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.

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.

For institutions that handle a large number of Patron Physical Item, and other request types dealing with their physical inventory, the Print Slip Report available under Fulfilment>Resource Requests> Pick from Shelf is a crucial workflow tool.

However the report output is inflexible, including columns which are irrelevant to many customers and which require hiding/deletion in Excel formats before being printed for onward process by library staff.

It would be a huge improvement to be able to configure the columns that go into this report to ensure that only the key ones are downloaded for each circulation desk's pick from shelf lists.

NB The Print Slip Report is somewhat unusual in Alma in that most functional areas have Excel downloads of data from the User Interface which can be configured column-by-column, however the Print Slip Report has no User Interface equivalent display which makes the lack of configuration particularly awkward for the workflow - i.e. it is the ONLY place we can access this vital request-by request, holding-by-holding, barcode-level, service information.

Currently, there are limited scheduling options for emailing Scheduled Reports (Alma Analytics Object area). Many of our users need reports delivered on the 1st of each month in order to capture the previous month's data. The only option right now somewhat close to that is delivery on the 2nd of each month. This doesn't work for us because it adds the first day's worth of data from the next month to the previous month. I propose adding delivery options for the 1st of each month. Better yet - how about offering a drop-down list where users can choose a certain day of the month for report delivery?

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.

Currently the only way to use records from NZ in an IZ is to search them in the NZ and perform an action like "order" or "link" on every single record one by one. There are, however, situations where an IZ wants to use a bulk of records. For this purpose we need a possibility to link records in bulk and create inventory for the linked records.

We imagine a linking job that takes as an input a logical or itemized set of records saved from a search in the NZ. The linking job can create physical and electronic (and digital) inventory, similar to current import profiles. The inventory operations for electronic inventory should include an option to specify the desired action if the record and a portfolio exist already in the IZ, out of the following choices:

• Add new portfolio.


• Update portfolio information (the URL).


• Don't do anything.

Use case:
The NZ loads monthly updates from e-book vendors where the IZs have purchased different packages. The workflows for group inventory aren't applicable here because the NZ doesn't possess the necessary information for determining who has rights to which portfolio. OAI is no option because this currently creates duplicate portfolios each time a record gets updated in the NZ. The workarounds currently in place involve sending files back and forth which is error prone and not very efficient.

At the moment Alma only sends one claim request to the vendor. If the ordered item is still not received, staff need to follow up and re-claim manually; usually a number of times.

We would like to see claim cycle functionality in Alma so that we can configure follow-up claims based on a set interval per vendor, as well as a maximum number of claims to be sent before the order is automatically cancelled and the vendor automatically notified. It would also be useful to be able to see the history of claims for an order, and be able to report on this for vendor performance monitoring.