August 2022 Release - Harvard Highlights

Owned by Maureen Elizabeth Driscoll
Last updated: Oct 19, 2022 by John Hostage



Ex Libris Documentation

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

General

  • Enhancements

    • Search terms now emphasized with yellow highlight in addition to being bold. This occurs in results, as well as in the search bar dropdown of previous searches. 
    • Recent Entities now reflect activities that you performed for the last 14 days.

  • Resolved

Analytics & Reporting

  • Enhancements

    • OpenURL Service Details Dimension Available for Reporting on Clicked Services. You can now create reports for the number of times a service was clicked. To allow this feature, the OpenURL Service Details dimension was added to the Link Resolver Usage subject area. It contains the following fields:
      • Electronic Collection ID
      • Electronic Collection Name
      • Interface Name
      • Is Clicked Service
      • Is Digital Service
      • Is Electronic Service
      • Is Network Service
      • Portfolio ID
      • Service Type

For more information, see OpenURL Service Details.

    • The following fields were added to the Physical Item Details dimension in the Physical Items, Requests, Lending Requests, and Fulfillment subject areas:
      • Has Committed to Retain – indicates if the library has committed to retain the item
      • Retention Reason – the reason the library has committed to retain the item
      • Retention Note – a free-text note concerning the library's commitment to retain the item
    • The Has Local Extensions field was added to the Bibliographic Details dimension in all subject areas in which it appears. It indicates if the Community Zone-linked record has local extensions (Y/N).
    • The Digital Resource First Access Date and Digital Resource First Access Date (Calendar) fields were added to Borrowing Requests > Borrowing Requests Details. The fields display the date that the digitally received resource was first accessed by the requesting patron.
    • The Public Access Model field was added to E-Inventory > Portfolio. It displays the patron facing access model of the portfolio, which is presented to the patron in the discovery system. In addition, the Access Model field was added to E-Inventory > Portfolio PO Line. It displays the internal access model of the portfolio. For more information on access models, see Managing Access Models.

    • The following events are now reported by the System Events subject area:

      Alma Events

      Event TypeEvent Description
      169

      The user has failed to login to the system

      3370Community linked record updated with local extensions
      4200  Send message to remote storage successfully
      4201No response from remote storage
      4202Failed to send message to remote storage
      4203Failed to connect to remote storage
      4900Loading patron user group succeeded
      4901Loading patron user group failed
      5001Wrong Data found when parsing element for User
      6116Import Job External system Task Chain Fail for User
      9171Failed to send Inventory Add message
      9172Inventory Delete message was sent successfully
      9173Failed to send Inventory Delete message
    • To more accurately calculate the cost usage for a title, if the COUNTER Platform (defined in E-Resource of UI Alma) field is empty, Alma Analytics now derives the platform from the Vendor Interface > Interface Name field.
    • The No Charge field was added to the PO Line dimension in every subject area in which it appears (E-Inventory, Funds Expenditure, Physical Items, Purchase Requests). It indicates if the No Charge checkbox on the PO Line Details page was selected, which is done for titles that were marked for purchase following a process of DDA/PDA, but are open access free-of-charge titles.
    • The Lost Item Fee Amount, Lost Item Fee Currency, and Lost Item Fee VAT were added to Borrowing Requests > Borrowing Request Details and Lending Requests > Lending Request Details. These fields enable you to create reports concerning the fee charged for lost items.
    • The deprecated Events subject area is no longer being updated with new information.

  • Resolved

    • The number of rows that were possible to export in formatted Excel format was limited. This was expanded to 1,000,000 rows.

Acquisitions/Finance

  • Enhancements

  • Resolved

    • Clicking on a PO Lines with multiple funds from the Invoice Lines tab in the invoice goes to the fund instead of the PO Line. This was fixed and users are directed to the PO line instead of the fund. 

Course Reserves/Leganto

  • Enhancements

  • Resolved

E-Resources

  • Enhancements

    • Alma Portfolio Loader now supports using KBART format files for management of electronic collection portfolios. These files can be used directly in the portfolio loader without reformatting. 
    • New electronic collection level indicator for Community Zone collections gives better transparency into how and by whom each collection is maintained. The options are:
      • Ex Libris (managed by Ex Libris)
      • Community (managed on a title level by the Community)
      • Not maintained (the vendor no longer supports this collection)
      • Contributed by Institution (Collection was contributed and is managed by an Alma institution)

  • Resolved

Fulfillment

  • Enhancements

  • Resolved

Resource Management

  • Enhancements

    • (blue star) New item fields for retention commitments. (This feature will become available on August 14 with the release update)
      • Committed to Retain check box, Retention Reason (controlled list of values will be configured), and Retention Note (free-text field)
      • Items with the "Committed to Retain" check mark cannot be withdrawn (individually or in batch).
        • The job report will contain a counter of "unmanaged items" and the specific item will be listed in the Error section with "Item is marked as committed to retain" followed by the barcode
      • These fields should only be used for shared retention projects, which will be listed in the Retention Reason field. The 3 values will be:
        • HathiTrust
        • ReCAP
        • HathiTrust and ReCAP
        • (Contact LTS if there are other partnerships / programs that should be added to this list of values)
      • In the coming weeks LTS will be running batch jobs to move existing item retention notes from Statistic Note 2 to the new fields, which will be in Analytics. 
      • Records with the "Committed to Retain" check box will have a special icon in the Physical Items search results (garbage can with red angled line over it): 
      • You can add a new display column in List of Items by configuring your list to show the Committed to Retain column. 



    • The new MDE now supports several copy-paste options. The options include:

      • The standard cut (Ctrl+X), copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) - this will give you the standard browser functionality
      • The MDE-specific options will work to cut/copy/paste fields only
        • Ctrl+Shift+X, Ctrl+Shift+C, Ctrl+Shift+V
        • For cutting, copying and pasting multiple fields using Ctrl+select
    • Enhanced Change Physical Items Information Job Report. It now includes error reporting and the items handled.

  • Resolved

    • After a Merge and Combine operation in the New MDE, the result record either does not appear on the list to the left or the loading screen continues indefinitely, after saving this record. This was fixed.


Alma-D

  • Enhancements

    • Captions now supported for video files