Ex Libris Documentation

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

• Alma August 2024 Feature Release Notes
• Leganto August 2024 Release Notes

General

Enhancements

• The UI for active facets was redesigned for better clarity and efficiency in narrowing down and viewing results. This applies to PO lines, resource sharing requests, sets, and relevant searches such as physical holdings. 

• The collapsed facets panel now indicates the existence and the number of active facets. This applies to PO lines, resource sharing requests, sets, and relevant searches such as physical holdings.

If you hover over the collapsed facets bar, a tooltip displays the selected facets. 

• When filters other than the default filters are chosen, a green dot displays next to the filter icon to indicate that the results displayed on the page are not the default ones, e.g. My Sets instead of All Sets. This is useful for sticky filters–when the user accesses a page that has a non-default filter selected, they will get a visual cue that the non-default filter is selected. Additionally, the Clear All button was added to clear all the filters and set them back to defaults. This applies to PO lines, patron services, and sets. 

• When searching in sets, the Created by option now allows for search by the user name (First or last name). Truncated searches are supported so that users can use an asterisk wildcard to search for a string that begins with the searched characters.
• The Simple and Advanced search now support recent searches for all search types, including Order lines, Holdings, Users, Licenses, Reading Lists, Requests, etc. 

• PHYSICAL ITEMS SEARCH: the following fields are now available to activate in the physical items search configuration:
  • Public note
  • Fulfillment note
  • Internal notes
  • Statistics notes
  • Receiving date
  • Receiving operator
  • To activate these fields, click the gear icon at the top right corner of the results
• LIST OF ITEMS VIEW
  • When viewing a list of items, such as on a bib or holding, these additional fields are available for display: Condition, Public note, Fulfillment note, Internal note 1, Statistics note 1
  • To activate these fields, click the gear icon at the top right corner of the results

Acquisitions / Finance

Enhancements

• Nineteen new fields were added to the Update PO lines Information job. The job form was also updated by dividing it into sections so it is easier to locate the fields you need to update.

The list of new fields is as follows:

• • Additional PO line reference field
  • Cancellation Restriction
  • Cancellation Restriction Note
  • Add labels from list
  • Remove labels
  • Create new label
  • Reclaim interval
  • Subscription interval
  • Note to vendor
  • Vendor reference number type
  • Routing during receiving
  • Binding during receiving
  • Activation note
  • Renewal date
  • Subscription from
  • Subscription to
  • Renewal reminder period (days)
  • Renewal note
  • Internal note

For more information see Manual Jobs and Configuring Processes.

• A summary bar was added to the Pricing and Funding section in the PO line, indicating the total sum and the funding coverage percentile. Additionally, some minor display modifications were done to the entire Pricing and Funding section. 

• The PO Line Description and Creator fields were added to the Transactions tab for Funds and Ledgers. To enable their display, check both fields in the table customization menu. 

• It is now possible to create PO lines for Article Processing Charges (APC) using two new PO line types:
  • Article Processing Charges (APC) - One Time
  • Article Processing Charges (APC) - Continuous

The new PO Line types do not have inventory, as they represent a request to publish articles. It is possible to link these PO lines to the vendor for which the request to publish is being processed and to link to a relevant license. You can also record the price and funding. These PO lines will be available in Analytics. 

• An option was created to copy the PO line price to the item's Replacement Cost field. The price is copied upon PO Line creation, change of PO line price and addition or removal of items in the PO lines. 
• The Receive an Existing Item API now supports receiving items of continuous PO lines. The same parameters should be used as for receiving items of one-time PO lines. 
• When creating an new invoice from a PO or when updating the invoice number, the PO lines of that PO are indexed in order to retrieve them in the receiving workbench by the invoice number. If there are many PO lines to index as part of the PO, the indexing is run in the background and the user is notified. 

Resolved

• The Public Access Model field did not update when adding an additional PO line with the "License Upgrade" type. This was fixed.

• Access models were not assigned to electronic portfolios when the PO lien was created via a template. This was fixed. 
• When creating a PO line type of Electronic Book - One Time, the material type field in the PO line was empty. This was fixed. 
• Invoice payment information fields were editable when accessed from the Receive New Material page for users who did not have the relevant privileges. This was fixed. 
• Invoices with Closed status could not be saved when editing the payment information fields. This was fixed. 
• When creating a new PO line using a template that contained the license value, the license was not copied to the created portfolio. This was fixed. 
• When an item with an illegal character ("&", "%") in the title was "Saved and Received" from the Item Editor, an error was displayed. This was fixed. 
• The Interested User field was not populated in PO lines when loaded through EOD with the user email address. This was fixed. 

Analytics & Reporting

Enhancements

• Patron Expiry Date field was added to Fulfillment > Loan Details. It indicates the date that the patron's user account expires in the library that provided the loan. This is distinct from the Expiry Date field under Fulfillment > Borrower Details, which displays the date that the patron's user account expires in the institution.

  Patron Expiry Date field is useful in a scenario where the patron has a long-term account in the larger institution but was given a short-term account in a specific library of the institution. In this case, this field allows you to run reports according to the expiry date for the specific library.

