Maribeth Manoff
Monica Ihli
Joe Ferguson
Mike Rogers
Implementing Alma in Six Months
ELUNA 2015
Minneapolis, MN
Who We Are and What We’ll Talk About
• Maribeth Manoff – Head, Discovery & Technical Services (D&TS)
• Background and Introduction - Why Alma? Why Now?
• Six Month Alma Implementation Timeline
• Monica Ihli – IT Administrator in D&TS (as of April 2014… quite a year!)
• Rethinking and Learning Curves
• Communication Considerations
• Joe Ferguson – IT Administrator in D&TS (as of October 2014… quite a six months!)
• Dealing With Configuration
• Some Set-Up Tips
• Mike Rogers – IT Analyst in D&TS
• Reports, Analytics, and Certification Trainings
• Primo Considerations
• Other, Etc… (including Third Party Integrations)
UT Libraries By The Numbers
• Serving 20,000 undergraduate students; 6,000 graduate students;
9,000 faculty and staff
• $12 million annual materials budget; 3.3 million volumes; 358,000
electronic books; 61,000 electronic serials
• 150 library faculty and staff, including 48 librarians.
• John C. Hodges Library – Main Library – Acquisitions, Cataloging, Serials
and Electronic Resources functions centralized here
• Three branch libraries – Pendergrass Agriculture & Veterinary Medicine
Library; George F. DeVine Music Library; Social Work Library in
Nashville, TN
• Preston Medical Library holdings represented in UT’s catalog
Technology Infrastructure
• Integrated Library System = Aleph
• From 2003 (version 15) to Go Live w/ Alma + 3 months (version 20)
• Still working in Aleph due to encumbrances migration issue
• Link Resolver = SFX
• First Ex Libris product, purchased with MetaLib, in 2002
• Switched to Ex Libris hosted in 2012
• Discovery System = Primo
• Went live with Version 2 in 2009
• Switched to Ex Libris hosted (Direct model) in 2012-13
• Implemented Primo Central One Search tab in August 2014
• Interlibrary Loan System = ILLiad
• One of Atlas’s first customers – pre-2000
Heading Toward Alma – 2013
• March – Library-wide “restructuring” included new department Discovery
and Technical Services
• 3 units – Cataloging, Acquisitions, Enterprise Systems
• Department Head tasked with keeping an eye on the Integrated Library System
landscape
• April – A day with Carl Grant
• Focus on discovery and on “Make Primo better”
• Consider workflows for back-end work
• May – ELUNA
• Why not Alma?
• Why not soon?
• July & August – Alma and WorldShare demos
• September through December – RFP
The Year of Alma – 2014
• Early January – RFP Evaluation complete and intent to award contract
to Ex Libris for Alma
• Late January – Meeting with Ex Libris Sales and Professional Services at
ALA Midwinter
• Review of the Getting Ready for Alma Implementation document
• April – Pre-Kickoff meeting
• Filled out the Alma Implementation form which included appointing the UTK
team
• Worried (a lot!) about not having enough information
• June 12 – Kickoff meeting
• December 18 – ‘Go Live’!!!
What About Those Six Months?
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Weekly schedule for prerecorded trainings and Q&A
Access to sandbox provided along with trainings
Migration Form, P2E file and first Auto Extract of Aleph data due July 18
Onsite configuration meeting July 21-22
Configuration Form due August 8
Test load / production environment delivered August 18 -> Data testing and
feedback
Primo / Alma Delivery for Testing on September 15
Cutover Activity December 8-17
Go Live December 18
Switch-To-Support Planned for February 2015 (actual date March 11)
Thoughts About the Timeline
• Tell Ex Libris that you really do need more information as soon as
possible
• In depth review of migration documentation to plan for source system
cleanup projects
• Explanation of configuration to effectively prepare for fulfillment policies
• Prerecorded trainings ahead of kickoff to prepare staff for the “paradigm
shift” to a workflow-based system
• For systems experts at UTK, certification training much earlier in the
process
• Understand discovery implications, i.e. have access to Primo and be
working on setup, early in the process
Rethinking the Systems
• Work individually with staff to document their existing workflows
• High Level:
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Mapping out general workflows
How is work divided? Who is currently responsible for what major tasks?
