January 2020 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

Phrase Search in the Simple Search Box: Alma now supports phrase search in the simple search box. All entities and index types that have the option to use phrase search in Alma's advanced search also have this capability with simple search when using double quotation marks to identify the phrase. See Performing a Simple Search for more information.
Community Zone Set Management: In addition to the Community Zone set management announcements made in the December release (see Community Zone Set Management), the January release adds the following Community Zone sets features:

- Cataloging an authority record set of Community Zone records
- Exporting a set of Community Zone records (with Export Authority Records or Export Bibliographic Records)
- Creating or updating a set of Community Zone records via API (see Rest APIs – Configuration and Administration in the Developer Network)

See Managing Search Queries and Sets for more information.

Bulk Dismissal of DARA Recommendations: You can now dismiss several recommendations at one time by selecting the recommendations and clicking Dismiss selected.

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

Week Number and Start of Week fields were added to all Date dimensions in Alma Analytics. In addition, all Date dimensions were aligned to include the same fields.
The Author (Contributor) field was added to the Bibliographic Details folder for all subject areas in which it appears. For MARC21 the data for this field comes from MARC fields 700, 710, and 711. Note that Bibliographic Local params that are currently mapped to 700 and 710 will be remapped from other fields.
The following fields containing the OCLC control number were added to the Bibliographic Details folder for all subject areas in which it appears. The data for these fields comes from MARC fields 019 and 035.
- OCLC Control Number (019)
- OCLC Control Number (035a)
- OCLC Control Number (035a+z)
- OCLC Control Number (035z)

The following measure fields were added to Fund Expenditure > Fund Transaction:

- Transaction Cash Balance: Allocated Balance – Expenditure Balance
- Transaction Available Balance: Allocated Balance – Expenditure Balance - Encumbered Balance
- % remaining (Considering expended and encumbered): (Available Balance / Allocated Balance) * 100
- % remaining (Considering only expended): (Cash Balance / Allocated Balance) * 100

Resolved

Publication Date is now populated according to the following prioritization: MARC field 264 subfield c, if empty then MARC field 260 subfield c, if empty then MARC field 008 pos. 7-10.
Adding Event end date field to Analytics reports in the Physical Item Historical Events subject area for transit events that do not have an end date caused the report to not display any data. This was fixed.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

New Purchase Type License Upgrade Available for Purchase Order Lines: A New purchase type License Upgrade is available for Purchase Order lines, this will enable institutions to record purchases which reflect license upgrades purchase model. Additionally, a PO line can now be created without a fund and price for scenarios such as described above where a License upgrade has no charge and needs to be recorded in the system. The option to set a PO line as no charge is compatible with the following acquisition methods: Purchase, Approval Plan, and Purchase at Vendor System. When selecting any of these values in the Acquisition Method of the PO line, the No Charge check box appears. When this check box is selected, the Funding and Pricing sections are hidden.

Resolved

If a fund had a negative value, when selecting the fund in the invoice line, the encumbered amount was ignored and the fund was not returned. This was fixed.
When receiving multiple journals on the Received Items List page, an error occurred. This was fixed.
When an electronic colleciton is linked with a PO Line, the E-Resource activation status was not correctly specified. This was fixed. Now, In electronic collections, if the resource has at least one active service and one active portfolio OR it links to unsuppressed bib that has a URL, it will be considered as active in the PO Lines List and in the Resource List.
In some cases, the PO status was stuck in Sent even though all PO Lines were closed or cancelled. This was fixed.
When releasing a record from In Process Items, the notification listed the title of the first record on the list, not the records that were released. This was fixed.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

The Number of Student Suggestions field was added to Reading Lists dimension of the Leganto Student Usage, Leganto Instructor Usage Events, and Course Reserves subject areas.

Resolved

The resource locate was being triggered when no changes were made in the citation. This was fixed.
Previously, when the resource_locate_multiple_matches parameter was set to manually, and multiple results were matched, selecting Save and Run returned the user to the Edit Reading List. This was fixed. Now, the repository search page will appear, and the operator will be able to select the title.
When selecting the All tab of a Reading List, an error was displayed. This was fixed.
After September, the Number of Citations field counted only citations with usage. It was fixed and now it includes all citations. The Number of Citations now includes the number of citations in the reading list without any relation to the usage. The Activity Score field is impacted similarly as its calculation is based on the Number of Citations field.
The Course Code field, which appears in the Course Reserves and Usage, has been increased to 255 characters.
Rolling over a course with single list creation mode was not working properly. This was fixed. Additionally, a new flag was added to course loader, On Rollover copy only newest list.

