Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to the iShare quarterly ALMA Primo VE update for the August 2024 feature release.
This is Martin Kong from the CARLI office.
Today's agenda will begin by sharing some updates on announcements and upcoming events.
Then we will move into the August release updates for ALMA, followed by the release updates for Primo VE.
Here are some announcements and reminders.
The first announcement is that the Alma Premium Sandboxes will be refreshed on August 11th.
An email with details about backing up your work in the sandboxes and ceasing work on third-party integrations was shared last week.
Additionally, five new iShare libraries are live in Alma, PrimoVE, and the Automated Fulfillment Network.
Chicago Theological Seminary, City Colleges of Chicago, College of Lake County, Elgin Community College, and Prairie State College.
You can always check the Carly calendar for all Carly events, including those related to Alma and Primo VE.
Here are some upcoming events from the Carly calendar.
There is a Newberry Library tour invitation for those attending the SAA annual meeting on August 15th.
Additionally, the Free People Read Freely Symposium, hosted by the University of Illinois System, will take place on August 20th and 21st.
The opening keynote will take place at the Crown Arts Center for the Performing Arts in Urbana, and the rest of the symposium will take place in the Illinois Ballroom at the IHotel in Champaign.
Attendance for the symposium is free, but advanced registration is required.
Box lunches are available for purchase during the registration process.
Starting us off with updates to Alma will be my colleague Bradley.
I think you're muted, Bradley.
Hello.
Sorry, I'm late.
Are we on the cloud apps portion?
Take it away.
Okay.
Um, so first off cloud apps, if you're familiar, our applications written by members of the community and they're used to kind of enhance ex-libris products like Alma, PrimoVE, Leganto to make the functionality.
work a little better.
You might be familiar with Carly's cloud app that we came out with recently, the letters address from cloud app, which you can use to change the from address in all of the letters at once instead of having to click into each letter.
So if we could go to the next slide.
Xlibris has
Added two new options for controlling who can access cloud apps and who can use them.
Those are coming out right now in August.
The first option is the administrator can configure cloud apps to be available only by users who have the relevant role for that cloud app.
For example, a cloud app might require someone to have cataloging permissions, and so someone can't activate that app unless they have those permissions.
The other option is they can grant a user or users with the Cloud App Operator role, which is available in roles now, and that will give that user access to all Cloud Apps to activate or deactivate and to use.
Those can be used individual of each other, one or both, or you can also do neither of those.
We also have more information about this on our Cloud App page.
which is linked below, and then Ex Libris has a page that has this information as well in their Knowledge Center.
Adrienne, I think you might be muted also.
Oh, okay, just a second here.
Let me get my act together.
All right.
A section was added to the... Did you hear me now?
Yes, you're good.
Okay.
A section was added to the facets for certain searches that displays the actively selected facets.
This applies to PO lines, resource sharing requests, sets, and relevant searches such as physical holdings.
Note that it doesn't apply to all searches.
Next slide, please.
When you collapse the facets pane with active facets, it will show an indicator that there are active facets and the number of them, as you can see in the upper left-hand corner.
If you hover over the indicator, a tooltip shows which facets are selected.
Next slide, please.
When you've selected a non-default filter, such as My Sets in the Managed Sets window, a green dot is displayed by the filter icon.
If you can see it, it's kind of tiny, but it's up at the top there where there's the funnel.
Also, the Clear All link is provided to easily clear all filters.
Next slide, please.
The simple and advanced searches contain recent searches from the dropdown from the search box.
Like there in the example, that was an advanced search for undergraduate student.
And the next time you click in the box, it will show up.
And I think now we're going on to somebody else.
Next slide.
Yeah.
Yep, that's me.
So with the August release, Ex Libris has added a new option to the Change Physical Items Information job that should allow library staff to, in bulk, remove the in-transit for reshelving status from items.
The CARLI office staff will be reviewing this new functionality with the help of one of our iShare libraries to make sure that the functionality works as anticipated in the sandboxes and also in production.
