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.

We would like more order types to choose from when creating additional orders on a portfolio using the “Additional Order” button. Particularly, Electronic Book - One Time and Electronic Title - One Time.

Currently there are only a limited number of order types available when creating an order via this method. This creates inefficiencies, because using the Additional Order button is the easiest, quickest and neatest way to create an additional order on a portfolio.

An example of where this change would be helpful is when purchasing additional copies of a limited-user ebook. Because we don’t have the option of creating an Electronic Book - One Time order via the Additional Order function, we have to follow an unnecessarily convoluted process to create the order and attach it to the portfolio. Simply adding more “type” options for Additional Order would save us a great deal of time.

Dear all
the May release introduced a change concerning the deletion of empty holdings:

The 'Delete Holdings' link in the 'List of Holdings' page, which was formerly visible to users with the 'Physical Inventory Operator' role, is now visible only to users who have the 'Physical Inventory Operator Extended' role.

This change is a problem because not all the operators can have the physical Inventory Operator Extended role: this role allows operators to delete copies and it is quite dangerous.
It would be better for us that operators with the physical inventory role keep the permission to move copies from an holding to another and then delete the empty holding. (let’s think of a correction of call numbers)
We propose the creation of a second Physical Inventory Operators’ role :
One without the possibility of delete empty holdings
and another one with the possibility of delete them.
So that, according to the job that operators have to do, they could keep doing the work deleting empty holdings

Because all norm rules can be edited by all staff with cataloger roles, there is great room for erroneous changes for rules that are applied to batch jobs. For example, the norm rule that is applied to records being brought in from Z39.50 targets can be edited by any staff member. A single error in the rule can break the z39.50 import process for all staff until the source of the error is identified. Likewise, if we have a rule applied to import profiles and a staff member inadvertently changes it and we load 50,000 records, that could cause huge data corruption. There needs to be a way to secure a norm rule to administrators such that normal staff with cataloger roles cannot change them.

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.

When you manually request a particular SUSHI account/report to be harvested by Alma, by default Alma requests any data which it hasn't already loaded for that account from the last 12 months. If there are multiple months in sequence missing, Alma requests the data for these months together as a single SUSHI request.

This is an inflexible system.
Instead, at the point where a user requests a harvest, Alma should ask the user to specify the time period they would like to request.

This would have several advantages:

• We would be able to use SUSHI to harvest usage data from greater than 12 months ago.


• When troubleshooting data errors, we could ask Alma to harvest just a single month at a time.


• We could avoid duplicating usage data which has been loaded into Alma manually.


• We could avoid harvesting the most recent month's data if the vendor hasn't yet made it available.

When using the Restore change type under Change item information, the only change made is toggling the "item is in temporary location" back to NO. Any values filled in for temporary library, temporary location, temporary item policy, temporary call number, etc. remain. Restore should clear those fields, or allow operators to keep those fields by unchecking a box that would be checked by default.

If the item has been scanned to have an item policy for special circ rules, that information remains in the record when it is restored, even though that information is not applied. If the item is given another temporary change that doesn't require a special item policy the previous item policy will be applied when it is moved to a temporary location. See attached file for an example, and desired option to clear all temporary info.

This was also suggested in 2017 NERS as Idea 5111: Remove Temporary Item Information during "Restore" Currently, temporary item information is not wiped out when a temporarily moved item is "restored" either via a staff process or expiration of the temporary move date. The info is confusing and can cause issues with Analytics, Manage Sets, and future temporary moves on the item.

See also the idea relating to removing temporary item information: https://ideas.exlibrisgroup.com/forums/308173-alma/suggestions/11012787-remove-temporary-location-not-just-change-indicat