Alma January 2024 Release Notes
Upcoming Issues to Note
Prediction Patterns Update
During December, we identified and fixed an issue with prediction patterns, where opening over 50 predicted items for the same holdings record (e.g. weekly or daily publications) sometimes created items with wrong chronology and enumeration. We have identified all potentially affected institutions and will contact them in the upcoming weeks to ensure any impact of this issue is handled.
Updated Documentation for Analytics Tables
As part of an ongoing project and in alignment with the Analytics Community of Practice, Ex Libris is currently enriching the documentation of several analytics field tables each month with additional information. This initiative aims to assist and support users in comprehending how our Alma data is presented within the realm of Analytics fields. For this month, the following tables within the Funds Expenditure subject area have been updated:
Features
Update to the URL Used for auto SUSHI Harvest from Ebook Central
Acquisitions
Update January 10, 2024: The following three certified SUSHI vendors (COUNTER release 5) were updated with the new URL:
- ProQuest Ebook Central
- Ebook Central
- Proquest LibCentral
New URL:https://bookservice.proquest.com/anr/release/sushi/ebooks/r5
Institutions that have an account linked to one of these certified vendors, will get the update automatically. If an “override URL” was entered by the institution, the override URL will still be used.
Institutions that defined a local account that is not linked to a certified SUSHI vendor, will need to update the URL manually. The old URL still works for now and will need to be updated by February 28, 2024, at the latest.
Additional Enhancements
- January 2024 AcquisitionsURM-203344 The new, next-generation, Alma UI design is available for the PO Lines task list. Until February, you will have the the option to move back to the older version using the Feature Rollout Preferences menu (User icon-> Feature Rollout Preferences). As of February 2024, there will be no option to opt out, and the new UI will be the only available layout for all users. It is therefore important to use the time before the February release to introduce and train your library staff regarding the new UI. For a general overview of the new PO Lines task list, see New Unified PO Line Task List. See also Searching for PO Lines - New Layout;Managing PO Lines - New Layout. For more information see the New Unified PO Line Task List in the Alma 2024 Roadmap Webinar Series.
- January 2024 Analytics and InsightsSF: 06770947URM-204838 The Invoice-Payment Voucher Currency field was added to Funds Expenditure > Invoice Line. It displays the currency of the voucher payment.
- January 2024 Analytics and InsightsURM-189873 The Object Report URL field was added to Analytics Usage Tracking > Query Details and Analytics Objects > Analytics Objects Details. It displays the report URL of the analytics object.
- January 2024 Analytics and InsightsURM-189231 The National Agricultural Library Call Number field was added to the Bibliographic Details dimension in all subject areas in which it appears. It displays the call number used by the American National Agricultural Library and is mapped from MARC field 070 a.
- January 2024 Analytics and InsightsSF: 06727765URM-208734 The following fields were added to E-Inventory > Service Details:
- Service Activation Status – Indicates if the service is available or not
- Service Portfolio Auto Activate – Indicates if automatic activation of new portfolios associated with the service is configured
- Service Site Down Message – Indicates if a message to display when the service is unavailable is configured
Resolved Issues
| SF number | Area | Description |
|---|---|---|
| 06965964 06973064 06933377 06891026 06936420 06909220 06918857 06955899 | Acquisitions | Changing the Expected Receipt Date on a Product Order Line did not update the receiving date of the associated item. This was fixed. |
| 06913249 | Acquisitions | Saving PO Lines generated an error when the Access Model field was empty. This was fixed. |
| 06616660 06802230 06788619 06810447 | Acquisitions | The Danish translation was not applied to the PO Line Aggregated Claim Letter. This was fixed. |
| 06945630 06922974 | Acquisitions | An error occurred when creating a logical set from an advanced search containing more than one query group. This was fixed. |
| 06819403 06796008 06789480 | Acquisitions | The Update PO Lines Information - Advanced job completed with errors when changing the acquisition method for migrated PO Lines. This was fixed. |
| 06833198 | Acquisitions | Disabled material types appeared in Advanced Search for PO Lines. This was fixed. |
| 06854826 | Acquisitions | PO Line history incorrectly indicated that the Renewal Note had been removed by a user when it was still present. This was fixed. |