Assuming all goes well, we will update the How to Request Maintenance page that is linked on this slide to include steps for using this functionality
as an optional part of your periodic review workflows.
Please wait to use this functionality until you see that the How to Request Maintenance webpage has been updated.
That we've updated the page with information about the job will mean that it worked as anticipated.
In the fall, we'll be holding an updated webinar on Alma Request Maintenance.
That date is still to be announced, but that session will be recorded.
So that'll be announced coming up in the fall, and we'll look forward to talking more about request maintenance then.
I will pass it over to Ted.
Thanks, Debbie.
And we'll get started now with a series of acquisitions updates.
First off, the acquisitions PO line interface has been upgraded to include
the total number of funds allocated when there are more than one fund used on a PO line.
Previously, you would have to rely on looking at the list net price to verify the valid data.
Next slide, please.
The update PO lines information job is being upgraded as well.
And the job will now include 19 new fields to be updated in a PO line.
For example, if you'd like to update multiple purchase order lines with the same note to vendor, then you can now accomplish this in batch.
Next slide, please.
Also, the list of the transactions tab, when you view in funds and ledgers, can be expanded to include additional fields, such as the PO line description, the title, and other information, and the creator.
To display these fields, you'd select the table customization icon, which is a gear above the display list, and then select the field names that you would like to display.
You may also deselect fields that you do not find particularly useful.
Once you save that list, you can drag fields between positions on the display to make a
an order that is more useful to you.
An important note, the creator's information card will only display for transactions added since the August 2023 update.
Next slide.
Two new purchase order line types have been added in support of open access workflows.
article process charges one time, and article processing charges subscription.
These new POL types may be used without inventory since they represent the request to publish articles.
They may be linked to the appropriate vendor, license, and include price and funding.
Future releases will add other open access elements, such as transformative agreement.
These PO line types are active with no action required on your part.
Next slide, please.
Here is a feature that has been requested by many over the past several years, a new configuration setting to automatically copy the list price from the POL to the replacement cost field of the item.
This copy may happen when you create a new POL, edit the POL list price, or change the quantity ordered.
This new setting is off by default.
To make this change, you'll need someone with an ALMA certification and the Acquisitions Administrator role who will be able to navigate to Configuration, Acquisitions, General, Other Settings.
and then search for replacement to find the replacement cost copied from POL setting.
Zero is the default setting, which means off.
A setting of one copies the price from the POL list line list price field.
A setting of two copies the price from the net price field and divide that by the number of items.
And this would take into account any discounts that may be applied to your POL.
We'll move on to cataloging and resource management updates next.
Xlibris has added some linked data functionality that will help catalogers.
Some of those improvements, such as functions related to BIBFRAME, require more consideration by Carly.
But here's one that should be useful right away.
When editing a record in the metadata editor, the cataloger may attempt to link a heading in the bib record to an authority record using the F3 key.
This opens a list of headings, as displayed here, which may lead to authority records stored in the community zone.
When viewing an authority record, a button may appear on top of the authority record that says View Contributor Page.
Next slide please.
Once one clicks the view contributor page button, a new screen will open showing details from various linked data sources.
The page may also show a list of associated titles and there is a generate new search button present to run a search on this particular heading.
Ex Libris notes that this search button will be fully functional after the November release and when associated indexing for that release has completed.
But in early testing, it does return some search results now.
Next slide, please.
Item templates were added to Alma earlier this year, streamlining the creation of new item records.
In August, the functionality is expanded again to enable the creation of multiple items on the same holding.
This will be valuable for catalogers adding multiple volumes or multiple copies at the same time.
When adding new items from the add from template option, select the template,
then tick the create multiple items box.
This opens a prompt for the number of items needed.
Select create item and Alma kicks off a job to create several new duplicate items which may then be edited further by staff.
Next slide please.
The search results screen for physical items includes a lot of details to help staff review item data in one place.
