July 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

New Alma main menu available. This new menu will create more vertical space in your Alma window. Please see New Alma Menu Layout. There are several known issues, but we encourage anyone who is interested to test this on the sandbox.
Creating itemized sets: when creating an itemized set via a file upload, you had to wait for the set to be finished before you could create another. Now jobs can be run in parallel so you do not have to wait for one job to finish before starting another.
DARA recommendations for missing items: DARA now identifies items that have been missing for a significant amount of time and recommends that you handle them.
New Metadata Editor: the new MDE can be used in production Alma. This may be of limited use to most users because there are features that remain to be included. Please visit the rollout timeline for more information. This month, Catalog Set has been enabled.
Alma Analytics migration to OAS (Oracle Analytics Server) on July 22nd. Alma Analytics OAS will introduce a new tool called DV (Data Visualization).

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

Alma Analytics OAS

Alma Analytics is being migrated to OAS (Oracle Analytics Server) which includes DV (Data Visualization). To learn more about both OAS and DV and how they interact with Alma Analytics, and Primo Analytics, see:

- - YouTube videos about OAS (Oracle Analytics Server) and DV (Data Visualization)
  - Blogs about OAS (Oracle Analytics Server) and DV (Data Visualization)

Until further notice, Data Visualization (DV) is in Preview mode. While in Preview mode:

- - The use of The DV is per user and it is not supported be put into an analytics object (widget, scheduled report, etc.). Additionally, DV projects are not accessible using APIs.
  - The ability to create data sets (subject areas) from files (for example, uploading an Excel file) is supported. However, creating data sets from connections is not supported.

The following applies to the files that are uploaded to Data Visualization (DV) as a data set:

- - The files are for the use of the user who uploaded the file. Sharing the data set created from the files (with the DV Inspect option) is not supported.
  - The files are limited to 20 MB per user and 5 MB per file.
  - The files may be removed at any time by Ex Libris for development purposes.

Important Migration Information

- A copy of all Analytics content will be extracted on July 12 --with the exception of “My Folders”. Analytics reports in My Folders MUST be copied to the Shared Folders area prior to July 12 in order to be migrated to OAS. Analytics content in My Folders that is not copied to Shared Folders will be lost. To migrate Analytics content in My Folders, please follow these steps:
  - Create a folder under “/shared/Harvard University/_Temp_OASMigration
  - Copy your analytics from My Folders to /shared/Harvard University/_Temp_OASMigration/[Your Name]
  - After the OAS migration copy your analytics back to My Folders
- After Analytics content is extracted on July 12 there will follow a “freeze period”. Although Analytics will be available during the freeze period, please be aware that none of the changes made in Analytics during the freeze period will be retained when OAS becomes available on July 22.
Other Enhancements
- The following fields for linked records were added to the Bibliographic Details dimension in every subject area in which it appears:
  - Link ID – the link ID
  - Linked to CZ – indicates if the record is linked to the Community Zone
  - Linked to NZ – indicates if the record is linked to the Network Zone
- The following fields were added to the Fulfillment subject area regarding requests:
  - Loan Details > Is Hold Request Loan – indicates if the loan was initiated by a hold request
  - Loans > Loans (Not In House) from Hold Request – the number of not in house loans that came from a hold request
  - Loans > Loans (Not In House) from Booking Request – the number of not in house loans that came from a booking request
- The following fields were added to E-Inventory > Electronic Collections to support the new Central Discovery Index (CDI):
  - No. of Electronic Collections (In Repository + In CDI)
  - No. of Electronic Collections (In Repository + Not In CDI)
  - In CDI
  - Active for Fulltext In CDI
  - Active for Search In CDI
  - CDI Full Text Linking
  - CDI Full Text Rights
  - CDI Newspapaers
  - CDI Number of Records
  - CDI Resource Types
  - CDI Search Rights
  - CDI Update Frequency
  - CDI Provider Package Code
  - CDI - Subscribe to only some titles in this collection
  - CDI - Do not show as full text available even if active in Alma
  - CDI Local Note
- Database usage is now included in usage statistics in the E-Inventory subject area.

