November 2019 Release - Harvard Highlights

Ex Libris Documentation

Harvard Alma Working Groups have summarized key changes below. A full list of changes for the release can be found in the official Ex Libris Release Notes:

General Enhancements

Search External Resources has been renamed to Search Resources. Alma institutions can now include their own Institution Zone in search profiles, though staff should continue to use the existing HVD+OCLC+LC (Pre-order searching) option to do so.
'Tasks' List is not Alphabetical. This was fixed.
New DARA features
- Identifies Highly Requested Titles - Using an Alma Analytics report, DARA now identifies highly requested titles in your institution, allowing you to take steps to reduce patron waiting time for these items.
- Recommends Linking Local Electronic Portfolios to the Community Zone - DARA now identifies when you have local portfolios in your electronic collections that are available in the community zone, enabling you to receive updates automatically.

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

For date fields that include both date and time, an additional field was added with only the date with (Calendar) in the field name. This enables a Calendar Picker to be used when manually filtering by a date.
The Title (Complete) field was added to the shared Bibliographic Details dimension in every subject area in which it appears. It contains all subfields from MARC field 245, including $p, $n, $s, $k, $f, $g.
The Usage Via COUNTER Reports - Release 5 dashboard and reports are now available in Alma Analytics. To support this new development, the following enhancements were implemented:
- An entire new folder called Usage Data Details - Release 5 with over 60 new measures was added. For more information, see Usage Data Details - Release 5.
The Fund Fiscal Period folder (E-Inventory > Cost Usage) was renamed Fiscal Period and the fields within it no longer contain the word Fund to better reflect the functionality of these fields.
The following additions were made to Alma Analytics:
- The Other Classifications folder was added to the following subject areas. Currently, it includes the Chinese Classifications dimension.
  - E-Inventory
  - Fulfillment
  - Funds Expenditure
  - Link Resolver Usage
  - Digital Usage
  - Digital Inventory
  - Purchase Requests
The following enhancements were implemented for Leganto Analytics:
- The Active Citations and Active Sections fields were added to Leganto Student Usage > Student Usage.
- The Reading Lists without Usage report was added to the out-of-the-box Leganto Analytics reports.
- The following columns were removed from the Leganto Instructors Usage - Lists KPIs report:
  - Number Register Students
  - Student Engagement %

Resolved

In the Fulfillment subject area under the Loan Details folder, the Loan Note field contained no data even when the loan had a note. This was fixed.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

Creating a PO line without a fund now triggers a warning and a confirmation window to verify.
In Allocated Funds, in the list of transactions, the time has been removed from the Time in Date column, which has been renamed to Date.
After contributing a SUSHI vendor to the community zone, you are now returned to the SUSHI vendor list.

Resolved

Renewal reminder field was not saved to PO Line template. This was fixed and now the renewal reminder is part of the PO line template.
There was a problem with the indexing of the vendors. This was fixed.
Label changed from Order lines to PO Lines to align other acquisition pages.
When exporting PO Line's invoice lines list to excel, subscription from date and subscription end date will be filled.
When creating an invoice line with a negative expenditure, and a PO Line attached, if the calculation of the disencumbrance is negative or zero, the disencumbrance will not be created.
In import EOD process, there was an issue in the fund balance calculation. This was fixed.
Oops error occurs for Add location to PO Line and Internal error occurs changing the location in the PO Line. Issue has been fixed.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

Leganto UI changes:
- The user avatar now displays the user initials. The user name is not displayed.
- The link icon no longer displays the text, External Links.
- The help balloons are no longer displayed.
- The search bar now includes a search button. To execute a search, you must now select the button or enter. This is applicable to the list view search, the Collection page, and in lists.
- The Leganto facets now display in a column instead of a running list
The following enhancements were implemented for Leganto Analytics:
- The Active Citations and Active Sections fields were added to Leganto Student Usage > Student Usage.
- The Reading Lists without Usage report was added to the out-of-the-box Leganto Analytics reports.
- The following columns were removed from the Leganto Instructors Usage - Lists KPIs report:
  - Number Register Students
  - Student Engagement %
You can now create questions and answers in Leganto. Currently, the only question type that is supported is a question that appears when an instructor adds citations of a specific material type and availability to a reading list. After an instructor answers the question that appears, the citation is added to the reading list with a short version of the answer as a tag. In both Alma and Leganto, citations can be filtered using this tag (like they can with any other tag). For more information, see Configuring Leganto Questions.
Demand in other lists: The Demand in other list indicator can now be set to be displayed only when matches are found in active courses or from a specified date. This is controlled by the parameter demand_in_other_lists_start_date. When the parameter value is set to blank, all courses are scanned. When set to Active, only active courses are scanned. Or a date can be entered (in the format as defined by system_date_format), which will scan courses from the specified date forward.
Changing Citation Material Type: When editing a citation, if the type was changed, all data in fields that do not appear on the screen are now reset/deleted.
CiteIt! can now be used on a PDF URL.
Owner letter generated on rollover: If the Leganto parameter, auto_set_instructors_as_owners, is set to true, and the Receive Notifications by Email field is checked in the Leganto User Settings, an email is now sent on rollover of instructors for a newly created list.
A new field now appears when editing any type of citation in Leganto, Thumbnail URL. When a valid URL is saved in the field, the citation thumbnail changes accordingly.
The Full Text Available indication now appears when searching PC records in Leganto.
You can now select multiple items on the My Collection page.

Resolved

The course loading integration profile was slow. The performance was improved.
On rollover or duplication of courses, lists, sections, and citations (source 1 - source 10), they were not copied. This was fixed.
After viewing the Recently Deleted list and selecting Back to My Lists, an error was displayed. This was fixed.