| 06889740 06947727 06820585 06905150 06896387 | Acquisitions | When creating a Print Book - One Time PO Line, no material type was assigned to the ordered item. This was fixed. |
| 06672523 06924759 | Acquisitions | Updating a renewal date through the API did not change the PO Line status to Recurring Renewal. This was fixed. |
| 06954716 | Acquisitions | In the Japanese UI, the PO Line number displayed in the save confirmation popup was not a clickable link. This was fixed. |
| 06702686 | Acquisitions | It was possible to create multiple invoices for the same vendor using the same invoice number. This was fixed. When the customer parameter "invoice_not_unique" is set to false, duplicate invoice numbers are no longer allowed for the same supplier. |
| 06826272 | Acquisitions | Invoices with leading or trailing spaces in the invoice number caused data issues. This was fixed by ignoring extra spaces. |
| 06898063 | Acquisitions | The Invoice Approval Rules output parameter was disabled and could not be selected. This was fixed. |
| 06871891 06887946 06955160 06907580 06967685 | Acquisitions | Users received an error when searching for a fund in the Update PO Lines Transactions job. This was fixed. |
| 06977291 06677100 06709371 | Acquisitions | Pagination did not work correctly for Vendor Usage Data. This was fixed. |
| 06849276 06934946 06859004 06806758 | Acquisitions | When viewing or downloading letters attached to users, the logo appeared as a broken image. This was fixed by removing the logo from downloaded attachments. |
| 06822332 | Acquisitions | The New Order Import job completed with errors. This was fixed. |
| 06841563 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | In the Fine/Fee Transaction List, the Transaction Type column always displayed values in English. This was fixed and the column is now translated according to the user interface language. |
| 06770224 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | Deleting a sponsor user record using the Users - Purge Records job did not remove the related "Proxy For" entries from the associated proxy user record. This was fixed. |
| 06770510 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | In the General Electronic Services list, the Copy option on the Community tab was unavailable to users without the Catalog Administrator role. This was fixed, and the option is now available to users with Fulfillment Administrator and General System Administrator roles. |
| 06903539 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | The User Identifiers section did not appear when registering a new user. This was fixed. |
| 06946584 06330794 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | Successful Login events were logged for Alma, Primo VE, and Esploro logins. This was fixed so that login events are now recorded only for Alma logins. |
| 06845886 06353924 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | Sending an email preview from the XSL Editor included the XSL file as an attachment, causing some email servers to block the message. This was fixed by removing the XSL attachment. |
| 06905998 06957373 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | When updating existing users through SIS, duplicate user history entries were created and the Patron Welcome Letter was sent again. This was fixed. |
| 06905666 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | In Overlap Analysis > Compare Collections, the Physically Related Titles checkbox was truncated on smaller screens. This was fixed. |
| 06452271 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | The Relation Type label was displayed in English when searching the Network Zone. This was fixed and now appears translated according to the interface language. |
| 06749523 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | Some translations were missing in the German Alma interface. This was fixed and the translations are now displayed correctly. |
| 06827070 06586791 06937432 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | Updates to Institution Name and Description translations were not saved in some cases. This was fixed. |
| 06852556 06863747 06848719 | User Experience, Accessibility & Infrastructure | In General Publishing > Entire Repository mode for a single institution, records were incorrectly published as deleted. This was fixed. |
| 06768996 | Analytics and Insights | Previously, event type 9110 - "Successful Login" recorded successful logins for Alma, Primo, and Esploro. Two new events were added to distinguish Primo and Esploro logins: 9914 - "Successful Login - Primo" and 39110 - "Successful Login - Esploro". |
| 06844130 | Analytics and Insights | In the Primo Analytics subject area, Customized Values Usage, the Year field displayed a thousands separator in the default format. This was fixed, and no separator is now displayed. |
| 06793372 | Analytics and Insights | Loan notes were not anonymized by the anonymization job even though the "Anonymize Item Loans" and "Anonymize Item Loans Notes" checkboxes were selected. This was fixed. |
