Alma
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1897 results found
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Set standard opening hours in advance
If the Library decides to change the standard opening hours of the Library for the coming year you currently have to wait until the first day of new hours to be able to input them as standard hours into Alma.
It would be nice if Alma allowed you to enter new standard opening hours in advance and to set a date in which they would come into effect. That way you wouldn't have to schedule to change them on the first day of the new hours.
An example would be if new standard hours were decided on by Library Management in June for the coming year. Currently you have to wait for the start of the new year but we'd like to be able to set them up in June with a date they'll come into effect
If the Library decides to change the standard opening hours of the Library for the coming year you currently have to wait until the first day of new hours to be able to input them as standard hours into Alma.
It would be nice if Alma allowed you to enter new standard opening hours in advance and to set a date in which they would come into effect. That way you wouldn't have to schedule to change them on the first day of the new hours.
An example would be if new standard hours were decided on by Library Management…
19 votes -
make permissions on changing address data more granular (email/domestic)
Aleph allows to set an option to allow users change their "address" data via Primo OVP. This allows users to edit the phone number and email in Primo, but also their domestic address. Often, the change of the domestic address must be prevented, because it is the address where a possible court order is directed to.
We want to allow users to change their email and phone number but need to disallow the change of the domestic address. Therefore, we propose that Primo and Aleph/ALMA must be designed to work in a way that allows setting permissions on each field ( email, address or phone number).
Aleph allows to set an option to allow users change their "address" data via Primo OVP. This allows users to edit the phone number and email in Primo, but also their domestic address. Often, the change of the domestic address must be prevented, because it is the address where a possible court order is directed to.
We want to allow users to change their email and phone number but need to disallow the change of the domestic address. Therefore, we propose that Primo and Aleph/ALMA must be designed to work in a way that allows setting permissions on each field…
22 votes -
Change Financial Year dates after they have been set
It doesn't look as if it is possible to change the start and finish dates of any financial year in Acquisitions Configuration > Fund And Ledger Fiscal Period table mapping tables once the year has been created, unless it is deleted completely.
Can it be made possible for the start and (in particular) the end dates to be edited having already been set and saved, if so required?
Being able to do this would be of particular benefit around the time of a financial year rollover, especially if an institution cannot be certain that all financial transactions for the outgoing year will be completed in time for the originally set end date (necessitating, therefore, an extension of the outgoing financial year and a delaying of the incoming one).
It doesn't look as if it is possible to change the start and finish dates of any financial year in Acquisitions Configuration > Fund And Ledger Fiscal Period table mapping tables once the year has been created, unless it is deleted completely.
Can it be made possible for the start and (in particular) the end dates to be edited having already been set and saved, if so required?
Being able to do this would be of particular benefit around the time of a financial year rollover, especially if an institution cannot be certain that all financial transactions for the outgoing…
17 votes -
Automatically Associate Certain Payment Methods (e.g., Credit, JV, Deposit) with Prepaid Functionality when Creating Invoices
We would like the ability to automatically associate certain Payment Methods (Credit Card, JV (Correction), Deposit Account, etc.) with Prepaid functionality when creating Invoices. 1) This would save time. 2) Most institutions do not want certain payment methods going to their ERP, but occasionally forget to check the Prepaid box. Setting this up systematically would serve as a fail-safe for such situations.
14 votes -
Display renewals in Item History
In the Physical Item Editor, under the Fulfillment activities, we are able to see the Loan and Return history. I think it would be great to see Renewal information in this place as well.
So many times, we have patrons disputing fines because the item was late and they renewed it thinking that it's not due on the original due date.
It's true that when the item is checked out to the person you can see this when you click Actions>Loan History. But this does us no good when the item is checked back in and a patron comes to dispute.
It's also true that you can run an Analytic report to find this information. But this can be a long and tedious process and would be much more convenient within the Fulfillment activities or somewhere equally easy to access.
In the Physical Item Editor, under the Fulfillment activities, we are able to see the Loan and Return history. I think it would be great to see Renewal information in this place as well.
So many times, we have patrons disputing fines because the item was late and they renewed it thinking that it's not due on the original due date.
It's true that when the item is checked out to the person you can see this when you click Actions>Loan History. But this does us no good when the item is checked back in and a patron comes to…
92 votes -
Improvements to Pick From Shelf list needed
Currently our staff spend too much time managing requests. Improvements to the interface for Pick From Shelf would help in some of these cases. We would like to see:
- A search box.