Starting in August, this display will include 10 more fields that could previously only be seen on the item record itself.
These include the received date and receiving operator, as well as all of the fields from the notes tab of the item record.
Next slide, please.
Any user may customize the results screen and the location of different fields.
By clicking the gear icon to customize the display, you may then tick the box for different fields to activate or deactivate.
You may also drag and drop fields between different columns of the display.
These new fields will only appear in the results display when the data are present.
For example, as we see here, the internal note three field appears in the first column since it contains some migration data.
But the other notes fields are empty, so they don't appear.
And then we have in the lower right corner, the receiving date and receiving operator for the item in question.
Next slide, please.
Continuing on a theme of new fields available for items screens and similarly to the acquisition screens earlier.
Some of these same fields being added are also going to be available to the list of items table.
List of items is usually reached by the items button on the actions menu or by clicking view all items from an item record.
As we've mentioned previously, staff may click the gear icon to customize the display for themselves.
You can activate or deactivate columns that you would like to appear, and then columns may be dragged left or right by clicking on those column headings.
I will now pass back to Martin.
Thank you, Ted.
In Analytics Objects, the feature to select the Alma roles that have access to an Analytics Object was enhanced.
You can now open a dialog box and select the roles with which you want to share the Analytics Object.
The roles are categorized to make it easier to find specific roles.
You can select all the roles in the category or select specific roles within a category.
The next slide will show a side-by-side comparison between the previous Analytics
object's method of selecting a role in comparison to the new enhanced method.
On the left side, the top image shows what the share pane looks like from the previous analytics object interface for an analytics object.
On the right side, the top image shows what the share pane will look like in the enhanced analytics object interface for an analytics object.
Note the new role selection option highlighted in red.
On the left side, the lower image shows what the previous share pane looks like after clicking into the roles field.
The only option for choosing a role previously was to begin typing the letters for the name of that role into that box.
For example, ACQ for acquisition.
On the right side, the lower image shows what the share pane will look like after clicking into the role selection area after the enhancement.
This new roles pop-up window will appear, allowing for enhanced selection of the Alma roles of the users with whom you want to share this analytics object.
The next few slides will highlight the new role selection features.
In the new enhanced role selection feature, there are two possible options for selecting the role or roles that you want to share this analytics object with.
On this slide, the top image shows the new enhanced roles pop-up window with the entire category of acquisitions selected, which means that all of the Alma acquisitions roles will be selected as indicated with the checkbox to the left of acquisitions.
The bottom image shows the new enhanced roles pop-up window with just the acquisitions administrator role selected as indicated with the checkbox to the left of acquisitions administrator.
This next image shows that the role of Acquisitions Administrator has been selected as the role upon which this analytics object will be shared with.
This analytics object will be shared with any Alma user who has the role of Acquisitions Administrator at this institution.
Note, there is a pinned to selected roles user toggle at the bottom of this share pane.
This toggle will only become functional after role or users are selected above.
In addition to being able to more easily select the Alma user roles that you want to share an analytics object with, it is now possible to pin that particular analytics object for that specific role or users with whom you shared the object.
In the previous example, the analytics object was shared with all users who have the role of Acquisitions Administrator at this institution.
Toggling the Pin to Selected Roles slash Users button will pin
this analytics object for all Alma users who have the acquisitions administrator role.
As noted in the previous slide, this toggle is not active if there are no roles or users selected above it.
On the lower left image, you see that there are no roles or users selected, thus the toggle is inactive.
On the lower right image, you see that the toggle becomes active once roles or users are selected for the sharing of this analytics object.
The object is pinned to the menu of all users it is shared with, unless individually removed by that user.
Additionally, when roles or users are added, the object will be pinned to their analytics menu.
As noted above, users are able to remove pin items that were shared by an administrator.
To the left, below is an image showing the pinned toggle enabled, and on the right,
is an image of the analytics object list that shows the active block report widget is pinned for this user by the administrator.