When do materials change hands?
Example: Checking physical materials in at a circ desk before putting them on the shelf
• Detailed Level:
• Be on the lookout for any “creative” uses of data fields or elements in the old system
that might not translate well to Alma
• Identifying cases where staff configured Aleph to their unique workflows
• Example: Additional order # 2
Learning Curves & Surprises
Alma as a Location-Centric System:
• Scoping job permissions to locations.
• Item statuses in the context of work orders & work order departments.
Alma as a Workflow-oriented program:
• Often makes decisions about what to do next with a record,
based on where it is in a workflow.
• Example: Receiving workflows or items put into a work order:
Can’t send a book back out to the shelf from a workflow until:
(A) You specifically say you are DONE working on this item.
(B) Check it back in at a circulation desk scoped to that item’s location.
• When learning workflows for the first time, it is challenging to
understand if what you are experiencing is the result of the workflow
or if something is happening differently because of how data was migrated.
Learning Curves & Surprises
Migrated Data Surprises:
• Items Not Received in Aleph:
• Were populated with a default receiving date when they got to Alma
• This interfered with the ability to initiate the receiving workflow
• Clearing the receiving dates of migrated items solved this problem
• Items Migrated from Aleph While In a Status:
• Migrated into a default Technical Migration status
• These needed to be checked in
Learning Curves & Surprises
Troubleshooting & Data-Checking Tips:
• Master & document creating orders and putting them through
complete workflows in Alma
• Compare this to processing migrated orders
• Focus on learning how Libraries & Locations impact other functions
within the system, including the scoping of roles
Communication
• Engage in technical services workflow training for both groups and
individuals
• Where will you put documentation as you develop it?
• How will staff know when documentation is updated?
• What channels will exist for communication to flow in
from outside of the implementation team?
Configuration Form
• The Configuration Form is not your friend, but it will not hurt you.
• DO NOT get stressed out by filling out this form.
• Alma is MUCH more configurable than the Configuration Form leads you to
believe.
• The Configuration Form allows ExLibris to do your initial setup with SOME
very basic settings.
• You can go in after setup and make whatever changes you need.
Configuration Tips
• Do not try to convert your legacy system loan rules into Alma rules…
• Start fresh!
• What User Groups do you REALLY need? Consolidate similar loan types.
• Default Institutional Loan Policy
• We set our default loan policy as NO CIRCULATION so in case anything slipped through the
cracks it would not circulate.
• We would rather something NOT circulate that should instead of allowing something TO circulate
that should not
• Think about Day 1 priorities
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Make sure what needs to loan can loan (even if for the wrong loan period)
Make sure what does not loan will not loan
Make sure blocks can be overridden to account for configuration mishaps
Elevated Role Permissions; many people need to be able to override for Day 1 that
might not usually need to override +2 months Post-Go Live (like student workers)
Configuring Hours
• Be patient grasping the concepts of both Hours Management and Printing
in Alma.
• Hours
• Set up regular open hours first (i.e. 7:30 – 23:59)
• Exceptions are the complicated part. If you shorten your operating day you would
expect to adjust your days hours like such:
10:00 – 18:00
X – WRONG!
• If you have an exception like this then you actually have to add two exceptions for
one day to show the CLOSED times that you would normally be open; like this:
7:30 – 10:00
18:00 – 23:59
Multiple Time Zones?
• A unique issue for us is that we have a branch library in another time
zone from our main campus. The main University of Tennessee
campus is in Knoxville, TN which is in the Eastern Time Zone. We have
a Social Work Library in Nashville, TN which is in the Central Time
Zone.
• There is not currently any feature in Alma to support multiple Time Zones per
institution.