Very often we need to target a particular request, a task made more difficult by less than ideal facets (see #2). Search functionality exists under Monitor Requests & Item Processes, but not all options for handling requests are available in that view (such as "Skip Location").
- Better facets.
Two of the facets available in the Monitor Requests & Item Processes view would be great for Pick from Shelf: "Request/Process Type" and "Pick-up Location". Currently we have a need to facet out temporary move requests in order to view only the patron physical item requests. To do so in Pick from Shelf we use the "Destination" facet, which is still not ideal because we cannot see individual library hold shelves or whether an item is for office delivery. "Request/Process Type" would allow us to separate the two types of requests very easily. The facet "Pick-up Location" from Monitor Requests and Item Processes would then allow us to see which hold shelf an item is routing to or whether it is for Office Delivery. Adding these two facets would allow us to prioritize our requests more efficiently.
Currently our staff spend too much time managing requests. Improvements to the interface for Pick From Shelf would help in some of these cases. We would like to see:
- A search box.
Very often we need to target a particular request, a task made more difficult by less than ideal facets (see #2). Search functionality exists under Monitor Requests & Item Processes, but not all options for handling requests are available in that view (such as "Skip Location").
- Better facets.
Two of the facets available in the Monitor Requests & Item Processes view would be…
67 votes -
Payment option on user Fines/Fees tab
We would like to include a "Pay" option in the drop down list at the bottom of user Fines/Fees tab (see attachment). There are many times that patrons want to know their fine details. The staff have to show the patron Fines/Fees tab. If the patron wants to pay after that, the staff has to exit the Fines/Fees tab to pay the fine, which we think is wasting the time. Why don't have a "Pay" option in the dropdown on the Fines/Fees page?
47 votesThe Manage Patron Services menu has moved to the new UI, allowing improvement management of the payment process from that interface.
I was optimistic about exploring this idea further. While I had hoped to prioritize this enhancement, it hasn’t gained the traction we typically look for to move forward. As a result, it’s unlikely to be implemented in the foreseeable future. That said, your feedback remains valuable, and I’ll continue to keep it in mind as our roadmap evolves.
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Add seach box to Active Hold Shelf
We often have 1500+ items on our Active Hold Shelf. While we have the ability to sort, this does not help much when we are looking for a particular item. A search box would allow us to locate an item easily without clicking through page after page.
16 votes -
Alma Templates: allow user-by-user customization of default holdings templates
The shared MARC21 holdings templates in Alma offer customization of the template properties, allowing the selection of one template as the default. This customization applies to the entire institution, and not the individual Alma user. Therefore, when we have multiple catalogers working with multiple templates, they all have to conform to one default template. It would be useful to allow each cataloger to set the default template for their workflow.
156 votes -
Retain Data in Interface Records
We really like the multiple tabs on interface records that allow us to record different admin logins and statistical information.
Publisher and vendor changes happen pretty frequently in our environment and we foresee needing to move interfaces from one vendor to another on occasion.
We just found out the hard way that when an interface is deleted from a vendor record and then added to another vendor record all the information that was in the various interface tabs gets wiped out. Can something be done to preserve the information that was hand keyed into the interface tabs?”62 votes -
Return and reissue items with a single click that have reached their max loan period
When items reach their maximum loan period and patrons want to borrow the items again they have to be returned and issued again by a circulation operator. This is an unnecessarily complex workflow. Please could an option be added for circulation desk operators to be able to return and reissue the items with a single click of an interface button (providing their are no blocks of course).
28 votes -
Add a checkout widget that can be accessed from the desktop
The most common thing we need to do in Alma is to check out books, but we need to train our students and Circ clerks to go to "Manage Patron Services." What about some kind of checkout widget or even an entry in the main Alma menu that actually says "Check out" or "Check in"?
27 votes -
Add more options for ILL integration
Adding ILLiad integration to Alma was welcome but also brings more issues into the system. For example - patrons are shown in their account via Primo that ILL loaned items are not renewable. They are but not via Alma. A customizable message for the Resources sharing library that would display in "My Account" saying "Renewable via ILLiad" would be welcome. We have configured ILLiad to send courtesy notices. Now that we have integrated with Alma patrons get two courtesy and "due today" letters because Alma cannot turn off letters for specific locations. The ability to turn off those two letter for specific locations would be welcome.
