2018 Alma Enhancement Voting - Round 2

Title	ReqID	Description	ComplexityPoints
Article details in RS borrowing requests in Analytics	3929	Journal details (title, volume, pages) are needed to be added to the Analytics Borrowing Request subject area to identify multiple articles being requested from the same journal issue.	10
Resource Management: Indicate whether electronic collections are active in the Institution Zone when searching for portfolios in the Community Zone	4787	When searching for and activating new portfolios in the Community Zone, it is preferable to add portfolios that belong to collections already active in the Institution Zone. As the CZ often includes many portfolios for each e-journal or e-book from multiple collections with similar names, it would be helpful if there was an indicator informing the user whether each collection is already being used in the IZ or not. This functionality was available in SFX and would improve workflow in Alma.	15
Add OCLC number to physical item export	5041	Large scale weeding projects would be made much more efficient if Alma offered the ability to include OCLC numbers in the physical items set export details. Currently, we are in the position of using a work-around where we must create a title-level set based on the same items. There are bib-level elements present in the physical item export, so we assume this is possible. Ultimately, we would prefer the option to select which fields export for every export we perform, but the addition of OCLC number to physical item exports would be a great first step.	10
Portfolios in an electronic collection/package should inherit data displays from the collection's service	5054	While portfolios that are part of an electronic collection/package inherit the properties that are set at the service level, those inherited properties do not display in Alma in the individual portfolios. For example, the proxy value in the individual portfolios will always display in Alma as "No" even when the true value inherited from the electronic collection's service is "Yes." Similarly, a public or authentication note entered at the electronic collection or service level does not cascade down to the individual portfolio display in Alma either. Currently, the only service level information that appears in a portfolio is the Service Parse Params. Request: Data elements that are set at an electronic collection's service level (specifically, proxy settings and public/authentication notes) should cascade down to the portfolio level display. Staff shouldn't have to check two places to see the correct setting.	15
option to not show related holdings locations	5340	related holdings are confusing to our users, and there is currently no way to stop these from showing. See attached file for a screenshot. We have been told this is an Alma configuration that cannot be changed, but the way it is presented in Primo is the issue: either have an opt-out from showing these, or re-design the display in a better way	10
Alert message when lost item is checked in	5395	Currently the lost item check-in message does not appear if no lost item replacement fee and refund policies of the lost loan fines have been configured. Request ability to configure Alma so that the lost item check-in message appears regardless of lost loan fines configuration.	5
Vendor Contacts (Contact People tab) are added as internal contacts in Alma	5588	When you enter Vendor Contact Details in Alma (Contact People tab) the internal contact form is used and the vendor contacts are stored as internal contacts. This form is inappropriate for Vendor Information. It asks for non-applicable fields such as gender and birth date and there is nowhere to add important information such as the contact's name, title and company they are associated with, work phone number, cell number, fax number, etc. This is SalesForce case 4060.	5
Add expiration date and renewal options to Proxy User	5594	Add expiration date and renewal options to Proxy User. This is SalesForce case 9470. Our faculty usually provide assistants with proxy permission for a semester or academic year, it would be great if staff were able to set an expiration date and action renewal of proxies. Currently staff need to maintain lists of proxies outside of Alma to delete on certain dates. 1. Ex Libris should add expiration date and renewal options to the Proxy User. 2. When expiration dates are able to be added to the proxy relationship, the patron granting proxy access should receive an email notification when the proxy is about to expire. 3. When a proxy relationship is established, the patron granting access should receive a confirmation email. Currently we spend a great deal of time at the beginning of the semester, emailing patrons to confirm their request has been received. 4. We have found multiple instances of faculty and staff who have more than one proxy associated with their account - in some cases up to 10. It is time consuming to go to each proxy account and add the same faculty or staff details, it also presents a problem if a faculty member asks who their current proxies are, we have no way to retrieve this information from Alma. We must consult our increasingly large spreadsheet maintained outside of Alma. It would be very helpful if we could click on the proxy tab and see a list of all the associated accounts. A better design of this workflow would seem to be allowing the proxy relationship to be created from the requester's account, this would enable a staff member to open up Prof Smiths account, add as many proxies as they need and see any existing relationships.	25
Serials: Editing of Description Needed	5612	When opening predicted items, the Description-Field is populated by the data provided in “Next Predicted Item´s information” and displays these data in a certain interpunctuation-logic. Unfortunately, this logic is not equal to the description- (and interpunctiation-) logic used in German speaking countries (which is following ZETA-Standard) – and there is no possibility to edit this. Since there has to be a correct description (for sorting etc.), the only way is to open and edit every single item once it is created by prediction pattern. This is causing a lot of unnecessary work to be done manually - we need the description template to be editable so that items with a correct description can be created automatically in the first place!	40
Allow Rollback to previous Request Status in Resource Sharing Requests	5659	Resource Sharing Requests are frequently scanned too many times or otherwise mishandled by staff, causing them for instance to arrive at the borrowing library in a Completed state instead of in a ready to be received state. The ability for staff at the borrowing library to rollback the Request Status from, for instance, Complete to Shipped Physically would allow the borrowing library to "revive" the request, instead of coordinating a new request with the lending library.	50
