December 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

There is now an option to generate a performance tracking file. If Alma has performance issues such as long search times, select the Help icon, then select Generate Performance Tracking File to download a data file to submit via the LTS Alma Support Form. This information can help Ex Libris resolve the issue. NOTE: Please generate the tracking file immediately after experiencing the performance issue, before doing any other action.

A reminder that the old Alma sandbox will be deactivated as planned as part the January 2020 release.
Starting December 4, 2019, staff working in the Sandbox (not Production) may see a new Alma feature called GuideMe. The feature is a help tool layered over Alma that provides provide step-by-step guidance enabling you to get just-in-time help on selected workflows. More about this feature will be available in the January release.

Community Zone Set Management: Several new options are available that expand set management capabilities into the Community Zone. This includes:
- Creating logical sets of bibliographic or authority records (Save Query) from Community Zone search results
- Itemizing a set of Community Zone records.
- Combining sets of Community Zone records.
- Cataloging a set of Community Zone records (available for bibliographic records, initially, and authority records in a future release).
- Filtering a set of Community Zone bibliographic records
- Later releases will allow the ability to export the set of Community Zone records.

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

Cost Per Use subject area is marked as "to be deprecated" now that Cost per Use is part of the E-Inventory subject area. Cost per Use subject area will be removed in January 2020 release, and reports that use this subject area will no longer work.
These fields have been added to E-Inventory > Cost Usage > Portfolio and Collection Measures:
- No. of Electronic Collections (Deleted + In Repository)
- No. of Electronic Collections (Deleted)
- No. of Electronic Collections (In Repository Linked to CZ)
- No. of Electronic Collections (In Repository Not Linked to CZ)
Invoice - Currency and Invoice Line - Currency fields were added to Funds Expenditure > Invoice Line. They indicate the currency used in the invoice and invoice line.
In Temp Location at Time of Loan field was added to Fulfillment > Loan Details. In indicates if the item was in a temporary location at the time of the loan.
Portfolio Additional PO Lines field was added to E-Inventory > Portfolio and the Electronic Collection Additional PO Lines field was added to E-Inventory > Electronic Collection. These fields display the additional PO lines for the portfolio and electronic collection.
Receiving Operator dimension was added to the Physical Items subject area. It contains fields related to the receiving operator.
Renewal Circulation Desk dimension was added to the Fulfillment subject area. It contains fields related to the renewal circulation desk.
Alma Analytics now supports COUNTER version 5. To support this enhancement, the following fields were added to E-Inventory > Cost Usage > Cost Usage measures:
- Usage TR_J1
- Estimated Usage TR_J1
- Usage TR_B1
- Estimated Usage TR_B1
- Usage DR
- Estimated Usage DR
Reading List Citation Create Date dimension was added to the Course Reserves subject area. It contains fields related to the citation creation date.

Resolved

In Course Reverse SA, a reading list that is not related to course (it is related to default course) could not be reported. This was fixed.
Fiscal periods were sorted alphabetically by ID. So, for instance, '10' sorted before '9'. Now the sort is done numerically.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

When receiving a continuous PO line for other departments, Alma will now calculate a PO line's next step and put the item in transit, if needed. This requires the customer parameter po_line_calc_co_next_step_on_receive to be true.
The PO line history now has two radio buttons which differentiate between the history of PO line changes and transaction changes. This change also applies retroactively on all PO lines history.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

Find List Settings--allows you to configure the search fields that appear on the Find Lists page:
- Enable/disable a search field.
- Specify whether a search field will appear on the advanced Find Lists page or on both the simple and advanced Find Lists pages
- Specify a default value for a search field.
Add Duration Field for Video/Audio Citations--allows you to specify the duration of recordings when adding citations for audio and video recordings in Leganto. In addition, Cite It! will now map the Duration field for any YouTube video that is cited.
The following sites are now supported by Cite It!:
- Idunn - https://www.idunn.no/
- regjeringen - https://www.regjeringen.no/no/id4/
Hiding Incomplete Citations--Previously, Leganto displayed incomplete citations (which are citations that have not been marked Complete). With this enhancement, you can hide the entire citation if it has not been marked Complete.
Digitization Request in Tasks List--This enhancement allows you to add the Creator column to the Approval Requests List page.
For digitization requests, this enhancement allows you to create a copyright rule that checks to see if the academic department requesting the digitization is in the same academic department to which the course belongs.
Mapping Subfields from Primo Citations to Leganto--This enhancement allows you to map information from a specific subfield in a PNX field and to utilize regular expressions to match information in the subfield. This may be useful when mapping thumbnail images from Primo citations so that they display in the Leganto Reading Lists.
Reset Assignees during Rollover of Reading List--During the rollover of a reading list for a course to another semester or year, this enhancement allows you to reset the staff member assigned to your reading list. To support this functionality, the On Rollover Copy Assignee option has been added to the Actions tab in the Course Loader integration profile. If this new option is not selected, the assignee will not be rolled over to the new reading list.
Add Secondary Citation Types--With this enhancement, the following citation types have been added to further distinguish cited material in Leganto:
- Streamed Video
- 3D Model
The Reading List Citation Create Date dimension was added to the Course Reserves subject area. It contains fields related to the citation creation date.
When adding a patron user as a list owner, a new parameter controls the assignment of the instructor role. When the parameter is set to 0, there is no expiration.
The button for translating a course name was removed as it was not in use.

