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.

Current Alma practice is that EDI invoices automatically load into Alma and expend from a fund whilst still 'in review' and before the 'approval' stage.

Below are some examples where the practice of expending a fund whilst the invoice is still 'in review' is causing us issues:

1. We have full end-to-end invoice integration from our suppliers, via Alma and into Agresso. We don't send through manual invoices for payment. Our invoice data is automatically transferred through to Agresso every evening once an invoice has been approved. Only those invoices that have moved out of review are included in the export. Any invoices 'in review' will not be in the export but will be showing as expended on our system. This means that Agresso and Alma will always be out of step whilst we have invoices 'in review'. This makes it impossible to reconcile Alma and Agresso.




2. Some invoices have over 200 lines and it may take us some days to work through each transaction. There may be issues with incomplete or inaccurate data. We have to make a few manual amendments in order to ensure that the Agresso transfer completes successfully. Only once all of that is done do we 'approve'. Whilst this is happening our Alma and Agresso systems are out of sync. What is the point of the approval step?




3. We are working with IT on enabling the accrual accounting functionality so that our Finance Team don't have to maintain a separate spreadsheet of prepayments and meet monthly to reconcile. There is little benefit to be gained from working on this functionality if, once again, the two systems are always out of sync. We can't reliably turn up to meetings to discuss our accounts when the Alma reported expenditure includes invoices that aren't yet paid.




4. If an invoice arrives that doesn't have an Alma PO number on it, the transaction amount is expended but because there is no PO to match to the amount remains encumbered too.

Any 'in review' invoices should remain as 'encumbrance' until they have been 'approved' or have another 'pending expenditure' type invoice status.

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!

Currently the "ignorelenderduedate" setting in the Alma Customer Parameters Mapping Table is a global setting; it applies to all resource sharing partners. This is problematic for consortia who have resource sharing partners for consortia members, as well as a resource sharing partner for ILLiad.

Setting "ignorelenderduedate" to "true" works for our consortia resource sharing standard checkout, but ILLiad due dates must be entered manually.
Setting "ignorelenderduedate" to "false" works for the ILLiad lender due date, but then consortia due dates must be entered manually.
If "ignorelenderduedate" could be configured separately, for different types of resource sharing partners, this would allow a more seamless ILLiad to Alma integration.

When the URL in a bib record attached to a portfolio is updated (individually edited, or batch load/overlay of records), there should be a setting to the action so that the URL in an attached portfolio would also be updated and we don't have to remember to manually do this. We have had 2 recent instances, one where we used APIs to update bib records using our old PURL manager to use our new one, only to find that the portfolio URLs also needed to be changed separately, and one where we have a batch of vendor records with changed URLs that we had to delete and re-add in order to get the portfolio URL updated. Both of these were large batches... We'd like to tell Alma to synch URLs in the attached portfolios when we make a manual edit, or load/overlay a batch of records.

If there's a way to do this we don't know, please tell us!

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

User experience testing that we conducted showed that most users prefer to place resource sharing requests via the resource sharing request form in Primo. Users also expressed frustration with some aspects of the form including the format of the fields. They also expected that the Library could add notices relevant to the resource sharing service to this page.

The current options for configuring this form do not allow us to meet the expectations of our users. We would like to have more options for customising the page the form is on and the form itself. Specifically we would like :
1)The ability to customise the format and appearance of the page (e.g. the width of form fields, the positioning of the radial buttons)
2)The ability to add a notice or message to the form (this is crucial to communicate important information about the service to our users)
3)The ability to add custom fields to the form

To mark an item as missing, you must currently use the Toggle Missing Item option from the inline action menu, which only displays when you are viewing a list of items attached to a given bib record. However, if you search for the item using a physical item search, and only one item matches your search criteria (for example, if you search by barcode), then the item record opens automatically in the physical item editor. There is no option to toggle the missing status from this screen. Operators must remember to perform a title search, instead of a physical item search (counter intuitive, since only a physical item can be missing), and then drill down to the list of item records from the title record. It would be nice to be able to toggle the missing status from the physical item editor.

A new multi-selection field, Purchase Request Library, was added to the User Details page with the June 2018 release. If one or more libraries are defined for a user, the user may create purchase requests only for the listed libraries. If no libraries are defined, the user may create a purchase request for any library.

But managing Purchase Request Libraries in user records can only be done record per record; there is no possibility for batch processes.

Currently, there is no option:
- to add or remove a Purchase Request Library with the Update/Notify Users job;
- to add or remove a Purchase Request Library with an API;
- to add or remove a Purchase Request Library with a SIS Integration Profile;
- to retrieve in Alma Analytics existing Purchase Request Libraries in user records or to find user records that have no Purchase Request Library.

We would appreciate a lot a more efficient Purchase Request Library management that would be integrated with the existing tools (Analytics, SIS, job, API).

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.