Enable customer-defined order of locations in the Get It menu and RTA display	5683	Currently, the locations in the Alma resolver (Get It menu) and RTA are not sorted in a consistent, meaningful manner. There is a "use IP best locations ordering" option, but this option is insufficient for many institutions. For instance, in many cases, users are off site or not in a library building, and many institutions do not reserve IP addresses for specific buildings Ideally, we would like the ability to explicitly define the preferred order in which locations are sorted. For multi-campus institutions, customers should be able to define the location order for each campus.	30
Create a Separate Search Index for Specific OCLC Number	5684	Currently, the OCLC Number for a record is indexed in the search index "Other System Number." This is not ideal, since the Other System Number indexes other numbers related to vendor record, CONSER, related item, etc. We request that Ex Libris provide a separate search index for OCLC number based on the presence of the '(OCoLC)' prefix in the 035 $a and/or $z, or (without prefix) in the 019 $a if there is a number in the 035 with an (OCoLC) prefix. Currently these specific (OCoLC) numbers are mixed in with other numbers occurring in the 019, 035, 773, 774, 775 777, 786, 800, 810, 811, 830 $w tags and subfields. Disambiguating these specific (OCoLC) numbers from the "other system numbers" would allow us to use them as unique identifiers. We see the potential for: Improved search Improved matching upon record import Cleaner Excel exports from Alma (we currently have to clean this field every time we export) Creation of a new Analytics field for OCLC number in Alma Analytics Establishment of a model for non-OCLC systems to create other unique search indexes	10
Split role user manager in 2: the user manager and the patron manager	5713	Right now any operator at any level with a role enabling the right to edit/delete users in Alma has the rights as well to change or delete roles or scopes of anyone else, even of the Alma administrators (!). Roles shall be fine tuned in a much more granular way, as to have two separated types of managers and administrators. - Patron managers shall be enabled to create and edit Patron Users, but not to edit/delete roles assigned to other users, esp. Libray staff Users. - User administrators instead should be enabled to edit/delete roles of other users, including Library Staff Users.	20
Batch remove process types	5725	We need the ability to remove/change an existing process type on an item record in batch. This will aid immensely in correcting record sets and other record misconfigurations.	15
Ability to Preview Letters	5730	At present, it is difficult to customize patron letters, especially if you do not have a sandbox in which to test. It requires 8 separate steps outlined in the product documentation and requires use of XML and XSL, with which library staff may not be familiar. One way to simplify the process would be to provide a link that generates a preview of each letter as currently configured. This would cut out steps 1-5 of the current procedure and allow staff to more easily make and preview changes to the XSL.	55
Allow desktop printing directly from Alma	5746	When staff print in Alma what they are really doing is sending an email. Alma's print function consists entirely of generating and sending emails, however printing is an essential function of a library management system. For a library that allows requests and transit of materials between locations, it is crucial that the books have a slip of paper in them to move them around efficiently, and keep them organized. Current recommendations are to tack on third party software (Namtuk, Outlook, Papercut), introducing breaking points, breaking points that we should not have in an end-to-end solution like Alma. Microsoft and Google (among others) provide desktop printing for their cloud-based systems. Under this email-based system Alma allows just one 'printer' to be connected to each circulation desk. Relying on one printer to print request slips, transit slips, and loan receipts creates confusion. In a large library where each circulation desk has multiple staff performing different tasks at different workstations, sometimes on multiple floors of the same building, this creates an unmanageable situation. We have had to create additional circulation desks to manage our operations. Alma should allow multiple 'printers' to be connected to a circulation desk, with a configuration option to send certain types of prints to the chosen printer.	60
Add timeout warning to Design Analytics module	5753	Currently, there is no way to know when Design Analytics is about to time out or when it has already timed out. A timed-out screen is visually indistinguishable from a logged-in one. There also seems to be absolutely no consistency in the length of time one can be logged in prior to a time out.	10
Allow patrons a minimum loan period before items can be recalled	5779	Alma should be able to allow patrons to have a loan for a minimum amount of days before it can be recalled. Currently, we can only set the number of days a patron can have an item after it has been recalled, regardless of how long the patron has already had the item. An example: If a person checks out an item, then someone else puts a hold on that item the next day, the first patron only has the loan for one day plus the post-recall period. We would like a patrons to have a general circulating item for a minimum set period of time before it can be recalled. This period would ideally be configurable by number of days or weeks allowed.	15
Provide patrons notification of reasons for failure to renew a loan	5782	We would like it to be possible to notify users when they have an item on loan that cannot be renewed, and to explain the reason to them so as to avoid confusion to patrons. Reasons may include: - because it is requested, - the patron has reached their expiry period - or the item has reached its maximum renewal period. Currently when an item is about to go overdue a notification is sent to warn a user that an item must be renewed or returned even if there is a request on the item. However, when a renewal is attempted, whether by the patron, automatically, or by staff, it fails, e.g. because of the request, with no notification of the failure which is confusing to the end user.	10
Add URL checker	5789	URLs are constantly breaking as resources move, or as websites are redesigned or simply disappear. Request a URL checker be added to Alma that regularly checked URLs in all portfolios. The URL checker should create a report or set of screens that show the title of the resource (and linking to the resource's bibliographic record), the type of problem, the link (which could be clicked to confirm the problem), and easy access to the portfolio editor so the URL could be quickly changed. The operator should be able to perform all functions within this area and be able to easily return to the report/problem list at the same place they were working.	45