E-Resources

Enhancements

COUNTER Release 5: With the January 2020 release Alma is now fully compliant with COUNTER release 5. COUNTER Release 4 will continue to be supported along with COUNTER release 5. This is the case for both Alma as well Alma Analytics. For more information, see video COUNTER Release 5 in Alma and Alma Analytics as well as Knowledge Center entry Managing COUNTER-Compliant Usage Data. NOTE: As COUNTER Release 5 is a new functionality for both Alma and many vendors, there may be issues with harvesting R5 data from specific vendors during the initial adjustment period. Ex Libris is working to address problems as soon as possible.
New Purchase Type License Upgrade Available for Purchase Order Lines: A New purchase type License Upgrade is available for Purchase Order lines, this will enable institutions to record purchases which reflect license upgrades purchase model. Additionally, a PO line can now be created without a fund and price for scenarios such as described above where a License upgrade has no charge and needs to be recorded in the system. The option to set a PO line as no charge is compatible with the following acquisition methods: Purchase, Approval Plan, and Purchase at Vendor System. When selecting any of these values in the Acquisition Method of the PO line, the No Charge check box appears. When this check box is selected, the Funding and Pricing sections are hidden.

Resolved

When an electronic colleciton is linked with a PO Line, the E-Resource activation status was not correctly specified. This was fixed. Now, in electronic collections, if the resource has at least one active service and one active portfolio OR it links to unsuppressed bib that has a URL, it will be considered as active in the PO Lines List and in the Resource List.

Fulfillment

Enhancements

Send Courtesy Notices: The performance of the Send Courtesy Notices and Handle Loan Renewals job is improved. Additionally, loans for a single user are now aggregated into one letter. If there are more than 100 loans, they will be split into an additional letter.
Leganto Configuration Menu: All Leganto configuration links that previously appeared in the Leganto sub-section of the Fulfillment tab in the Alma configuration menu are now moved to a single Leganto tab on the configuration menu (for those institutions that are configured for Leganto). The Settings mapping table now appears in each of the Leganto tab's sub-sections. Only those customer parameters that are pertinent for that section are displayed in each link.
Merge users now includes options to migrate purchase requests, and data from Primo VE and Leganto from the source to the target user.
The Export Users job now allows you to rerun failed jobs. Jobs that failed due to a server restart will rerun automatically. All other failed jobs can be rerun from the Jobs History list.
The Number of Student Suggestions field was added to Reading Lists dimension of the Leganto Student Usage, Leganto Instructor Usage Events, and Course Reserves subject areas.

Resolved

Previously, multiple overdue blocks could be created for the same returned loan. This was fixed. Now, a single block should be created for each loan. The block should be created according to the updated return date, if it is different than the return date.
In some cases, when sending multiple checkout messages for the same user on a self-check machine, the loan limit could be exceeded. A performance improvement was implemented to address this issue.
On the Held By Patron and On Shelf tabs of the Active Hold Shelf, clicking loan links caused an error. The loans are no longer clickable.
A renewal request sent to an itemless library was not processed correctly. This was fixed.
Previously any recall operation initiated by fulfillment processes on an item in resource sharing would process the recall. This was fixed. The recall will not be allowed if the item is in resource sharing and the status is Returned by Partner.
The Test Access functionality in the portfolio editor was not working for URLs with non-latin alphabet characters. This has been fixed.

Resource Management

Resolved

When the MD Editor is open in split mode while editing a bibliographic record in one and a holdings record in the other, creating a new holdings record results in two holdings where one is related to the wrong bibliographic record. This issue was fixed with the exception of creating a new holdings record using the shortcut key ctrl+alt+h. The full fix will be handled in a later release.
The Preferred Term Correction job removed subfields from the 651 field because of wrong matching. This was fixed.
Subdivisions were duplicated in records with trailing punctuation (period). This was fixed.
A new setting has been enabled that handles subfield u in the following manner: * Subfield u is ignored while browsing headings suggestions (F3) * Subfield u is kept after selecting the suggested heading * Subfield u is not part of the linking process * Subfield u is not part of the Preferred Term Correction process. Reindexing needs to be run for this to be fully functional.
The output file of the 'Duplicate Title Analysis' job included deleted bib records. This has been corrected.
If the import finds at least one match, and the upon match method is 'DO NOT ADD,' then the import report did not display the matched records. This was fixed.
After the import job completed successfully, no email report was sent for the import job. This issue was fixed.
View Import on the Resolve Import Issues page led to an error. This issue was fixed.
Import with an Excel file that contains lines with one of their cells containing a space character was not processed correctly. This was fixed.