May 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

Keyboard Shortcuts: you can view the full list on the Shortcut Customization page (User menu > Shortcut Customization). You can also disable global Alma keyboard shortcuts. You may want to do that in cases when your language requires usage of the same keyboard keys for typing accents or diacritics. Note that you can disable the Alma shortcuts, but cannot define other Alma shortcuts for the same action. See Global Alma Hot Keys. This list does not include MDE shortcuts. Additional shortcuts are available on the Patron Services (see Managing Patron Services) and Manage Item Returns (see Returning Items) pages.
Item Statistics Notes Search - In advanced search for Physical titles and Physical items, you can now search for statistics notes. See Searching for Statistical Notes for more information.
New widget available for adding to your Alma home page: the Top Trending Book dashboard widget presents a list of the top 10 physical and electronic books that have been added to library's collections within various Alma institutions (on average) as an indication of trends around the libraries. The widget can be fine-tuned in order to present specific classifications taken from the Library of Congress. For more information, see Managing Widgets.

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

No. of Available Portfolios and No. of Unavailable Portfolios fields were added to E-Inventory > Portfolio.
Reporting on electronic collections without portfolios is possible in the E-Inventory subject area in Alma Analytics. To support this enhancement the No. of Electronic Collections Without Portfolios (In Repository) field was added to E-Inventory > Electronic Collection.
The following fields relating to place of publication were added to Bibliographic Details shared dimension for every subject area in which it appears.
- Place of Publication - Country
- Place of Publication - State
- Place of Publication - City
In the the Course Reserves subject area, the Leganto Citation Library Discussions field was added to Reading List Citation dimension and the Leganto List Library Discussions field was added to Reading List dimension. They display the library discussions.

Resolved Issues

Data was not returned for roles in the Events subject area. This was fixed.
The 'Updated by' field now shows the logged in user that made the change and not the default Ex Libris user.
In 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.
The Storage Location ID field was missing from the Physical Item Details folder in the Physical Item Historical Event SA. The field was added.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

Ability to Activate Portfolio from CZ using Create Order API - The functionality–originally introduced in the January release–is now available for 11 providers. NOTE: This is only available for orders originating from OASIS
An option to create and/or update the fields within the Vendor Details section has been added to the Update PO Line and Create PO Line APIs.

Resolved

The Create invoice API was slow in some cases; performance was improved.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

Instructor personal copy management: Alma now includes enhanced workflows to enable instructors to lend their personal copies of items to the library for circulation. This allows the library to catalog instructor-owned copies, track which instructor owns the item, and easily re-use previous items in subsequent terms.
Leganto now includes built-in guided tours for instructors. These guided tours direct instructors through specific workflows, demonstrating exactly where to click using on-screen arrows and messages. For more information about the guided tours, see The Guided Tours.
Instructors can now import citations to reading lists using BibTex files. Citations can be imported to reading lists when the list is being created, imported to sections of a reading list, or imported to the collection.
Generating Citations Based on Reference Files (Beta): Instructors can now import citations to reading lists using files that include references, such as those in the bibliography section of an essay. A different citation is automatically generated for each reference in a reference file. This feature is available only for librarians in Leganto and does not display for instructors. All uploaded references are automatically created as articles, but can be changed manually.
Excel exports from the Edit Citations screen now include the Course Code, Course Term, No. of Participants, and Academic Department columns.
In the Edit Citations screen, Alma now provides a link to reading lists in each citation in Alma.
In the the Course Reserves subject area, the Leganto Citation Library Discussions field was added to Reading List Citation dimension and the Leganto List Library Discussions field was added to Reading List dimension. They display the library discussions.
Navigating and Exporting to New Refworks: Leganto now enables users to navigate directly to (New) RefWorks by selecting Go to RefWorks from the user menu.
Libraries can now decide whether to show or hide the Newspapers menu item when searching for library resources, regardless of whether it is enabled in Primo (Configuration Menu > Leganto > Discovery)
CiteIt! now supports the Library Hub Discover site. For more information about using Cite It!, see Adding a Citation from A Website (Using Cite It!).
When iframe is used, the Logout menu item is hidden. This hides the Logout option when Leganto is embedded in the Learning Management System.
New User Citation Task for Citations with Files: You can now easily manage citations with new uploaded files from the task list in Alma (Citation has a New File task).