• The Locked Out Date field was removed from analytics from all the subject areas in which it appeared, as it no longer exists in Alma.
• DV Section field was added to Analytics Usage Tracking > Query Details. It displays the section of the Data Visualization dashboard that was used.

  In addition, the following fields in the Query Details dimension were renamed for better clarity:

  • Dashboard Name was renamed to Dashboard/Workbook Path
  • Dashboard Tab was renamed to Dashboard Tab/Workbook Canvas Name
  • Object Path was renamed to Report Path
  • Object Report URL was renamed to Report URL

  For more information, see Query Details.

• Two new out-of-the-box analytics objects were added to the Analytics Objects list for the Resource Sharing Borrowing Requests and Resource Sharing Lending Requests dashboards.
• In the Analytics object List, the default format to send scheduled reports is now Excel.

Resolved

• The values of Available for Group, Available for Group Members, and Available for Resource Type fields under E-Inventory > Portfolio and E-Inventory > Portfolio Details for Consortia Members > Portfolio were not accurate. This was fixed.
• The values of Available for Group and Available for Group Members fields in the E-Inventory subject area were not accurate. This was fixed.
• When the Leganto - Monthly CRL report and the Leganto - Monthly RL report were sent as Excel files by email, the files did not display any data. This was fixed.
• The Purchase Requests (Analytics) > Purchase Request Details > Modification Details field was removed as it does not display meaningful data.
• In the Analytics Object List, if you viewed the preview of an Alma Analytics report and then tried viewing the preview of a Primo Analytics report, it did not open. This was fixed.
• When using the Microsoft Edge browser, clicking View Full Report did not work. This was fixed.

Course Reserves/Leganto

Enhancements

• It is now possible to add a Custom link to LMS help URL (Configuration > General > External Systems > Integration Profiles > Integration Type: LTI Tool > Actions tab) to direct users to a specified link for help using a link to a section or item in the LMS. When the Custom link to LMS help URL field is blank (default), users are directed to the Ex Libris Leganto help. For more information, see LTI.
• Based on customer feedback, it is now possible to manage collaborators from the Edit list page. Previously, it was only possible from the Manage list page.
• Based on customer feedback, the tooltips that appear on hover were adjusted to appear and disappear more quickly as the mouse moves across the page.
• When deleting sections or adding/removing section tags in bulk, these events are now included in the Notifications list.
• Analytics: The Link to PDF field was added to the Citations dimension of the Leganto Student Usage and Leganto Instructor Usage Events subject areas and the Reading List Citations dimension of the Course Reserves and Purchase requests subject areas. It displays the URL of the PDF of the citation.
  

E-Resources

Resolved

• An error that occurred when moving some portfolios to a different electronic collection was fixed.
• The Inventory tab in all title searches displayed the old name for the electronic collection, even though the collection name was updated in the Community Zone. This issue has been fixed and the correct public name is now displayed. 

Fulfillment

Enhancements

• (NERS 8338): The Change Physical items information job can now be set to remove the Transit For Reshelving status from items. This makes it easy to correct the status of items that are incorrectly marked as in transit.

• The following fields are now available to activate in the physical items search configuration. For more information, see Customizing the Search Results Record Fields.

  • Public note
  • Fulfillment note
  • Internal notes

• The following columns are now available to activate in the physical items list table. For more information, see Working with Table Columns.

  • Condition
  • Public note
  • Fulfillment note
  • Internal note 1
  • Statistics note 1

Resource Management

Enhancements

• Creating multiple items for a holding using item templates
  • When using the "Add item from template"  feature, you can now specify the number of items to add. 
• New Cloud App on sandbox for testing: Item Creator by Excel
  • This CloudApp facilitates the creation of new physical items from Excel files, ideal for scenarios involving multiple holdings or titles, varied enumeration/chronology fields, or when item data is provided in Excel format (e.g., from vendors). Minimum input requirements are MMS ID and Holding ID. 
  • Contact LTS to become a registered user for this app in production. 
• NEW SEARCH INDEX: Serial Title
  • This index searches MARC field 222 (unique serial title)
• Metadata Editor Linked Data feature
  • For a linked author heading, when you click on the binoculars to see the authority record at the right, you will see a new button for "Contributor Page." This button will open a panel that exposes information from LC and Wikidata if available. Full support for generating a new search based on the ID of the authority will be fully functional after the November 2024 indexing.
  • 

• Authorities search

  • When an authority record has a 5XX field mentioning a related authority, the authorities search results now contains a link to easily search for that term. If the authority vocabulary does not base these pointers on authority ID, clicking on the "See also" link generates a search for the term entered in the 5XX field. This search was enhanced to give more accurate results and will now:

    • Use the "equals" search operator

    • Limit the search by originating system, so that only authorities from the same system as the authority record the search originated from will be retrieved.

    • Before, the entire 5XX field was included in the search, often resulting in not finding the relevant authority. Now, only subfields indexed for search in the relevant source code (subject, personal name, corporate name, and so forth) within the 5XX field are included in the search.

    • Institutions that prefer the previous keyword-based “See also” search behavior (for example, who work mostly with vocabularies where doing a fuzzy match is more desirable), can select to opt out of the new system by setting the customer parameter aut_see_also_link to ‘false’ to retain the old behavior. (Contact LTS to inquire.)