• When setting up hours for another time zone be sure to “translate” that time
into your institutions time zone when setting up your hours.
Configuring Printing
• Say Good-bye to printing as you know it:
• Receipt Printers are obsolete in Alma
• Printing is handled as emails.
• Must have email enabled printers
• or setup intermediate facilitator to handle printing
• i.e. Microsoft Outlook with rules
• One printer per circulation desk
• Causes issues when multiple workstations are not immediately located to shared printer
• You may have to rethink your current setup and workflows to account for the way Alma
handles printing
Configuration in General
• Alma Configuration will continue past Go-Live for
+6 Months
(if not longer)
… yes, we are still adjusting our configuration 5 months out!
Alma Reports & Analytics Training
• WebEx Training Session (not on-site)
• UT had multiple attendees
• ExLibris trainer was excellent, with very relevant material
• 2 days:
• Day 1 – Strategies and techniques for using Alma to perform record
batch work, data cleanup, etc
• Day 2 – Analytics reporting
• Training occurred in the 3rd month of our Implementation
Alma Certification
• In-depth online training for Alma administrators
• UT had four staff receive training
• 4-weeks:
• Week 1 – User management (~3 hours videos)
• Week 2 – Fulfillment (~10+ hours of videos)
• Week 3 – Resource Management (~6+ hours videos)
• Week 4 – Review & Exam
• Training occurs near the end of 6-month implementation
• Once certified, staff are allowed access to Alma configuration
Thoughts On Alma Certification
• Training is very in-depth, very helpful
• Primary trainer in the videos (Shmuel Moss) was excellent
• Overall we learned a LOT
but….
• Strong consensus was that we should have received this
training much earlier in process
• Would have greatly benefited our understanding of migration
process, configuration setup, etc.
Implementing Primo: Considerations
• Primo is the only discovery interface to work with Alma
• Primo implementation part of the 6-month Alma
implementation (seriously!)
• No required Primo Certification training
• An ExLibris Primo expert/consultant works closely with
site
Implementing Primo: Considerations
Advantages
Disadvantages
Already using Primo:
• Familiarity with system
• If the site prefers, can do much of the setup
work themselves
• Better grasp of identifying problems during
data checking
New to Primo:
• May be easier to do setup from scratch
• ExLibris may be able to do a default “outof-box” setup, thus saving the site much
effort/time
Already using Primo:
• No capability to copy normalization
rule sets into Alma (This was a BIG
problem for us!)
• The more customizations you have,
the more work to set them all back up
New to Primo:
• Steep learning curve
• Lack of familiarity may be harder for
identifying problems w/ data
checking
The Alma “Last Minute Scramble”
• Patron loading
• Ongoing record loading
• EDI invoice loading
• Self-check machines
• Spine label printing
• Budget setup
• User accounts
• Notices/letters
• Work order departments
• Requests
• Delivery skin for
Requests
• Initial Analytics reports
• Final Primo tweaks
Third-party integrations
• Unless you have staff devoted 100% to this, there is very little time
built in to the 6-month implementation window for setting up 3rd-party
integrations
• We continue setting ours up, including:
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Alma – SAP integration (transferring invoices, returning vouchers)
Alma – Banner integration (sending holds & fines to Bursar)
Alma – ABLE integration (Binding system)
Alma – ILLiad
Alma – Registrar’s Office system (for closing out graduating students and
updating due dates of checked-out items)
Alma – Three Implementations in One?
• Must consider that implementing Alma is almost a “3-in-1” process:
• ILS system (Alma)
• Link Resolving (Alma Link Resolver)
• Discovery Layer (Primo)
• It is a LOT of work, but we feel well worth the effort!
Thanks for your attention!
Any Questions?
Maribeth Manoff
Monica Ihli
Joe Ferguson
Mike Rogers
mmanoff@utk.edu
mihli1@utk.edu
joe@utk.edu
mikerogers@utk.edu