Resolved Issues

- Analytics “Interface status” has numeric value instead of Active/Inactive
- In Fulfillment under the Loan Details folder, the Loan Note field contained no data even when the loan had a note. This was fixed.
- In Physical Items > Holding Details > Holdings Record Creation Date analytics field displayed the same value as the Holding Details > Holdings Record Modification Date analytics field and not the holding record's creation date as it appears in Alma. This was fixed.
- In Fulfillment there was no difference between the data in Patron Details folder and the Borrower Details folder. This was fixed, and now the Patron Detail folder displays information from the time of the loan and the Borrower Details folder displays the current information.
- Results did not appear for reports with the Bibliographic Details > Language of Cataloging field in Analytics reports if the record does not include an 040 $b field. This was fixed.
- Portfolio Access Type field (Inventory >Portfolio Details) returned two values for 'None'. This caused portfolio duplication in the report. This was fixed and now only one record is displayed in the report.
- LC Classification range 195.001 to AC199.999 showed incorrect groups. This was fixed.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

Move Invoice Owner from the Institution to a Library: You can now change the owner of an invoice to match the owner of the linked PO lines. See this video from Ex Libris for additional details.

Resolved

Performance has been improved for the Received Items List. As a result, the PO line list on the page is now sorted by creation date, from newest to oldest.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

Users can now export a filtered list from Leganto showing only specific fields. You can set your filters by clicking the filter button and selecting your filter(s).
When exporting reading lists, users can now include or exclude the Item availability, Tags, and Public note fields:
Instructors can now create new reading lists by importing RIS, BibTex, References, and Folders in addition to the existing lgn format.
Leganto has integrated with Syndetics Unbound. This integration enables Syndetics Unbound customers to access all of the sections displayed on their Detail Page Settings in Leganto.
Leganto now displays the View online or Check availability links in the brief display of a citation only if at least one link exists on a citation. If, for instance, you hide all the digital presentations of a citation, the link is not presented.
Users can now view a citation's public notes while viewing Leganto in compact view.
Previously, capitalization was automatically applied to all labels in all languages. Now, the labels will appear as entered by the user.
When exporting reading lists in Excel format, the Permalink to Citation column has been added.
When you search for citations within a reading list in Leganto, empty sections are hidden.
Locked reading lists can now be rolled over. See Locking and Unlocking a Reading List.

Resolved

A content indicator was added to the Instructors tab in the course details page.

E-Resources

Enhancements

Public Access Model on the Portfolio Editor: The access model has been indicated in the PO line, but is now also displayed in a new field in the Acquisition tab of the portfolio editor. This field presets the active access model associated with the portfolio, as inherited from the PO line that created the portfolio. Any updates to the access model on the PO line are reflected in the Public access model field of the portfolio editor. Note, however, that changing the access model value on the portfolio does not update the access model on the PO line. Institutions can control the presentation of the access model to patrons via Alma Link Resolver through a configuration setting.
In Analytics, the following fields were added to E-Inventory > Electronic Collections to support the new Central Discovery Index (CDI):
- No. of Electronic Collections (In Repository + In CDI)
- No. of Electronic Collections (In Repository + Not In CDI)
- In CDI
- Active for Fulltext In CDI
- Active for Search In CDI
- CDI Full Text Linking
- CDI Full Text Rights
- CDI Newspapers
- CDI Number of Records
- CDI Resource Types
- CDI Search Rights
- CDI Update Frequency
- CDI Provider Package Code
- CDI - Subscribe to only some titles in this collection
- CDI - Do not show as full text available even if active in Alma
- CDI Local Note
Improvements to Electronic Collection and Portfolio Deletion: The process of electronic collection and portfolio deletion was made more user-friendly. Now the options to edit records (add, edit or delete) are disabled on electronic collections, portfolios and services once these resources are marked for deletion. In addition, now you are blocked from attaching a stand-alone portfolio to a collection that is marked for deletion (unless the portfolio has some available services).
Platform Field Added to the SUSHI Account Details: The SUSHI Account Details page now includes a Platform field. This field should be populated for vendors that require a platform code for successful harvesting of usage data.
Notification on Last Community Zone Update: The date of the most recent Community Zone update was added to the Help menu in the Main Menu Icons.
Improvements to Electronic Collections Contributions: Electronic collection contribution was enhanced as follows:
- You can contribute to additional fields, including static and dynamic URLs.
- You can update additional fields of your contributed electronic collections and share your updates with the community.