Resolved

In Alma, a reading list that has an large number of Instructors on the course has an issue in that the “view in Leganto” click through is not displaying has been fixed.
The Other Formats & Editions feature displayed the incorrect resource type and edition number. This was fixed.
Cite It! did not function for some sources. This was fixed.
For reading lists, Ready for Processing is displayed in the Being Prepared facet. This was fixed.
View Online was displayed when the link was hidden. This was fixed.
The text for "0/14 items are in process" was changed to "All items are processed".
When publishing reading lists, the status did not change from "Being Prepared" to "Ready for Processing" when auto_publish is set to yes. This was fixed.
Specific accounts were missing the citation_availability_format parameter. This was fixed.
The location order in the Availability statement in the brief view did not select the first location based on the defined order settings. This was fixed.

E-Resources

Enhancements

In order to assist with activating Community Zone portfolios, you can now view portfolio linking information from search results in the Community Zone tab. Previously in order to view the linking information of a Community Zone portfolio, you had to activate the portfolio. See Linking Information on the Searching in Alma page for more information.
The SUSHI Harvesting job can now be run on a monthly schedule, in addition to the weekly scheduling option. The monthly schedule offers four predefined dates across the month.
The No. of Available Portfolios and No. of Unavailable Portfolios fields were added to E-Inventory > Portfolio in Analytics.
You can now create reports for electronic collections without portfolios from the E-Inventory subject area in Analytics. To support this, the No. of Electronic Collections Without Portfolios (In Repository) field was added to E-Inventory > Electronic Collection.

Resolved

When executing import EOD for Electronic Resource and the Do not create E-activation task field was selected, the creation of activation tasks was not skipped. This was fixed.
The issues with deleting electronic collections have been fixed.
Portfolios with embargoes were not handled as expected in the 'Overlap and Collection Analysis.' New logic was added to apply the embargo on the coverage(s).

Fulfillment

Enhancements

On the In Process Items page, the order of the filters has changed for acquisition departments.
On the request form in Get It, once a patron clicks on the Submit button, the button is disabled so that it cannot be clicked twice.

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.
Previously, you could update the user Primary ID with value of one of its identifiers. This was fixed and will now cause a validation error.
Previously, when creating a new item in a department on the Scan-In Interface - Quick Cataloging, the item status appeared as In Place. This was fixed. Now, the item will automatically appear as in process.
The Interested Users filter on the In Process Items page is now visible only to an acquisitions department.
After logging in successfully to an Alma account on a self-check machine, if the user attempted to toggle to the renew function, the application crashed with error “SelfCheck station is not available. Please contact library staff.” This was fixed.
RS: A borrowing request that was mistakenly handled as Expired could not have been processed as Lost. This is not a valid scenario, but the Lost operation should not fail. This was fixed.

Resource Management

Enhancements

New Metadata Editor available for testing. Read more at Metadata Editor (MDE)
The following MARC 21 holdings and authority configuration profile updates have been completed:
- MARC 21 Holdings – Update No. 28 (May 2019)
- MARC 21 Authority – Update No. 26 (April 2018) and Update No. 28 (May 2019)

Resolved

The number of items in the MD Editor > View Inventory > Holdings tab did not reflect the total number of items but, instead, just the items which were not in a temporary location. This was fixed; a new counter of items in a temporary location was added.
Previously, not all operations were updating the Modified By column for Item History. This was fixed.
The “Starts With” operator in Advanced Search did not retrieve any results when the searched value contained an apostrophe (e.g. America’s). This has been corrected. This fix is relevant for all indexes and all search types (e.g. “Authorities”, “All Titles” etc.).
Text in angle brackets <> was not displayed in the Metadata Editor F3/ View and in Browse Bib headings. This was fixed.
In the Metadata Editor when using F3 on bibliographic headings and viewing more than one authority record and after clicking Edit on the authority record on the right side, all the viewed authorities were opened. This was fixed.
The ISBN (exact sub-field match)/ 024 / 035 Match Method did not appear as a non-serial match method in the import profile. This was fixed.

Primo interoperability

On the request form in Get It, once a patron clicks on the Submit button, the button is disabled so that it cannot be clicked twice.
Ability to turn off Related Records feature in Get It display – Discovery-to-Delivery WG has discussed this new option and has decided turned to turn off the Related Records feature in HOLLIS. This will be applied later in the spring after testing.