| 06913155 06877204 | Analytics and Insights | An error message was displayed when trying to access a Data Visualization workbook. This was fixed. |
| 06939368 06904808 | Analytics and Insights | Pinned objects did not display in the "Pinned Objects" area under the main Analytics menu for some users. This was fixed. |
| 06867486 | Analytics and Insights | Searching for Analytics objects by creator name did not return results if the user display name format was configured. This was fixed. |
| 06879710 | Analytics and Insights | When the Analytics New Layout attempted to display a report preview for very large reports, performance was slow and the page eventually crashed. This was fixed by improving performance. |
| 06725312 | APIs | When an invalid id_type value was sent to the User API, a misleading error message was returned. This was fixed. The new message is: "Identifier type <id_type> does not exist." |
| 06525080 | Digital Resource Management | Thumbnails for records in the Institution Zone and Network Zone were not displayed in the Primo Discovery Full View page. This was fixed. |
| 06852489 | Digital Resource Management | Access rights policies could not be saved when the interface language was set to a language other than English. This was fixed. |
| 06783763 | Digital Resource Management | The Digital Viewer stretched images instead of displaying them with their original proportions. This was fixed. |
| 06894835 | Digital Resource Management | The Digital Viewer did not display remote representation videos from YouTube. This was fixed. |
| 06936191 | Digital Resource Management | Records were imported even when an Indication Rule was configured to exclude them. This was fixed. |
| 06638145 06630663 06651795 06556464 06665253 | Electronic Resource Management | In the Wiley Upload Electronic Holdings job, related titles that shared the same e-ISSN could be grouped together incorrectly, causing coverage information to be saved to the wrong portfolio. An opt-in fix was developed and can be enabled by Ex Libris Support. |
| 06934542 06743363 | Electronic Resource Management | In the Upload Electronic Holdings job, vendor files could be only partially downloaded because of network issues. When this occurred, portfolios missing from the partial file could be deleted. This was fixed so that if a file is not downloaded completely, the job fails and no data is deleted. |
| 06859460 | Electronic Resource Management | The Available Online Service Order list could unexpectedly reorder entries after using the up and down arrows, particularly after previous deletions from the list. This was fixed. |
| 06572730 06784765 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | When returning multiple items on the Return Items page, Quick Print printed only the last letter. This was fixed, and all letters are now printed. |
| 06811842 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | The "Export to Excel" option for the Loans - Overdue and Lost Item job did not work. This was fixed. |
| 05333163 06753870 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | Requesting item information through SIP returned incorrect Current Location and Permanent Location values. This was fixed. |
| 06783363 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | The Note field for digitization requests was not populated on the Monitor Requests & Items Process page as it was on the Approval Requests List page. This was fixed, and note display is now consistent between the two pages. |
| 06927537 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | Link resolving did not work correctly for certain portfolios with URL linking parameters that required encoding. This was fixed. |
| 06682547 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | Display Logic Rules for electronic collections did not work correctly in some cases. This was fixed. |
| 06842498 06731087 06678871 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | The order of libraries in the Resource Sharing form was incorrect. This was fixed. When the customer parameter "alphabetical_sort_pickup_inst_lib" is set to True, the owner list is now sorted alphabetically. |
| 06845568 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | The new PO Line Task List did not support Cloud Apps. This was fixed. |
| 06722286 06638742 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | Creating a Move Request from the Lending Request Task List sometimes generated a general error. This was fixed. |
| 06783317 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | In Firefox, fields in the "Request Form (Filled Out by the Requester)" did not expand sufficiently to display all entered information, causing text to be truncated. This was fixed, and fields now resize automatically to fit the window. |