E-Resources

Enhancements

The electronic collection modification date in the Community Zone is now updated when changes are made by Content Operations to the electronic collection, its service level, and its content (portfolios). Previously, the modification date only represented changes to the electronic collection descriptive information such as electronic collection name and/or description. Additionally, the electronic collection modification date is now updated when service-level changes and portfolio-level changes (additions/deletions) are made. This includes parser parameter, threshold, and target service changes.

Resolved

Previously, the electronic resource editor allowed a user to enter free text into the PO Line field. This has been corrected, and only existing PO Lines can be saved in that field.
Activation job created many collections due to problem caused from restarts on server. This was fixed and activation job should activate only one as expected

Fulfillment

Enhancements

Hold notice email delay option: You can now add a Delay for hold notification (minutes) on either the Circulation Desk - General Information or Library Details pages. When a hold notification is set to be sent to a patron, Alma waits for the delay to complete, then checks to see if the request is still active and if so, sends the hold notification to the patron. If the value is populated for both the circulation desk and the library, the value in the circulation desk is used. For more information, see Editing a Library and Adding a Circulation Desk.
Bulk actions on Reading Room loans: When in the Active Hold Shelf of a reading room location, the Held by Patron and On Shelf (not final) tabs now include an option to select multiple items and then select either Receive from Patron or Loan to Patron. Additionally, Requester Email, Requester Name and Item Barcode are now available as search options on those tabs. For more information, see Managing Active Hold Shelf Items.
Resource Sharing:
- Alma can now create borrowing requests in ILLiad via the Create a transaction request API. To configure the partner for this, create or edit a resource sharing partner with the Profile Type of NCIP and a System Type of ILLiad. For more information, see ILLiad Parameters.
- Alma can now automatically create borrowing requests in RapidILL using the InsertRequest RapidILL API. For more information, see RapidILL Parameters.
- More sort options for Resource Sharing task lists: You can now sort the resource sharing task lists, either ascending or descending by title, creation date, update date, or last interest date.

Resolved

In Analytics, in the Fulfillment subject area under the Loan Details folder, the Loan Note field contained no data even when the loan had a note. This was fixed.
In some cases, the FulHoldShelfRequestSlipLetter was sent twice to the printer. This was fixed.
Previously if a request was cancelled while it was in status 'Waiting for remote storage', the request was sometimes exported by the Send Requests to Remote Storage job event though it was cancelled. In this case, the exported request was missing the Barcode, MMSID, and item ID XML fields. Now cancelled requests are not exported by the job.
The count of request on the item, in some scenarios, is not equal to the number of actual requests which appears after clicking on the request number. This was fixed.
Previously, the locate job did not check if the location of the item is suppressed or not, so items from suppressed locations were retrieved. This was fixed.
Resource Sharing: The barcode field displayed in the lending request is now displayed in the lending requests task list as well, under Requested Barcode. In addition, it was added to the excel report when exporting the list, and to the slip report (xml/excel).
Previously, the list of the blocks the user has were displayed in the user popup, in the Blocks field. Now, instead, there's an indication weather the user has active blocks or not.

Resource Management

Enhancements

Authority control rules and tags:
- Link BIB Headings Rules: these allow you to prevent certain kinds headings (such us undifferentiated personal names) from linking to an authority (and consequently being eligible for preferred term correction). Rules can also be used to apply tags to certain headings, which will show up in the Authority Control Task List.
- Preferred Term correction rules: these rules allow us to tag certain kinds of headings when they undergo preferred term correction. These tags will show up in the ACTL.
- See Authority Control Rules for more information
- The rules applied to Harvard will be determined by /wiki/spaces/ITSadmin/pages/41367219, and documented on the LTS website when finalized.

Resolved

Item availability appeared incorrectly when 'chronology I' includes multiple years, for example, '2010-12' . This was fixed.
Subfield $t with value “0” (zero) is redundantly added to field 852 of the holdings record (created for the target – preferred – bib record) when merging two bib records via the “Merge Records & Combine Inventory” action in the MD Editor. This has been corrected.
When trying to relink itemless holdings to different bibliographic record, in some cases an error message appears. This was fixed.
In the MD Editor when using suggestions that included the Eszett or hyphen character in 260 $a or 264 $a, the result did not sort correctly. This was fixed.
MARC21 Browse Bibliographic Headings (Heading Type “Series”): Part of the “Series” headings are built out of bib field 490 subfields $a and $v. However, if there are several bib records with the same 490$a but different 490$v, the display text of the “Bibliographic Records Headings” in the list on the left-hand side of the page is comprised of the common 490$a followed by ONE OF THE 490$v values, selected randomly. This has been corrected by removing 490$v altogether from the display text of Series bib headings created out of field 490. The deployment of this fix will be done during the semiannual indexing planned for December release.
When flipping fields by using a normalization rule, the field's indicators were not flipped. This was fixed.
Some bibliographic records had a future creation date. These records were fixed. You can ask Ex Libris to run a data corrector if you experience this problem in the future.
In the MD Editor, when using F3 to browse MESH subject authority records with hyphenated text, they were found only without the hyphen. (Example text: 'Evidence-based medicine' can be found only without hyphen.) This was fixed
In the MD Editor when testing a normalization rule that modifies the holding fields 866, 867 and 868 fields with the MD Editor's Preview feature the record's 853 fields will sometimes be highlighted as though they were affected by the normalization rule (even though they shouldn't be). Issue has been fixed.
In the MARC21 bibliographic profile, position 03 was missing from field 006 for 'Serial/Integrating resource' (s) form of material. this was fixed.
Doing F3 on a Chinese name would not find the correct LCNAMES authority. This was fixed.
The Exlibris footer sometimes appeared in the middle of the page. This was fixed.