Setting Renewals & Predicted Items

Owned by Jennifer Koerber (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Apr 05, 2019
6 min read

In this video, we'll cover:

 

Serials and Continuous Orders Overview

In this video, we’ll review specific Acquisitions concerns for serials and other continuous orders, including renewals and working with predicted items. Note that we will cover the general process for these workflows in Alma; serials have many variables, so always check with your department or manager if something is different than expected and for local workflows.

Let’s start with renewals, which are set up as part of the ordering process.

 

Renewals

When you are creating a Purchase Order Line for a continuous order, you’ll include information about the renewal process for this title.

If we look at this order for Art Doll Quarterly, below the PO Line Details section is the Renewal section. First, is the Manual renewal check box, which sets the stage for the rest of the section.

 

Manual Renewal or Automatic Renewal?

The Manual Renewal check box indicates whether a serial will be renewed automatically by the system or manually by staff.

  • If the box is unchecked, the POL’s renewal is processed automatically by a system job.
  • When the box is checked, the POL appears in the Renewals task list when the material is due for renewal. Further processing of this PO line must be performed manually.

 

Automatic Renewals

A note about automatic renewals: Renewals will never be sent to vendors Automatically; it’s just renewed in Alma. Harvard's instance of Alma does NOT have the renewal notification to vendors enabled to automatically send that communication. Please follow current workflows regarding communicating with vendors about renewals.

Recommended Best Practice = Automatic Renewals. Since most subscriptions are ongoing, with no need for communication with vendors regarding renewals, it is recommended to set POLs for Automatic renewals when ordering. Leave the box unchecked, leave it as is.

However, the Manual renewal process might be useful for the following cases:

  • A limited time subscription. For example, when a bibliographer wants a one- or two-year subscription and then wants to evaluate the title to see if it should be renewed at all.
  • The vendor does not accept “real” standing orders/subscriptions. As a result, you would have to “order” every year, and using the manual renewal process will remind you to place the order.

 

Subscription and Renewal Dates

Underneath the manual renewal check box is the Subscription from date field and the Subscription to date field.

The Subscription from date field is the start date of the subscription, usually January 1st of the year the subscription begins. You can click on the calendar at the end, or just type in the field to set the Subscription from date. I will go ahead and choose January 1st, 2019.

The Subscription to date is very powerful, and is not recommended for use with automatic renewals. Why? Because when the automatic renewal job detects that the Subscription to date has passed, it will automatically close the POL and the order. In other words, if you tell Alma that you want the subscription to end on a certain date after a number of automatic renewals, it will do that for you. Alma is designed to help automate and maintain serials subscriptions, and this is one way it does that.

In contrast, for manual renewals, the Subscription to date will help Alma provide you with a reminder that this subscription needs to be renewed, along with the renewal date and cycle information. We will leave this blank for our automatic renewal.

The Renewal date determines when the order will first appear on the Renewals task list for renewal. After that date, it will automatically be incremented according to the value in the Renewal cycle field.

  • For new serials orders in Alma, the recommended best practice for automatic renewals is to input the date 12/31/2099, effectively making it renew until you cancel it.
  • For new orders with manual renewal, enter a renewal date a few weeks or months before the subscription ends.
  • For migrated Aleph orders, this date comes from the value in the Aleph Subscription record.
    If there was no Renewal date in the Aleph subscription record, the Renewal date for migrated orders is 12/31/2050, so you’ll be able to tell a migrated order.

Beneath that is the Renewal cycle field, and this is required for automatic renewals. The values are 1 year, 2 years, and 3 years. This field only appears filled in with a value for automatic renewals, if the Manual renewal box is unchecked.

The Renewal reminder period (days) can be left at zero (0) for automatic renewals because you won’t need a reminder to renew. For manual renewals, this determines the number of days before the renewal date that you want to be reminded about the renewal (that is, the number of days before the renewal date that you want the renewal added to the task list). It can be as low as 0 days and as long as 120 days.

 

Manual Renewals

When I’m done adding my renewal information to my order, I could go ahead and click on Save. But first, I’m going to walk through turning this into a Manual Renewal process, because I am seeing that in my Receiving note that this subscription is a new subscription for a particular course, so I only want to try it for a year or so.

In that case, I click on Manual Renewal, and my Subscription from date I actually want to set it closer to my day of ordering, so I’ll use April 1st, 2019. And now I will add a Subscription to date of March 2021 – so a 2-year subscription – and my Renewal date I want to set just slightly before the end of my subscription, so 2/28/2021. And my Reminder period, I want a reminder 30 days before that. Notice that the renewal cycle field has gone away now that we’ve turned this into a manual renewal.

So, with my manual renewal, I’ve got the actual subscription time period, the renewal date, and a renewal reminder. So, I’m going to go ahead and click on Order Now.

 

Next, let’s look at creating item records for serials issues using prediction patterns, and then receiving those issues.

Creating Items Using Prediction Patterns

Prediction patterns are used to automatically create all of the item records for the expected issues of a serials subscription. The templates for these patterns have already been created, so when you order a new title, you can use a template to add the predicted item records to the holdings record.

  1. First, use the persistent search bar to find the bib record for Art Doll Quarterly, and I’ll use an All Titles search type.
  2. Here is my bib, and if you look...that I have a holdings record but no items yet. Underneath the holdings information, you see the link to view the list of Holdings. When we click on this link, we are brought to the List of Holdings page, and there is my holdings for Schlesinger Library.
  3. Click on the row action item list icon for the holdings record you want to add predicted items to, then on Edit.
  4. This will take me into the Metadata Editor, where I have the holdings record open for editing.
  5. Click on the Edit menu, then on Expand from Template.
    • There are several templates we could choose from when creating predicted items. However, we can only use this functionality when we create the initial 853/854/855 fields in the holdings record. Subsequent 853/854/855 field(s) must be created manually without the use of the template.
    • The record we have chosen does not have 853/854/855, so we’ll use a template.
  6. As I scroll down, I start to see Serial prediction pattern templates. Art Doll Quarterly was a quarterly publication that comes out in seasons, so we’ll find Serial prediction quarterly seasons, click on it and then on OK.
  7. An 853 is added to the holdings record, as well as a 590.
  8. Let’s finish creating the 853 by first clicking on the 853 line and pressing F3.
    • The Next predicted item’s information box will pop up
    • We’ll add 17 for the First level enumeration and 2019 for the First level of chronology. We could also update the Issue Date, but we’ll leave it as is for this demonstration.
    • After the information is entered, we’ll click Close to save this information.
  9. Notice that there is now a binoculars icon next to the 853. This tells us that the field contains Next predicted item’s information. After this line is created, you can return to the holdings record and click on the binoculars to edit it at any time.
  10. Next we’ll go up to Tools, pull down to MARC21 Holdings and click on Open predicted items.
  11. A Predicted Items window appears with a list of the item records you’re about to add to your holdings record. We can choose to Discard or Save. We’ll Save.
  12. Finally, go up to File to Save and Release the holdings record with its new predicted items records attached.

For more information, please refer to the Creating prediction patterns document in the Alma wiki.

 

Viewing Predicted Items on the Bib Record

Now, if I find my title again and open up the information, now there is item availability and Items here, but it’s saying that 0 of 4 items are available because we haven’t received them yet. If I click on the Items list, I see can see that they are here: predicted items with temporary barcodes, item not in place, and a Process Type of Acquisition, and a complete lack of a Receiving date.