Alma Q&A and Chat Transcript 12/8/16
- brandon dudley (Unlicensed)
- Mallory DeBartolo (Unlicensed)
12/08/16: Work Orders
SONOMA:
- Public services includes our main circulation desk. They handle loans and returns, manage the hold shelf, shelving returned books, and collecting/waiving fines. They put items on "work order" to be sent to technical services when they need to be repaired, replaced, re-cataloged, or when they are missing. Our technical services department handles all acquisitions, receiving and shelving received books, repairs, replacement review, cataloging, labeling and physical processing, and inventory. I'd like to create work orders for repairs, replacement review, and searching for missing items, and I'd like these all to be handled by the tech services department instead of creating separate work order depts for each work order type.
EXL Answer: The thinking behind work order departments is that disparate areas with specific functions are separated from each other and can each manage their work separately. If you don’t want to have separate departments for each task and everything happens in the same area, one way to accomplish this is through statuses assigned to a single department.
To configure:
- General Configuration → Work Order Types
- Navigate to AcqWorkOrder (OOB work order for Alma associated with Acquisitions)
- Add statuses for the various tasks
To place a work order at the circulation desk:
- Search for the item in a Physical Items search, click “Work Order”
- On the return items screen
- Physical Item search, facet to Loans, return a Loan. Actions → Work Order
- The drawback to this approach is that there will only be the single department for the work order and circulation will need to place a note in the work order to help guide the process
To work on the work order:
- Back to the Acq Dept → Scan in Items
- Manage In Process Items to show the item in the department
- Edit to view notes, use checkboxes to change statuses
- If we did eliminate the Acq Dept location and everyone in the library was scoped to the Circ Desk, how would that work with work orders? Would they still have to change their location for work orders? It looks like there is a way to have a work order department "managed by circ desk" but if that was the case, would all the work orders show up in the task list for everyone at the circ desk? Or only for those particular work order operators?
EXL Answer: Once a department is added to a circulation desk, all of the Fulfillment and Request Operators scoped to the circulation desk can see the work orders. You can use the Manage In Process items to only work with the specific items needed.
SAN JOSE:
- How about circulating an on the fly item. One will be a California Textbook that will never be cataloged or added to the system. The other is a government document that needs to be added to the system.
EXL Answer:
- Manage Patron Services, click “Create Item”
- Create the new brief record and circulate.
- Note – it is not currently possible to restrict permissions on where the record is created. However, the ability to create on-the-fly items is restricted to users that have a Physical Inventory Operator role.
- The new brief item has a work order placed on it which is triggered at the point of it being returned so that it can go back to Cataloging for processing
- For on-the-fly items that should not be added to the system: Recommend that these items either be added to the system for tracking purposes or not circulated within Alma.
- Circ desk receives damaged item, needs to mark as damaged and route to TS. TS repairs and routes back to circ for reshelving. I am particularly interested in how this happens when the circ desk operator (maybe a student with very limited roles) and the TS staff (doesn't have access to a circ desk location) do not share a "location".
EXL Answer:
Create the following in San Jose:
- Work Order Dept / Statuses for Repair
- Return item, place Work Order on the item and route to In Repair
- Change to Repair Dept, move item through statuses, then mark as Done
- Change back to Circ Desk, scan in the item for reshelving.
FRESNO:
- If Circ gets an item that has been returned and is sent to Tech Services to be appraised for repair. Tech Services decides to charge the patron and order a need copy. Is there a way to communicate that in Alma (either the charging part or the reorder part)?
ExL Answer:
- If the item will be going back to the circulation desk for reshelving, you can add a fulfillment note to the item that will pop up when the item is scanned back in at the circulation desk
- If the item is being withdrawn, there is no way in Alma to send a message to charge a patron or order a replacement copy.
- If Circ gets an item that has been returned and is sent to Tech Services for repair and we determine it instead should go to bindery. We assume that we would need to have bindery as a separate work order department since the time involved in bindery is considerable compared to repair but we would like clarification on that.
ExL Answer:
- Again, this depends on how you configure things. If you have multiple statuses in one department, you can move things between statuses.
- Times are set by department, so if you want to utilize this, you will need separate departments.
- Work Order time is only used to calculate the Expiration Date that appears on the Resource Request Monitoring page for the item being processed, so there isn’t a very large impact.
Helpful links:
Chat transcript
from North American Professional Services to Everyone:
Welcome to the call! Please check to make sure your line is muted - thank you!
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
Can I change the name of the department from Acquisitions to Tech Services?
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
So that we only have the Currently At options of Information/Checkout Desk, Tech Services, and Interlibrary Loan?
from North American Professional Services to Everyone:
Laura: Yes, you can change department names.
from Chris Ashley to Everyone:
Can Megan show how to change department names and list of drop downs of Currently at?