It shows up in their analytics object list with a purple pin to menu indicator.
Below is an image of the analytics menu that shows the new sections for pinned objects.
In here, you're actually in the Alma analytics menu.
You see that the analytics object titled Active Block Report Widget has been pinned for this user by an administrator.
To unpin it, you would actually click this little small x to the far right of the analytics object name.
To move the pin object to the My Pinned Analytics section, you click on the thumbtack icon that is found immediately to the left of that analytics object name, in this case, Active Block Report Widget.
I will now hand it off to Jessica.
Thank you, Martin.
Well, with one final highlight here for Alma before we move on to Primo VE, I'm going to talk to you about the new multi-factor authentication option that can now be enabled for users who sign into your Alma IZ with a local Alma login.
So this is where the username and the password are both stored directly in the Alma user record.
It's also known in Ex Libris documentation as a login that uses the Ex Libris identity service.
So this new feature for MFA only applies to these local to Alma logins and is not something that applies to single sign-on authentication methods that you may use, such as logging in through Open Athens or through your campus identity service provider.
So the new MFA feature relies on the email address that's in that local to Alma user record, because when it is enabled, Alma will send the user an email with an Alma letter that contains a link they must go into their email and click through in order to log into Alma.
There are three settings for this feature, which can be edited in your IZ by someone with the user administrator or general system administrator role.
And of course, you can always ask Carly to assist if necessary.
Those three settings are none, which is the default, meaning that MFA is off, suggest, multi-factor authentication, which allows users to choose to enable MFA or not.
The users are prompted each time they log into Alma with a small reminder box and given the opportunity to enable it.
Once it's been enabled by the user, anytime that user logs into Alma with their credentials, they will see a message telling them a link was sent to their email address and they need to click through that link to sign in.
Under this suggest model, users can also opt back out of MFA by using a checkbox in the Alma user record.
So it suggests
each time they log in, but they can also then opt back out if they need to.
The third option is force, which forces all users signing in with a local to Alma login to receive the MFA email in order to sign into Alma.
So much more dramatic and I think should be used with caution.
The xlibris documentation, which has been put into the chat here, actually is very good, I think, in this particular instance, where it gives you all the different information about these settings for this new feature, walks you through the user's experience for both suggest and for force with handy pictures that show you exactly what those users are going to see in terms of little pop-up boxes and what their experience is going to be.
So in general, I think it's fair to say that more security and more layers of authentication are always a good thing.
However, on this next slide, we're going to talk about some important things to consider before you go and enable this new feature.
So first of all, we'd recommend that you think about first how many of your staff users will be affected by this.
If your library staff primarily log into Alma via single sign-in, this will not have much benefit to you.
But if you do not have single sign-in set up for accessing Alma, it would affect all of your staff.
Keep in mind that it will also affect any local backup administrator accounts that your library has in your IZ in case single sign-on goes down.
And it will also affect all Carly staff who have logins in all of your IZs.
But that is OK.
We do keep our own internal email addresses up to date in our records.
All that to say, consider the user base first.
Next, as I mentioned, the email address in the user record must be kept up to date in order for this feature to work properly.
If the email address in the user's record is not getting to them, they won't be able to log into Alma and do their work.
That also means please do not turn this on in one of our premium sandboxes for any of the Alma users that are set up there for everyone to use.
We'll not be able to log in because those users don't have valid email addresses to get the link sent to.
Also, number three here, keep in mind that the link to sign into Alma is sent by an Alma letter, specifically the login using one-time token letter.
If there is any issue with your staff or receiving email from Alma or Alma emails are sent to spam or quarantine folders, this may prevent your staff from logging into Alma.
Again, because this is a letter, you may wish to customize the letter to say something, including changing that address from email address, which comes with the old standard default, your.departmentatorganization.com.
And finally, we recommend that if you do decide to investigate this new multi-factor authentication feature in your IZ,
Start with the suggest level and do some coordinated hands-on testing with your staff.
