Acquisitions - December 2016 Enhancements

Until now, claims were sent automatically by email to vendors only for missing one-time physical PO lines. Now claims can also be sent automatically by email for missing continuous physical PO lines. When configured, a claim is sent automatically by email to the vendor for an item when triggered, in addition to being added to the claims task list. For more information, see Processing Claims.

Set the new parameter auto_claim_co (Configuring Other Settings) to Y to enable this feature.

For one-time PO lines, notifications (EDI or email) are sent to the vendor only the first time that the PO line is sent to the Claims page (if, for example, an operator updates the PO line date, and the PO line is sent to the Claims page again after the new date passes, another notification is not sent to the vendor). For continuous PO lines, notifications are sent to the vendor every time the PO line is sent to the Claims page.

As with one-time physical PO lines, the email PO Line Claims letter must also be enabled (see Enabling/Disabling Letters). This letter has new XML fields to support additional information for continuous claims. If the item description is complete (this is the case if you are using prediction patterns), the following XML is added to the EDI claim about the missing volume/issue; otherwise the XML contains information about the last received item.

You can configure the letter using XSL; see Customizing Letter XSL Style Sheets.

Electronic resource usage statistics information can be provided by vendors in COUNTER format. With access to these reports, librarians have more options for analyzing and understanding usage within their institutions. COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) compliant usage statistics is explained here: https://www.projectcounter.org/.

Many vendors can provide COUNTER statistics for your institution's users' usage. In some cases, you receive this information in a file. In some cases your vendor supports the SUSHI protocol (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative), which allows you to automatically retrieve (harvest) the data. For more information about SUSHI, see http://www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/.

Ex Libris is implementing the ability to manage COUNTER reports in Alma (rather than from UStat), both for manual upload and SUSHI harvesting. Several early tester institutions are using this functionality. For detailed information, see Managing COUNTER-Compliant Usage Data. In March 2017, all Alma institutions will be moved from UStat to Alma for COUNTER reports management and UStat will no longer be available for new COUNTER reports. In advance, your SUSHI vendor account details will be available so that you can review and prepare your SUSHI vendor information when the migration occurs in March.

• Thealert indicating that an Order Now process was successful no longer states that the order was sent to the vendor (since some acquisition methods, such as Purchased at Vendor, do not send anything to the vendor). The new message simply indicates that the process was successful and is continuing in its workflow.
• You can now search licenses from the Persistent Search box. See Using the Persistent Search Box.
• The message that appears after selecting one or more patron purchase requests and then clicking Reject Selected was updated to note that already approved requests cannot be rejected.
• When you reopen a canceled PO line, any fund associated with the PO line is removed. You must associate a fund to the PO line again, as for newly created PO lines. An alert indicating this appears at the top of the page when you are editing the PO line information.