| 06575033 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | The Borrowing Resource Sharing FU rule did not work correctly when Request Format was set to Digital or Physical Non-Returnable. This was fixed, and the rule now works correctly with or without that parameter. |
| 06819035 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | When manually creating a Resource Sharing request for local inventory from the Borrowing Requests Task List, Alma now displays the warning message: "The institutional inventory has services for the requested title." |
| 06838857 06813375 06794098 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | When renewing items for blocked users, the Override and Renew action did not bypass user blocks. This was fixed, and the action now overrides applicable blocks. |
| 06852437 06733299 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | When exporting borrowing requests, the Volume field was not included for material types other than Books. This was fixed, and volume information is now exported for all applicable material types. |
| 06788171 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | The Find User in Other Institution function allowed selection of inactive fulfillment members. This was fixed, and only active fulfillment members can now be selected. |
| 06786750 06785297 | Fulfillment and Resource Sharing | In some SLNP scenarios, borrowing and lending requests were incorrectly created as Articles instead of Books. This was fixed. |
| 6865878 | Physical Resource Management | The Update Inventory Import Profile failed with a "File Failed" error during Additional Services Processing. This was fixed, and files are now processed successfully. |
| 06706368 | Physical Resource Management | Physical Holdings advanced search results were not displayed when the search was saved. This was fixed, and search results saved as logical sets are now displayed correctly. |
| 06896322 | Metadata Management | In General Publishing, when publishing a combined results set to an FTP server using Binary format and no Institution Code Subfield was defined, records were not written to the output file. This was fixed by using default subfield code "A" when no Institution Code Subfield is specified. |
| 06877613 | Metadata Management | Collections that were in use or contained sub-collections with titles could be deleted incorrectly. This was fixed, and such collections can no longer be deleted. |
| 06586304 | Metadata Management | In Physical Holdings Advanced Search, Chinese character suggestions were not displayed after entering the first character when using a Chinese keyboard. This was fixed. |
| 06803548 | Metadata Management | In Authorities Advanced Search, duplicating a search condition copied the default index instead of the selected index. This was fixed. |
| 06979504 06844447 06872953 | Metadata Management | Assigning a set in the Logical Collection Editor displayed a picklist that only contained My Sets and omitted the All and Public tabs. This was fixed. |
| 06868269 | Metadata Management | API calls attempting to retrieve deleted PO Line set members returned an INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR. This was fixed, and a descriptive message is now returned instead. |
| 06805199 | Metadata Management | When limiting an SRU search to a single record, the returned result was not always the first result from a larger result set. This was fixed, and the first matching record is now returned consistently. |
| 06393626 | Metadata Management | The time_zone field in the REST-DLF Loans API did not account for daylight saving time. This was fixed. |
| 06747893 | Metadata Management | Renewed loans did not display the Last Renew Date field in Primo and Primo VE. This was fixed. |
| 06802730 | Metadata Management | 852 $z notes entered in Alma appeared in a different order in Primo VE. This was fixed. |
| 05311154 05316382 05316373 | Metadata Management | In UNIMARC, headings created from fields 410 and 411 were not displayed in the Headings from Bibliographic Records tab. This was fixed. |
| 06425159 | Metadata Management | Metadata Editor performance was slow when displaying Headings from Bibliographic Records. This was fixed and performance was improved. |
| 06715059 | Metadata Management | In Browse Bibliographic Headings, subject searches using multiple authority vocabularies sometimes omitted valid headings from the results. This was fixed, and all matching headings are now displayed correctly and sorted as expected. |
| 06889657 | Metadata Management | When multiple authority vocabularies shared the same Direct ID prefix, only one vocabulary was checked during heading matching. This was fixed. |
| 06800454 06709008 06948925 06767353 06757865 06747275 06750229 06754779 06947479 06747433 06984274 | Metadata Management | Selecting "Resolve Import Issues" displayed a blank screen with an error message and tracking ID. This was fixed and the page now opens correctly without errors. |
