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Alma June 2016 Release Notes

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The Alma June release provides numerous new features and enhancements. Some of these enhancements are a result of the NERS or Idea Exchange initiatives.
PDF.png Download a PDF of the Release Notes - Note that the PDF includes the online help pages that describe the core functionality of the new features.

Make the Most of This Release

Action Items
Brief Record Levels - To enable more granular control of bibliographic record levels of briefness, Alma has introduced the support of multiple brief record levels instead of the previous two-level record support (brief/not brief). As part of this release, choose the brief level rule that is most appropriate for your cataloging policies (you can choose one of the out-of-the-box rules or create your own). Following this release, Alma calculates the brief level of the entire catalog, based on your choice. If you do not choose a brief level rule, a default one, simulating the two-level (brief/not brief) approach, is chosen for you.
NERS.png A NERS Enhancement: Alerts for Shortened Due Dates - You probably don’t want your patrons to miss the fact that their loan has been issued with a shortened due date. With this month’s new feature, you can set the system to highlight this condition so that the circulation desk staff and the borrowing patrons do not miss this fact at loan time.
Contribute Vendors to the Network Zone - This new capability will allow your consortia to better collaborate in order to create and manage a shared vendor list.

What's New?

The following sections present the new and changed features in this release of Alma.

Acquisitions

  • Contribute Vendors to the Network Zone - See Collaborative Networks
  • idea_exchange.png Idea Exchange: Multiple PO Lines for an Electronic Resource - When a new order extends an electronic resource, such as adding additional users or adding access to additional portfolios in an electronic collection, the new (or existing) PO line can be added as an Additional Order to the existing electronic resource.

Resource Management

Digital Resource Management

Fulfillment

Resource Sharing

Collaborative Networks

Analytics

  • Note Field Anonymized for Analytics Reports from the Network Zone - The Note field of the Lending Requests Details dimension of the Lending Requests subject area is now included as one of the fields that are anonymized for the Network Zone when creating reports for member institutions.
  • NERS.png A NERS Enhancement: The number of records that can be exported from Alma Analytics will be increased to 250,000 in the coming weeks and to 500,000 records at a later stage.
  • Additional Analytics Enhancements
  • Due to an upgrade of the OBIEE used by Alma Analytics that will take place in June and July, the export option for reports from Alma Analytics to Excel 2003 will no longer be supported. Only export to an .xslx format will be supported and not export to an .xls format.
  • The new Fund Information dimension under the Physical Items subject area is currently under construction and should not be used. It will be made available soon in an upcoming release.

Alma Administration, Integrations, and Infrastructure

APIs

Known Issues

  • When importing an EOD file using the New Order profile, if the location of the item does not have a call number type, the call number type of the institution should be used as the alternative call number type. Currently, however, no alternative call number is used.
  • Related to merging bibliographic records in the MD Editor, if there are no requests, the Merge Records and Combine Inventory pop-up window does not display a count of 0 (zero) requests. The count appears for requests only when it is greater than 0 (zero). The count should also appear as 0 (zero) requests when they occur.
  • Regarding the autocomplete/pop-up assistance being provided for several UNIMARC fields in the MD Editor, there is a known issue related to UNIMARC 327 $a and 327 $b. These subfields are based on the same functionality and as a result, the pop-up suggestions in the MD Editor suggests both subfields’ values when entering content in either the 327 $a or the 327 $b.
  • Fixed position fields cannot be modified using the extension loader (extension packs) at this time.
  • When creating an OCLC Connexion import profile in a Network Zone member institution with the Use NZ option selected, the Use NZ record option is used upon finding a match. Currently, there is no possibility to select the Merge, Overlay, or Do not import options instead.
  • When a record is deleted in Alma, the headings associated with the record are still available when browsing bibliographic headings.
  • The Total electronic portfolios imported count in the MD import report does not take into account the portfolios imported in the first file that is imported when the import is split into several files.
  • When LDAP is used for authentication, and one or more fields values in the LDAP integration profile are missing, the values from a previously defined LDAP integration profile are used. If there is no previously defined LDAP profile, or if this profile also contains missing values for these fields, authentication will fail. In the future, mandatory fields will be enforced and the previous LDAP profile values won’t be used. In the meantime, it is recommended that you fix your LDAP profile if you have missing field values.
The following known issue was fixed for the June release:
  • When creating an Analytics report using the Cost per Use field, the year used is taken from the date of the invoice transaction instead of the fiscal year of the fund used in the transaction.

Data Services

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