Skip to main content
ExLibris
Ex Libris Knowledge Center

Alma July 2016 Release Notes

The Alma July 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
Enhancements to Fulfillment Networks - If you are working with a fulfillment network that wants to offer full, direct borrowing services, you can now take advantage of a new, full end-to-end workflow. With the addition of a Request for pickup anywhere option, your patrons can request items from any institution, for pickup at any institution.
Managing Automatic Patron-Linked Account Creation - If you are working in a fulfillment network that shares Primo as a discovery platform, this new feature is of interest to you. Using this feature, it is now possible to retrieve another institution's holdings information without copying over the patron information from the original institution and without creating a linked account.
Dublin Core Support for Bulk Ingest of Bibliographic Records - This new feature supports loading Dublin Core records and keeping them as the descriptive records for digital resources. If you are interested in moving some of your digital collections from an existing system to Alma, this feature enables you to easily export and import resources from your system to Alma, with no cross-walking of metadata required.
Support for Publishing in Linked Data Format - Linked data can greatly enrich a discovery experience. With this new option, libraries that publish their catalog information using the general publishing platform can include linked data enrichments as part of the published data.

What's New?

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

Acquisitions

Resource Management

Digital Resource Management

Fulfillment

Resource Sharing

Collaborative Networks

Analytics

  • As part of the plans to increase the export size of CSV reports in Analytics, the Analytics OBIEE will be upgraded to version 11.1.1.9. This will be handled in Europe on July 10, North America on July 17, and Asia Pacific on July 24. Initially, the exported number of rows from Analytics to a CSV report will be increased to 250,000. At a later stage, this number will be increased to 500,000.
  • Due to an upgrade of the OBIEE used by Alma Analytics, the export option for reports from Alma Analytics to Excel 2003 was removed. Only export to an .xslx format is available, and not export to an .xls format.

Administration, Infrastructure, and Language Support

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 URL condition that was added as an advanced search option under Electronic Collection when searching for electronic titles is not functioning properly.
  • Was this article helpful?