Resolved

In the SUSHI harvesting process, when a vendor returned an error about date arguments, the harvest process failed. This was fixed.
In some cases, removing a link to a bibliographic record in an electronic collection did not trigger the publishing of the bib record as deleted. This was fixed: now when a bib record is separated from a collection, it is properly published as deleted.

Fulfillment

Enhancements

Request Anonymization and Anonymization Rules: You can now define rules for all anonymization types, not just loans. The anonymization job, which runs once daily, is Fulfillment - Handle Historical Archiving. The rules are found in the Fulfillment Jobs Configuration page (Configuration Menu > Fulfillment > General > Fulfillment Jobs Configuration) next to each anonymization type
Option to Exclude the Grace Period When Calculating Fee:Previously, when calculating fees, when the grace period ended, fines were immediately implemented and set for the entire period including the grace period. Now, the grace period can be set to not be included in the fine period at all. In the policy, currently, you can now configure new periods. Each of the prior periods now has a second period with excluded from day. When that period is selected, the fee calculations are the same, but they are based on the end time of the grace period instead of the due date.
For attachment digitization requests, the file size limit was increased from 10 MB to 25 MB.
Users with the Circulation Desk Operator role can now access the Advanced Tools section of the main Fulfillment menu. See User Roles - Descriptions and Accessible Components.
Analytics: The following fields were added to the Fulfillment subject area regarding requests:
- Loan Details > Is Hold Request Loan – indicates if the loan was initiated by a hold request
- Loans > Loans (Not In House) from Hold Request – the number of not in house loans that came from a hold request
- Loans > Loans (Not In House) from Booking Request – the number of not in house loans that came from a booking request

Resolved

Request button in Get It not fully clickable in Firefox. This is fixed
- 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 not place a manual description request if the item was in a temporary location. This was fixed.
- A performance improvement has been made for selecting a new processing location in Alma.
- Request recalculation ignored the On Shelf request policy. As a result, recalculation of a request sometimes caused the request to switch to an available item even if the On Shelf request policy did not allow it. This was fixed.
- The Primo Get-It pane loading time was slow for serial titles that had many related records. The loading time was improved. Additional improvements are in progress.
- Under certain circumstances, the last renew status of a loan was incorrect. This was fixed.
- A performance improvement has been added in the fulfillment area.
- When cancelling a request from the Patron Services page, the cancellation reasons did not appear in the order of the code table, as they do when cancelling form the Monitor Requests page. This was fixed.
- The Pick from Shelf print slip report is now sorted in the same order as the UI list.
- The content indicator of requests and returns tabs on the Patron Services page are now populated when coming from user details Manage Fulfillment Activities.
- When a physical item request was in the pick from shelf stage, and then the item information was changed, the resource request slip was immediately printed a second time. Now, a new resource request slip is printed in this case only if one of the following fields is changed: Location, Description, Material type, Item policy, Process type. Note: If the request will not be handled (i.e. it is still in the pick from shelf stage) until the next execution of the Requests - Recalculate after Inventory Update job, the job will process the request and will trigger a printing of a new slip regardless of which fields were changed.
- The reshelving of an item was wrongly considered an inventory update and therefore incorrectly triggered request recalculation by the Requests - Recalculate after Inventory Update job. Since the job also reprints resource request slips during the recalculation, this caused the slips for these items to be printed a second time for no reason. This was fixed. Now reshelving will no longer trigger request recalculation and therefore the slips will not be reprinted.

Resource Management

Enhancements

Two important authority jobs (Link bib headings, Preferred Term Correction) were dependent on the completion of other jobs. When the other jobs ran long, these dependent daily jobs would not run until the scheduled time the next day. Now, the jobs will begin after the previous job completes, rather than being skipped entirely that day.
List of Items - revised menu for "Managed Selected." The options to "Change Holdings" and "Relink to another bib" are now located under the Manage Selected dropdown menu. Also, there is now a counter above the list to indicate how many items you have chosen.

Resolved

After browsing for an item with a specific source of classification or shelving scheme (call number type = source specified in subfield $2) through the 'Browse Shelf Listing' feature, editing it and then returning back to the MD Editor by selecting 'Cancel,' 'Save' or the 'Back' arrow, the user was not directed back to the Browse Shelf Listing with the previous parameters settings. This was fixed.
Relinking holdings did not remove the merged empty holding. This was fixed.
AUTH heading - punctuation was removed when linking an authority record via F3, even though parameter add_punctuation_for_heading was set to “N”. This was fixed.