Let's talk about Fulfillment (I mean Alma, not life's purpose) 12/04/20

Let's talk about Fulfillment (I mean Alma, not life's purpose) 12/04/20

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Friday, December 4, 2020 - 2:00pm to 3:30pm

During this session held on Friday, 12/4 from 2-3:30pm central, topics of discussion included:

  • CARLI Resource Sharing Committee: Alma & Primo VE Release Note Review
  • Review of recent Known Issues in Alma and Primo VE
    • Alma Primo VE Known Issues
    • The page is oriented with newest-posted Known Issues at the top.
    • Posts may include a workaround, an Idea Exchange enhancement to vote for, and/or an Ex Libris support ticket number.
    • Three CARLI known issues were resolved with the December release.
  • How to replicate "List patrons with materials charged from other I-Share libraries" report from Voyager in Alma?
    • Gordon from the CARLI Office is working on this report because it is unable to be done in a local library's Analytics, as far as we know thus far, so he's writing a version in the Network Zone.
  • Work Order Departments, who is using them and for which workflows?
    • Gretchen Schneider from Oakton volunteered to demonstrate the work order departments they have set up at OAK.  
    • Documentation from Ex Libris:
    • Discussion about workflow departments overall; Work order departments:
      • Are not one-size-fits-all; they should be tailored to fit the workflows and staffing of each institution considering using them.
      • Are useful to track material that previously would have ended up on a desk, a cart, a shelf while someone was working on it, or, waiting to work on it, and may have been hard to keep track of.
      • Prevent material in the department from being requested by patrons; the material also shows as unavailable for being checked out.
      • Can be set up at the institutional level (available to all libraries at the institution), or at the library level (available only to that specific library).
      • Operators are assigned to a work order department; those operators have permission to select the work order department as their working location to process the materials that are in the work order department.
      • Work order statuses are for staff-use to keep track of which part of the work flow the material is next ready for (they don't automatically cause any action to happen in Alma).
    • Settings at Oakton:
      • OAK Institutional Level work order departments:
        • Cataloging Repair
        • Review Area: Area where materials are placed for review for condition, relevancy, and rarity to determine whether they should be withdrawn or replaced.
      • OAK Library Level work order departments:
        • Cataloging Repair
        • Display Preparation Area
        • New Book Display Preparation Area
        • Reserve Preparation Area
        • Technical Services Department
        • Review Area
        • Weed Area
    • Other ideas for work order departments from attendees:
      • Binding
      • Mending
  • Attendees discussed briefly some of the editing they have done to Voyager-migrated reserves lists.
    • Some libraries, after seeing how their reserves migrated after test load decided not to import any reserves from Voyager and instead start from scratch.
    • Others have been working on clean up to improve reserve list names, reading list material sorting, and access points for Primo VE findability.
  • Is it possible to use more than one brand of self-check machine simultaneously?
  • Notes in patron requests do not print on pick-from-shelf slip; notes also do not print on transit letters?
    • Bradley from CARLI will review the metadata available in both letters and will see if it's possible to include the notes field in both.
  • Is there an Alma equivalent to the "email type count" files that we had in Voyager?
    • The email type count files from Voyager were possible because the emails were sent by CARLI's servers. Emails are now sent either by Ex Libris servers or by your own campus server if set up.
    • We do not know whether you can write a similar report in Analytics to gather the count of types of email sent.
    • Some letters are triggered by scheduled Jobs in Alma; those jobs create a report that is worth checking out.
      • Job report data is kept for one year in Alma.
      • Any 30 day period within that year is searchable for the name of the job.

Additional sessions of "Let's talk about Fulfillment (I mean Alma, not life's purpose)" are scheduled/have occurred.
Please register for future sessions if interested, or review past sessions for the discussion notes: