How to Address Indexing Issues in Alma and Primo VE

Question

What is "Indexing"?

Answer

In the simplest of terms, Indexing is the sorting of records, data, and values in a specific structure that allows that information to be used or retrieved at a later date.

Question

What are some Symptoms of an Indexing Issue?

Answer

For Alma, Indexing Issues might result in the following, but are not limited to:

• If a number of Portfolios were deleted from an Electronic Collection, the number of remaining Portfolios might be different than what that number is expected to be.
• If a Portfolio or Record was deleted, but can still be observed in the Alma UI.
• If a number of Portfolios were moved to another Electronic Collection, but the Portfolios are still seen in the old Electronic Collection.
• If changes were made to a large group of items (bibliographic records, portfolios, etc.), but the changes are not yet seen in the Alma UI.
• If changes in Availability for an Electronic Collection/Service were made, but the Alma UI does not reflect the changes made.
• If a change was made to a Bibliographic Record, but the relevant field has not yet appeared in Primo.

Question

Are there solutions that can be applied to address the issue without opening a Support Case?

Answer

Yes, you can index only a set of records without a support case.
There are some solutions that can cause Alma or Primo VE to re-evaluate the data and automatically re-index the data without having to open a Support Case or waiting for the Semi-Annual Indexing Process.

Although both Alma and Primo VE have built in functionality that attempts to passively detect and correct indexing issues, there are still sometimes issues with specific records. Here are some solutions that can be applied to cause indexing to occur for both products:

Processes that can Trigger Indexing in Alma:

1.  Saving and Releasing the Bibliographic Record.

2. Saving a Portfolio in the Portfolio Editor, Electronic Collection in the Electronic Collection Editor, or Electronic Service in the Electronic Service Editor.  No changes are necessary; re-saving them causes Alma to 'check' the data structure again, which can solve an indexing issue.  

3. Creating a Set of affected members, and then running the "recalculate local resource type" job on that set.

4.  Creating a Set of affected Bibliographic Records, and then applying a Normalization Rule with no rules or parameters on that Set of Bibliographic Records.

Additional Information:

For more information on adding members to a set, please consult our Product Documentation on adding Managing Search Queries and Sets.

For more information on the "recalculate local resource type" job, please consult our Product Documentation on running Manual Jobs.

For more information on how to create and apply a normalization rule, please consult our Product documentation on Working with Normalization Rules.

If you have tried the above steps and they did not work, or have further questions about them, please open a Support Case with the relevant Support Team!  

• Article last edited: 17-Nov-2021