Resolved

Users were unable to select the section portion of a citation's breadcrumbs to navigate to the selected section. This has been fixed. When a section is now selected, the user is taken to the section, and all other sections are collapsed.
The usage of Leganto on mobile devices was not reported to Analytics. This has been fixed.
The import of a Leganto file (.lgn) did not include its tags and public notes. This has been fixed.
The Citation ID could not be displayed in the brief display of a citation on the Edit Citations page. In addition, the View in Leganto option has been added to allow you to open the citation in Leganto.
The Course Loader integration profile was unable to load new files and returned the following message: Completed with no Bulks. This has been fixed to load new files.
An Alma error message displayed when users failed to sign in to Leganto. This has been fixed by providing a Leganto error page that returns the configurable error messages for users who have signed in via SAML and do not exist in Alma and for Alma users who have not been assigned either a Patron or Instructor role.
Submitting a reading list did not trigger an email notification. This has been fixed.
Instructor information was missing from Course tooltip. This has been fixed.
Network records added to Leganto using Primo search displayed a check availability indicator in the citation's brief display. This has been fixed by removing the record's MMS ID and allowing Leganto to locate the record in your local repository.
After rolling a course over, the correct name is not displayed in the pop-up message. This has been fixed.
Newly added reading lists did not appear in the Tasks List and could not be found by Reading List ID. This has been fixed.
The following issues were resolved:
- In some cases, a page range validation error incorrectly displayed, which prevented the create request.
- In Alma, there was a length limitation on the page number value. This has been fixed.

E-Resources

Enhancements

New facets, additional sorting options, filters, and display options were added for portfolio-level search results.
- The new Availability (Electronic Portfolio) facet now appears with the portfolio search results.
- The Title - Asc and Title - Desc sort by options now appear for the portfolio search results.
- When viewing results on the Portfolio List page, you can now search within the list using ISBN, ISSN, or Title.
- The following fields were added to the configurable display of portfolio-level search results: ISBN, ISBN (13), ISSN, Coverage (label change from Threshold), Perpetual Coverage, Access Type (as defined for the portfolio or the inherited value), Electronic Material Type, Notes, and Related Portfolios.
- For portfolios that have notes () or related portfolios (), the search results present new indication icons. (Note that, in the January release, the Notes icon can be selected and direct you to the Notes tab in the Electronic Portfolio Editor.)
Because of multiple report types, the duplication check in COUNTER R5 reports now includes only the name and subscriber.

Resolved

If an electronic collection in the Community Zone that was activated using an Excel file was validated offline, the analyzed file created in the job report could not be opened if the input was '.xlsx'. Additionally, if the file name contained an & symbol, an error occurred. These were fixed.
The Relink to another bibliographic record button was visible when the View action was selected for a portfolio from the Portfolio List of an electronic title. This was fixed.

Fulfillment

Enhancements

Loan Statistics in Physical Title Search Results--In the Other Details tab of physical title and all title search results, the following new loan statistics are available: Number of loans, Number of in house use, Year-to-date loans, Last in house use date, Last Loan Date.
On the Manage Patron Services page, when sorting the list of items by location (library), Alma now displays the item's actual location rather than the location that was relevant at the time of the loan.
The Courtesy Notices now includes the last renew status and date in its XML. This can be used to notify the patron why the last automatic renew failed.