Adding ILLiad integration to Alma was welcome but also brings more issues into the system. For example - patrons are shown in their account via Primo that ILL loaned items are not renewable. They are but not via Alma. A customizable message for the Resources sharing library that would display in "My Account" saying "Renewable via ILLiad" would be welcome. We have configured ILLiad to send courtesy notices. Now that we have integrated with Alma patrons get two courtesy and "due today" letters because Alma cannot turn off letters for specific locations. The ability to turn off those two letter…
24 votes -
Configure Alma Letters to use the operator's "from" address, rather than the value stored in "addressFrom"
This is in reference to case 00172604. It was suggested we post this here by Yaala Ariel-Joel.
- Go to Alma Menu -> General Configuration -> Letter Emails
- Select, for example, the General Assign To Letter
- We have configured the "addressFrom" field in this and several other letters to be the email address of one of our library departments
For some letters, however, we find that it would make more sense for the FROM address to use the email address of the individual Alma operator whose action generated the letter, rather than using the single email address that is stored in "addressFrom".
For example, different Alma operators who work in different departments perform functions that initiate the General Assign To Letter. So, having a single department's email address used as the FROM address doesn't make sense in all cases and can be misleading.
As of now, this isn't in development, but Yaala said this group might want to know about it. I have also added a screenshot of what I mean.
This is in reference to case 00172604. It was suggested we post this here by Yaala Ariel-Joel.
- Go to Alma Menu -> General Configuration -> Letter Emails
- Select, for example, the General Assign To Letter
- We have configured the "addressFrom" field in this and several other letters to be the email address of one of our library departments
For some letters, however, we find that it would make more sense for the FROM address to use the email address of the individual Alma operator whose action generated the letter, rather than using the single email address that is stored in…
28 votes -
Ability to suppress licenses from discovery
Sometimes, licenses have confidentiality clauses, so we can't show them in Primo, but right now, it is an all or nothing prospect. it would be great if a checkbox on the record could suppress a confidential license from showing up in Discovery.
116 votesDear All,
We are reviewing this idea and would like to ask the following: Do you refer to the "License Terms" that appear on the Discovery?
Thank you,
Zohar Shemesh
Alma Product Team
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Ability to link to single interface records from vendor record
At the moment, when you link to an interface from a vendor record in Alma the interface record cannot be linked to one that has already been set up. For example, if you have Vendor A and link it to Interface X you cannot also link Vendor B to Interface X. You are also unable to have two interfaces with the same name. This is required in situations where we have multiple vendors for the one interface. For example, SAGE journals are acquired directly through SAGE but the ebooks are acquired through iGroup. In this case we would like to link the SAGE interface to both vendors SAGE and iGroup. That way we only need to update the one interface record for SAGE.
At the moment, when you link to an interface from a vendor record in Alma the interface record cannot be linked to one that has already been set up. For example, if you have Vendor A and link it to Interface X you cannot also link Vendor B to Interface X. You are also unable to have two interfaces with the same name. This is required in situations where we have multiple vendors for the one interface. For example, SAGE journals are acquired directly through SAGE but the ebooks are acquired through iGroup. In this case we would like to…
93 votes
Anonymous
responded
Submitted by Ex Libris PM on behalf of our customers
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The default receiving status in manage items of receiving workbench is all and it should be not received or should be configurable
As part of the new prediction pattern development it is possible in the receiving workbench to receive new items and filter the 'manage items' section by "all" "received" or "not received".
Currently it defaults to "all" which is not what would be desired because
A. it would show too much
B. they would need to manually search for what they want to receive.It should default to "not received" because then they can choose the issue they have in hand and receive it. Another option would be to have it always remember the previous filter of the user and use that. But if that is the case it would need to be the previous choice of the user even in a previous session. It should not just remember the current session.
As part of the new prediction pattern development it is possible in the receiving workbench to receive new items and filter the 'manage items' section by "all" "received" or "not received".
Currently it defaults to "all" which is not what would be desired because
A. it would show too much
B. they would need to manually search for what they want to receive.It should default to "not received" because then they can choose the issue they have in hand and receive it. Another option would be to have it always remember the previous filter of the user and use…
33 votesAnonymous
responded
Submitted by Ex Libris PM on behalf of our customers
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