Let's Talk about Fulfillment (I mean Alma, not life's purpose) 1/15/21

During this session held on Friday, 1/15 from 2-3:30pm central, topics of discussion included:

• Waiting "for cancel response" borrowing request status:
  • Debbie sent an email this morning 1/15 to liaisons and APVE contact about the "Waiting for cancel response" request status.
  • We had noticed during testing and from library reports that:
    • Canceling a request from within a patron's account in Primo VE did not work the first time; the patron needed to cancel a second time to get it to go through. 
    • Canceling a request from the staff side in Alma: the first attempt to cancel caused error, the second attempt could actually cancel. 
  • Ex Libris has informed us the "Waiting for cancel response" workflow step was not appropriate for AFN, so we adjusted the settings. 
    • Distributed change on January 12 from the Network Zone to all Institution Zones, so no new occurrences should appear. 
    • Each I-Share institution should work through the steps in the email to fully cancel any requests in the "Waiting for cancel response status."
  • Debbie demonstrated the workflow for fully canceling the requests:
    1. In Alma Fulfillment> Resource Sharing> Borrowing Requests), under the “Status” facet, look for and limit your results to the status of “Waiting for cancel response.”
    2. For each request in the “Waiting for cancel response” status, select the ellipsis (…) for the request, and select “Cancel.”
    3. The Request Cancellation form will open.
       • Select the cancellation reason preferred by your institution; “Cannot be fulfilled” is a catch-all if you’re undecided.
       • Optionally, enter a cancellation note if you would like for historical reporting purposes. For example “CARLI eliminated ‘Waiting for cancel response’ status on 1/12/2021.”
       • Double-check that the “Notify user” checkbox is NOT checked.
       • Choose to confirm the request cancellation.
       • Alma should confirm the request is cancelled successfully.
• Group review of some example requests; how did they end up in the status they have, and why:
  • While reviewing the "Waiting for cancel response" status materials, attendees asked to review the "History" tab on one of the requests.
  • We reviewed the history tab, and the ROTA tab, and attendees asked why the ROTA tab in the "canceled by staff" example contained only one library in the list.
    • After investigation and reviewing examples, we determined that when a request is canceled, Alma adjusts the content of the Rota tab to only contain the institution where the request was sitting at the time of the cancellation, rather than continuing to contain all libraries that were eligible.
  • We review how upon request, a short, suppressed bib is created in your IZ belonging to the Resource Sharing library that is removed when the actual item arrives and is checked out to the patron. Seems to be a vestige of peer-to-peer resource sharing that we don't use.
  • Attendees mention that they've been seeing an increase in requested e-resources; as these are unable to be filled in Alma, they reach a "Canceled by staff" or a "Ready to be sent" status more quickly than other requests.
  • Review of canceled requests from the Fulfillment> Resource Sharing> Borrowing Requests:
    • Click the ellipse for the request, and review the history tab. When a request is canceled, the history column shows either "System" or a staff "user ID". 
      • We think that if a user cancels from Primo it will say System, and the status will be "Canceled by patron."
      • When Alma cancels a request because it cannot locate a supplier it is Operator = System and "Canceled by staff"
  • Marking requests as missing from the Pick from Shelf List:
    • If there are multiple records for the same title, marking it missing marks all records on the holding as missing. Though Pick from Shelf list. Affects All items, not just one.
    • It will not mark one that is already on loan as missing.
  • Review of sender in patron's Request Canceled email Attachments:
    • Coming soon.