And if you'd like to invite Carly to participate, we'd be happy to do that as well.
Using the suggest level and trying it out to see how it goes will just make sure that folks who need to have access to ALMA aren't suddenly interrupted by something that they can't control, such as them not receiving the letter in their email or their email address
being incorrect for some reason.
So just a recommendation from us to do some testing first before you make any final decisions about this particular new feature.
So with that, I'm going to pass it over to my colleague, Amy Moroso, where she will tell us about PrimoVE.
And there are two PrimoVE updates for this release.
The first is that PrimoVE now allows login users to export all, well,
We'll talk about this in a second.
Depending on how many records there are, then maybe all of their search results.
And the second improvement is to the linked data person pages.
For those of you that have those enabled in PrimoVE and a full link to the full release notes is listed on this slide and contains additional information about these improvements.
So on to the next slide, please.
First, let's start with the export all results option.
So this slide highlights some of the details about the new feature.
When I mentioned that the option will export all results, that might not actually mean all results.
There is currently a limit on the number of results that will appear in the exported list.
So you have 5,000 local records that may be exported at one time, or if the user is in a blended search slot that contains CDI records,
the results will be exporting 5,000 additional CDI records, so a maximum of 10,000 depending on what kind of search you've got going on.
A few notes about this feature are that user must be logged into PrimoVE to access the feature.
It will be turned on by default, and if you don't wish to provide it, you must go into Alma and disable it.
It isn't available on mobile devices.
And also for the Excel export option, full links to the records will be provided in the email results, rather than the shorter permalinks that you may be used to.
Next slide please.
So here is sort of a picture of what this looks like.
This is an example of a brief results list and a login user must click on either the top checkbox by the count of results or at least one of the individual titles in the results list for the option export all results to sort of slide out and appear at the top of the list.
It's not visible by default.
And next slide please.
And this is what a logged in user will see once they've chosen the export all results option.
A pop up box will display the export format options and those currently are Excel, Bibtex, and RIS.
And encoding options if they're necessary for the chosen export format.
And then the user adds an email address and any notes they want to add to the email.
And there's also a warning at the bottom of the page if the number of records exceeds either that 5,000 local records or 10,000
combined local and CDI item limit.
So I will stop here and say that there were quite a few complaints for those of you that are on all email list about this new feature when it was released to sandboxes and libraries were testing it out.
Some places reported emails were taking a really long time to arrive or that the number of results that was emailed to them was inconsistent with what they were expecting.
There was also in a webinar about the August release that Ex Libris had let us know there was a known issue at that time that the export all results option appeared only on the first page of results and you couldn't access it if you were on like say the fifth page of your results list.
So just yesterday,
There was an update email to the Alma-L list from Ex Libris themselves and they reported that these issues, including the export all results option being available only on the first page of results, have been fixed for the August production release.
I would say that since this is enabled by default, if you choose to leave this option enabled, I would strongly consider testing it because it was a little buggy up until maybe yesterday.
Testing the feature to make sure it's working properly.
You can also turn it off in your production PrimoVE and try it out in a test instance before you go live in production.
A final note before moving on,
all the labels of this feature can be edited and there is a full list of label codes for this in the release notes.
Next slide, please.
Now moving on to the other update.
If you have enabled linked data person entities, a few improvements to the person pages in PrimoVE have also been made for the August release.
Ex Libris has improved the thumbnails,
on the person pages and has also added copyright information for the source of the person page data.
So on this example for C.S.
Lewis, you can see highlighted there that there is a link to the copyright license for Wikipedia since that's where Ex Libris is pulling the data from.
And for those of you who are unfamiliar with person pages, there is more information that can be found at Ex Libris documentation.
I have a link there for it.
And just a brief, what are they?
They're search suggestion options.
When you're running a search on a person name or person information cards that are displayed on an item's full display page in PrimoVE, they provide some additional information about the person associated with the search and associated item titles for that person.