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
Dolph, I was under the impression that "Acquisitions" is not editable as it's an OTB department associated with Keep In Department. Am I wrong there?
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
And as the final thing we need to do: How would we set up that Acquisitions/Tech Services department to be able to reshelve books without them needing to go back out to Info/Checkout Desk.
from North American Professional Services to Everyone:
Laura: Megan will show that later.
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
Gotcha. Thanks.
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
Kind of.
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
Is it possible to change the name of the department as it appears in the Currently At list?
from John Larson (privately):
1. The main thing to worry about is what the work order is named, as this is the primary thing that users in Alma will see and what can (optionally) appear in Primo
from John Larson (privately):
2. It actually is possible. Go to the dept list and configure by library.
from A Hor to Everyone:
Can the Confirmation Message (i.e., the warning) be turned off?
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
When you change the name of the Work Order dept to Tech SErvices, then you have Tech Services AND Acquisitons in your currently at optiopns. I don't want that.
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
Typo city, sorry. :-)
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
You have to log out to see the Work Order department you just created.
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
So our tech services staff would have those same roles--receiving, acquisitions, and work orders/requests. So will they see both TEch Services departments?
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
Right. So our staff do work in acquisitions AND they do work order for tech services. I don't want them to have to differentiate between these two "locations."
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
I guess I'll have to see it to figure it out.
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
Maybe I just need to understand the relationship between the Acquisitions department that came out of the box and the AcqWorkOrder department that came out of the box. I'm not sure how they're related.
from Laura (Sonoma) to Everyone:
Ok.
from North American Professional Services to Everyone:
AcqWorkOrder is the work order Type.
from North American Professional Services to Everyone:
Acquisitions is the department that does that type of work.
from julie kowalewski Ward to Everyone:
Can we have the other fields not display?
from Natasha Allen to Everyone:
I believe I asked about this and there is no way to remove certain fields from displaying. The only thing you can change is what's required.
from TeamSDSU to Everyone:
What item policy was used?
from julie kowalewski Ward to Everyone:
We don't want this to go to circ desk
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
Why did "manage locally" pop up instead of the destination of the item? In other cases where an item transits it usually shows the actual destination in the pop up, right?
from julie kowalewski Ward to Everyone:
Thanks
from SJSU TS to Everyone:
Thank you, John
from Natasha Allen to Everyone:
is there a way that cataloging gets notified if something is miscataloged via on the fly?
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
thanks
from Natasha Allen to Everyone:
ok good. I just want to make sure that if someone accidentally makes a mistake during checkout - there's a failsafe
from Natasha Allen to Everyone:
also - does the create item option show up if you have a limited circ operator role?
from North American Professional Services to Everyone:
Action Item: ExL investigate whether the contribution of records to Network vs. Institution can be removed from the form
from julie kowalewski Ward to Everyone:
No.
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
Why did "manage locally" pop up instead of the destination of the item? In other cases where an item transits it usually shows the actual destination in the pop up, right?
from Thoreau (SF) (privately):
I'm curious about SDSU's earlier question: What Item policy or TOU is used for onl the fly records?
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
ah, thank you. got it.
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
I thought we were "currently at" the acq dept
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
so it would have needed to transit
from North American Professional Services to Everyone:
SDSU: the item policy that you have as the "default" is used. See Fulfillment > Config Menu > Item Policy table.
from TeamSDSU to Everyone:
Thanks
from Mallory (CO) to Everyone:
gotcha. thanks
from Fresno to Everyone:
Can you search by items in a "bindery" status? for tracking
from Fresno to Everyone:
Searching by process type is only for the work order dept?
from Moon (privately):
It could be I don't have the proper open sesame words for the knowledge center but is there a good entity relationship models available for work orders and work order depts?
from Moon to Everyone:
It could be I don't have the proper open sesame words for the knowledge center but is there a good entity relationship models available for work orders and work order depts?
from Moon to Everyone:
great, thanks
from Natasha Allen to Everyone:
basically like a note to keep track of things?
from julie kowalewski Ward to Everyone:
or a status
from Natasha Allen to Everyone:
definitely, that makes sense.
from julie kowalewski Ward to Everyone:
How do we get this kind of advice for our institution? Through base camp?
from Northridge to Everyone:
Thank you!
from julie kowalewski Ward to Everyone:
Thank you!
from Samuel to Everyone:
Thanks!
from Michelle (privately):
thank you!
from Thuy CPP to Everyone:
Thanks
from Mark B. (Los Angeles) to Everyone:
Thank you Megan, Dolph and John