Ex Libris Documentation

Harvard Alma working groups have summarized key updates below. See the Ex Libris monthly notes for complete details:

• Alma December 2021 Release Notes
• Leganto December 2021 Release Notes

General Enhancements

•  Excel reports generated from Alma using the Export list featureare now formatted as follows:
  • Headers have the option to sort / filter
  • Cell content is wrapped and column width is adjusted to fully display data
  • Hebrew & Arabic text (right-to-left direction) is aligned to the right
    
    
• Alma is now certified for Safari on macOS.
  
  
• It is now possible to create a custom sort for libraries and locations in HOLLIS (including the search result availability summary). The Discovery-to-Delivery group will be considering whether to implement this feature. If you have specific recommendations, please write to the Alma Support Center. 

• Sort holdings by “physically at” location. This feature has been turned OFF because it was affecting the visibility of repeated subfields in the Metadata Editor. 

  • How the feature worked when it was on: when your "physically at" Alma setting is a circulation desk, holdings for your library will display first in lists of holdings. It will also show first in the library facet for Physical Items searches.

Alma-D

Enhancements

• You can now add a watermark image to digital image files. Contact the Alma Support Center if you would like to test this feature. 

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

• PO Line Notes field was added to the PO Line dimension in the following locations. It contains the notes on the PO line. Multiple notes are separated by a semicolon.

  • E-Inventory
  • Funds Expenditure
  • Physical Items
  • Purchase Requests

Resolved

• Loan Note field (Fulfillment > Loan Details) did not display data. This was fixed.
• Adding the Cancellation Reason field (Requests > Request Details) to a report when run from a Network Zone caused results to be removed. This was fixed.
• Analytics Objects List does not display Primo objects when "Analytics Source System=All". This was fixed.
• Alma Analytics reports displayed the wrong day of the week for when API calls were made. This was fixed.
• Reading List Owner fields displayed duplicate values. This was fixed.
• Display Value field (Local Authorities > Local Authorities Details) displayed only a maximum of 50 characters. This was fixed.
• Creator field (Local Authorities > Local Authority Details) could display only a maximum of 10 characters. This was fixed and expanded to 255.

Acquisitions/Finance

Enhancements

• The PO Line Notes field has been added to the following subject areas in Analytics:
  • E-Inventory
  • Funds Expenditure
  • Physical Items
  • Purchase Requests

Resolved

• Fixed issue where placing a POL In Review was not recorded in the history tab. 

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

• When rolling over a course, Alma now enables you to Copy (Configuration Menu > Leganto > List Management > Instructor Rollover Operations) internal library note. The option is disabled by default.

• Automatically Create First Section When Creating a List in Leganto: When creating a new list in Leganto, the user is prompted to choose a template for the list structure. The blank template, which comes out of the box with Leganto, has been renamed "Default", and it now includes one section. The section name will be "Resources" unless otherwise configured. Users will be able to start adding resources to the list immediately, bypassing the need to create the first section. Names for templates can be customized in the labels configuration.

• New feature: Quick Cite. Quick Cite enables users to generate a citation for a single resource, and specify the bibliography style for the citation. Enabled by default.

• Leganto now enables you to reply to public annotations.

• PDFs now open in a new tab, leveraging the full screen size.
• Leganto can be configured to create course records in situations where the instructor selects the LTI link to Leganto and the course does not already exist in Alma. See Configuring Whether Instructors Can Create or Modify Courses for more information.
• For all roles, when a user selects LIBRARY REVIEW to send a reading list to the library, the text of the button changes to LIST SENT.  The LIST SENT button is now disabled until there is a change to the list. When there is a change to the list, the button changes to LIBRARY REVIEW and becomes active. Previously, librarians experienced different behavior from instructors.

Resolved

• Previously, list names with commas could not be exported to Word. This was fixed.

E-Resources

Resolved

• In the Electronic Collection search, Electronic Collection PID has been renamed Electronic Collection ID for consistency.

Fulfillment

Enhancements

• Now customers can define a list of libraries and list of locations within a library in a prioritized order, and have this order reflected in Primo search results. This enables more meaningful sorting of locations in the Get It menu.
• Proxy requesting: A new type of proxy user is introduced, that will function as an extension for the sponsor user: Fulfillment proxies will have a proxy account with which they'll be able to log into Primo, place holds on behalf of their sponsor user, follow up on these requests, be notified when they reach the hold shelf, and check out items on behalf of the sponsor user.
• Customizable labels for Internet Archive Book Reader and Universal Viewer are now available (similar to the Alma Viewer) from Configuration > Fulfillment > Digital Fulfillment > Alma Viewer Labels.

Resolved

• The Loan Note field (Fulfillment > Loan Details) did not display data. This was fixed.

Resource Management

Enhancements

• Metadata Editor
  • Improved performance and response time
  • Improved color contrast 
  • When opening two record side-by-side, 200% zoom is now supported. 
• Authority Control Task List
  • Major performance improvements were introduced, enabling the staff users to access it in a much shorter time.
  • 3 filters were moved to the top (to support performance enhancements): Brief Level, Suppressed from Discovery, Linked to CZ

Resolved

• Sometimes the option to Relink a holding did not appear if it had been recently locked. This has been resolved. 
• Metadata Editor
  • Copy, Paste, and Cut actions via the Editing menu worked only if the text in the field was not highlighted and the actions were on the field level. This was fixed. The Copy, Paste, and Cut menu actions labels changed to Copy Field, Paste Field, and Cut Field.
  • When using "Expand from Template", the cursor will now be placed automatically in the Template search box.
  • It was impossible to add fields to a template without control fields. This was fixed.