Resolved

The fines and fees report failed whenever there was a fine with no create date. This was fixed. Now the report will not fail. Instead, the create date will be empty in the report.
You could not find external users by searching for their email address. This was fixed.
When creating a new user from the Manage Patron Services page, in some cases the user's password was not written to the new IdP until the user was updated. This was fixed.
Sync SIS users failed in the case of faulty data of user selected letters. This was fixed.
When receiving a continuous PO line for other departments, Alma will now calculate a PO line's next step and put the item in transit, if needed. This requires the customer parameter po_line_calc_co_next_step_on_receive to be true.
Performance was improved for searching for electronic collections in the Online Services Order page.
If the Lost and Paid new functionality is enabled, the behavior is: If Close Lost Loans job has already processed this loan, the item withdrawal is allowed and succeeds. If Close Lost Loans job has not yet processed this loan, but loan is LOST and PAID (all relevant fines/fees have been paid), the item withdrawal is allowed and succeeds.
Previously, if a lost and paid loan was returned and refunded, multiple refunds took place. This was fixed. Now, only a single refund occurs.
In the Citation Linker Services page, if the word tabs was sent in an attribute's value, an error occurred. This was fixed.
The completion status of the Bulk Change Due Dates job was Completed Successfully, even when some records failed. Now, if some records fail, the job's completion status is Completed with Warnings.
When an item was in a temporary location it was possible to request it even if No Requesting from Available Holding was defined and the item was in place. This was fixed.
The On Shelf Request policy was sometimes calculated wrongly when there were items in temporary locations. This was fixed.
The request delete process was improved to handle data corruption within the request.
Performance improvements were done for the calculation of the On Shelf request policy. This should improve the loading time of the Primo Get It window.
On the Primo Get It page, the order of locations was changed despite the fact that the configuration has not changed. This was fixed.
A digitization request could not be successfully canceled if the digitization process had ended but was still in the Await Approval status. This was fixed.
Display Logic Rules sometimes hid a full text service rule. This was fixed. To fix existing rules with this problem, please contact Ex Libris customer support.
In the Primo resource sharing request form for citation type Book, the Chapter field was not populated.
The requestability check was failing when there was an electronic resource in the fulfillment network locate process. This was fixed.
When customer parameter rs_fail_locate_multiple_resources is false and Locate by Metadata finds multiple resources one of which is electronic, the system might have chosen the electronic one and responded with an empty IE value. This was fixed. Alma now ignores the electronic item in such cases.

Resource Management

Enhancements

The Export Physical Items job will now export the 035 $a contents in the column labeled Other System Number. See Export Physical Items for more information.
Validation of check-digit for ISBN, ISSN, Music Publisher no upon Save in MDE. If there is an error in a check-digit the Metadata Error will give a warning: "check digit is not valid."

Resolved

In Import Profiles, the ISBN (exact subfield match)/024/035 match method found matches between 020$$z of the imported record and 020$$a of the existing record, as did the ISSN (exact subfield match)/024/035 match method with 022 fields, correspondingly. This was fixed. Matches are now found only between the same subfields.
In some cases, item History tab missed some entries. In order to fix it, a background job will be run over the course of the next several months.
Statistics Note 3 is now searchable in Physical Items > Keywords.
Itemized sets from Analytics reports were producing errors with Coverage Information. This was fixed.
When invalid Holdings records (field 852 does not contain $$b and $$c) were processed by the Change Physical Items job, locations were not changed as expected. This issue has been fixed. In such cases, Alma will automatically correct them and create $$b / $$c with the target.
In some cases where the history of an item included many rows, the Physical item Editor page load was very slow. This was fixed.
Running Relink to another bib record and Change Holding caused an item to move to the previous bib record. This has been fixed.
Text inside of angle brackets (< >) was not displayed in the Metadata Editor F3/ View and in Browse Bib headings. This was fixed.
Some authority records were not available using F3 > View, and could not be linked using Select. These were fixed.
In MARC21, when copying the preferred term from authority field 130, the non filing indicator (second indicator) of the authority heading is now copied to the non filing indicator of the BIB record, and then used to create the normalized value of the BIB record. When using the F3 mechanism or running the preferred term correction job in order to copying the authority field 130 to a BIB record, the following indicator of the BIB field is updated as follows - 130, 630, 730 - 1st indicator 830 - 2nd indicator.
- For example, the 830 initial article indicator will be updated to reflect that of the authority 130 initial article indicator when the heading is corrected through PTF
When linking an authority via F3, in some cases where the value contained non alpha-numeric characters, the normalized value used to find the correct preferred term in the authority record was generated incorrectly and an error was displayed. This was fixed. Now the normalized value is generated correctly and the preferred term is found.
A Select all checkbox was added to the Resolve Import Issues page.