Physical Resource Management

Overview

Alma provides you with the ability to manage all aspects of physical resources. Robust workflows ensure that all types of physical items are handled efficiently, easily, and quickly. Physical resource workflows are fully integrated with acquisitions and fulfillment as well as all aspects of resource availability.

Roadmap

2023 H2	2024 H1	2024 H2
Add Library Scope to Physical Titles Search Holdings – Support Itemized Set Management Add Notes to Physical Items using the "Change Physical Items Information" Job	Holdings – Enhanced Batch Jobs Physical Item Templates	Physical Title Staff Search – Early Access to Enhanced UX Physical Holdings Search - Enhanced UX Efficiently Create Multiple Items

2023 H2

Add Library Scope to Physical Titles Search

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
Library Scope, used to limit the scope of the search for physical holdings or items of specific libraries, will be available in the Physical Titles search. It will enable limiting titles to search titles that have physical inventory in specific libraries.	Ability to limit Physical Title searches to titles with physical inventory in specific libraries. Ability for operators to exclude irrelevant titles from the search.	This will reduce the need to define the library in the Advanced search or to use facets for every search for operators only interested in titles with inventory in specific libraries.

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Holdings – Support Itemized Set Management

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
Staff users managing physical inventory will be able to manage sets on the holdings level.	Ability to manage itemized holdings sets. Ability to create itemized and logical holdings sets using the new Manage Sets UX.	Staff users will be able to better manage holdings with a higher level of accuracy.

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Add Notes to Physical Items Using the "Change Physical items Information" Job

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
The Change Physical Items job enables replacing existing notes on items. It will be possible to add new notes to physical items without removing the existing notes by appending the new note to the existing note content.	Ability to add notes to all items in the set without having to skip items with existing notes. Ability to add notes to physical items without losing the existing content.	Staff users will be able to better manage their physical items notes in bulk.

What’s New

Highlights

Impact

The Change Physical Items job enables replacing existing notes on items.

It will be possible to add new notes to physical items without removing the existing notes by appending the new note to the existing note content.

Ability to add notes to all items in the set without having to skip items with existing notes.
Ability to add notes to physical items without losing the existing content.

Staff users will be able to better manage their physical items notes in bulk.

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2024 H1

Holdings – Enhanced Batch Jobs

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
Bulk operations and batch jobs for holdings records will support running on holdings sets (and not just physical items and physical titles).	Ability to use a set of holdings for jobs covering different aspects of inventory management, for example, change holdings information. Only update relevant holdings selected for the physical holdings set, and not all holdings for the title as with a physical titles set.	The inventory manager will be able to better automate holdings management with a higher level of accuracy.

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Physical Item Templates

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
It will be possible to save an item as a template, to then be used to pre-populate common item information when creating new items.	Ability to save an existing item as a template. The new template will contain much of the item's non-unique data (for example, item policy, physical item material type, etc.) for use in creating future items. When creating a new item, it will be possible to select the template to be used to pre-populate the new item's data.	Physical inventory operators will more easily and efficiently create physical items, as they will no longer need to manually input common item information.

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2024 H2

Physical Title Staff Search – Early Access Enhanced UX

Repository search
enhanced UX

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
The Physical Title Search will be updated and redesigned for better usability, performance, productivity, and overall user experience.	Ability to use multi-value selection facets. Ability to perform cross-page bulk operations. Display more information. Quickly perform actions on titles.	The user will be able to quickly find titles and perform actions as needed.

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Physical Holdings Staff Search – Enhanced UX

Repository search
enhanced UX

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
The Physical Holdings Staff Search will be updated with various improvements for better usability, performance, productivity, and overall user experience.	Ability to configure actions order according to user's preferences. Ability to configure sections order according to user's preferences. Ability to configure the information visible in search results. More information and actions available in items section.	The user will be able to quickly find holdings and perform actions as needed.

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Efficiently Create Multiple Items

What’s New	Highlights	Impact
Create multiple similar items for the same holdings in one go.	When adding similar items to a holdings, it will be possible to add them together and not individually.	The user will be able to quickly and efficiently add similar items, minimizing manual processing.

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