They're enabled by default.
So if you're thinking, what the heck is this?
It's not that it was ever enabled.
For you, I'm sorry, it's disabled by default.
The xLevers documentation at that link that I've provided has information on how to enable and configure them if you are interested in this feature.
And thus concludes the PrimoVE release notes, and I will cede the floor to others.
Thank you so much, Amy.
We have reached the question part of our presentation.
Looking through the chat.
I don't see any posted yet.
So if you have a question about these updates, please feel free to type in the chat or unmute and ask with audio.
So what follow up questions or comments.
Do you all have
We can't see if people are typing in Zoom until it arrives.
We can go ahead and wait.
But also, I'll ask or mention if there's something you saw in this release and you're like, hooray, I've been waiting for that, please feel free to comment that as well.
You've got a support for creating multiple items template will be nice.
And a reminder that while these things are coming soon to production, you can now test these things in the Alma sandboxes as well.
So if you'd like to get a little bit of practice before this goes live, feel free to use the sandboxes for that.
with the exception of the single sign-on two-factor authentication that Jessica mentioned.
Don't test that one in the sandboxes.
All right, we can also open this up to just any general question and answer that's not necessarily related to the updates.
Anything anybody wants to talk about?
And Martin mentions in the comments
You cannot create new analytics objects in the sandbox from an existing report because analytics reports themselves do not exist in the sandboxes.
That's a good reminder, Martin.
Thank you.
Yes, the sandboxes do not have analytics.
There's another comment.
I believe we're the first Carly library to deploy Alma digital.
We're happy to answer questions privately for anyone who is interested, and that is at Knox.
So if you'd like to contact Lori from Knox,
And the link in the chat is to, there is a link in the chat for the recording to Knox's Primo VE.
We've got a question.
I'm going back to fields for physical item results will internal note three be displayed on every record, whether you want it to or not.
Can the notes be controlled if there are multiple notes.
Will it bump the other notes out What you would see is that the
If you have selected internal note three and say all three internal notes, so internal note one, two, and three, they will display on the record if there are data, or they will display on the physical items results if there are data in the record.
So they won't be bumped out.
What you'll notice is that the display of each item in the results screen will probably look a little more crowded.
There will be a lot more data than usual.
But a note shouldn't be excluded from display because something else is being displayed.
I'm not sure what their question about whether the notes can be controlled.
Guards, but.
So if a note was private, for example, that said like gift of Professor so and so, is there a way to say, like, I want it to show from this record that has.
A note about a condition versus this not show from this record that says who the gift was from.
Can it be on an item by item basis or is it just an overall all the notes?
It's an overall all the notes.
Okay, thank you.
I'm not sure if that was the follow-up.
We've got more to add there.
More questions or comments, please go ahead and put more in the chat.
So make sure your internal notes are allowed to be external notes before you allow them to be shown.
A follow-up, can you select to display only statistic notes?
Yes, you can.
Give me a moment.
I'll actually bring up a sandbox and demonstrate this.
Your screen looks good.
So here's the example that was displayed earlier, showing Internal Note 3 present and the receiving date.
We can click on the gear icon, which appears above the search results.
And that shows us the customized view window.
We can see right now that all of the possible fields have been activated.
If I wanted to not display internal notes, I could unselect those, but leave statistics notes visible.
I could also, say, move them from one column to another.
Maybe I don't want statistics notes to appear
right underneath the title, but I could make them appear in the second column.
And then if I'm happy with my results, I can then click Save.
And now, as mentioned before, the data has to be present in order for that column to appear.
So for an example, I'll edit this item.
go to the notes tab and just add a couple of quick details.
And so now we can see in this example, statistics notes appear because there are data present.
Thanks for that demonstration, Ted.
Other thoughts or questions?
All right, well thank you all for being here today.
This recording will be posted and if you have questions you know where to find us at support at carly.illinois.edu.
Thanks so much everybody.