Printing in Alma

During migration, on the Alma Configuration Form, your library will be asked to define printers for your library and specify email addresses for each printer.

Alma is hosted in a SaaS environment. Due to security concerns and technical limitations, SaaS environments do not support direct connection of local or network printers. Instead, printing in Alma works using email. Each library/institution must define the email addresses of its local printers in Alma, which route staff-oriented, Alma-originating e-mails (including request and transit slips) to the appropriate printer.

Newer printers have their own built-in email addresses to support cloud computing. If you are using a new printer, therefore, the email address for notifications should be the printer’s email address. Older printers do not support direct emailing and will therefore require a print proxy. For information on applications available to manage printer routing, see Technical Requirements for Alma Implementation in the Knowledge Center.
There are several applications available to manage printer routing. For example:
- MS Outlook printing rules – It is possible to create an email address and link this address to a printer via your MS Outlook printing rules.
- Automatic Email Manager (AEM) by Namtuk – For details, seehttp://www.namtuk.com/ Note: The above are examples only. Any print proxy that meets your institution's needs can be used.

Please refer to developers zone articles:
https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/blog/Printing-in-Alma
https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/blog/Simple-Alma-printing

Identifying Network Printers used by Millennium

If you want to find out what network printers are currently defined for use by Millennium, you can see a list in the character-based menu:

A> Additional System Functions

A> ALTER System Parameters

L> LOGIN names & parameters

P> List of Printers

Spine Label / Call Number Label Printing

"SpineOMatic is a Windows application that works with Ex Libris' Alma to print spine labels, pocket labels, flag slips, or other custom labels to a variety of desktop or networked printers, singly or in batches. It's easy to download and install, and is highly configurable."

Information on SpineOMatic can be found on the Ex Libris Developer Network:

https://developers.exlibrisgroup.com/blog/SpineOMatic-Label-Printing-Software-for-Alma

Spine Label Printing / Spine-O-Matic Setup Documentation

Spine-O-Matic Okidata Configuration and Setup (Pomona)

Epson Dot Matrix Configuration and Setup (Northridge)

Note for the campuses that are considering laser printers for printing spine labels: the labels will be printed on a sheet of regular size paper (8.5 x 11) so maybe each sheet can contain about 100 labels. So if you don’t print 100 labels at one time, there would be unused labels on the sheet and it might be difficult to reuse the sheet, resulting in wasted labels. (Thanks to Marcus@ Northridge for pointing this out!)

Other Printing Resources

Printing in Alma_Vanguard Testing (1).pptx (Micah Jeffries, San Jose)

HP Cloud Printing from Alma Configuration (thanks to Mike Price, SLO for sharing!)

Recommended label printers from the Alma listserv (thanks to Marcus Jun, Northridge for sharing!)