly increases the amount of clicking needed at times to find the item you are looking for. Also, due to variations in publishing schedules and the general inconsistent nature of periodicals, creating weekly predictions a year in advance often results in inaccurate predictions which will need to be modified later.

In our previous system, with one click we were able to change items to Claimed Returned status, no matter what their current status was. one click and it was done.
But in Alma, for some reason, this is not possible once the item has been declared Lost. One has to go through a long and convoluted process creating a file and saving it then creating a set and saving it then running a job on the set. This involves three pages of instructional documentation and about 15 minutes of staff time every day.
We often have items claimed returned when they have automatically gone to Lost status, and it would be really useful to have the Claimed returned option appear as a choice in the elipsis also when the item is Lost.

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/Knowledge_Articles/Configuring_Alma_to_Allow_Multiple_Requests_on_A_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

It would be exceptionally helpful to be able to run Analytics reports on all areas of Alma Configuration.

It should be possible both for each individual library to run the reports on their own behalf, AND for libraries belong to a consortium, possible for consortial staff to run the reports across all institution zones simultaneously for comparison between member IZs.

Use cases:
1) Reviewing a spreadsheet containing all of the settings in a configuration area makes settings review easier, and reduces errors. Needing to click between screens and take screenshot to compare settings is cumbersome, and leads to mistakes or unintended differences between settings. It is also easier to review many settings in comparison to each other (example, Fulfillment TOU and Rules), and it is easier to discuss the settings with colleagues through a report format.

2) Since Alma does not maintain an internal change log to configuration changes for most settings, it is possible that library staff may accidentally change configuration and be unable to recover what the settings were prior to the change. The ability to run reports provides libraries with the opportunity to snapshot their settings, in case edits occur that need to be reverted.

3) When libraries are in a consortium, that consortium may have consortial configuration settings/policies that each library should follow. Without the ability to run reports on Configuration settings, consortial staff must log in to each member's institution zones individually, and review each setting manually. This is inefficient, leads to the potential for error, and can impact the patron's experiences. This also prevents consortial staff from being able to provide reports that allow member institutions to compare their settings to the settings of other member institutions for baselining.

We have been using Voyager since 2002, and have had the ability to report on Voyager System Administration settings. I have found those reports invaluable in my time working at the consortium, and would appreciate the same access in Alma/Primo VE configuration.

There is no easy solution in Alma FF to indicate that an item has been consulted in the library and that it can be reshelved.

When items are placed on the hold shelf and are briefly consulted in the library, there is no easy way to directly reshelve them in Alma FF. The workarounds are far from ideal and are very labour-intensive when facing a large amount of physical requests: cancel the request (but this is not correct and influences our request statistics) and reshelve via the expired hold shelf, update the expiry date to yesterday (but this requires a lot of clicks) or wait until the item automatically appears on the expired hold shelf and reshelve from there. With this last option there is too much time between the moment of consultation and the moment of reshelving, which makes that items are not available on shelf or for request for a too long time period. It also makes that new features like the hold shelf reminder letter cannot be set up (because patrons could receive a reminder when they already consulted the item).
Possible solutions are: for an item that is scanned in via ‘return items’ the underlying request will disappear and the item will be reshelved automatically. A button ‘consulted’ (like there is a button ‘cancel’) which immediately reshelves the book when you handle a request is another – less preferable – option.