Ex Libris Alma: questions and answers

Question to Diane:
You said Alma cared about staff and Aleph doesn't, can you expand?

Answer:
Mostly the task list is extremely useful and it makes the tasks much easier (for example closing lots of open orders)

Questions:
1. What are the main functionality that are not working in Alma compared to Aleph
2. Primo with no OPAC, how to you sell Primo?

Answers:
1. Diane: It's not that it doesn't work but it's that the functionality is coming (lots of laughs!), it's not quite the same thing. We had some problems that have been fixed. We haven't pushed the limits of Alma's functionalities, some are a little primitive but we didn't find them to be priorities. It is the resource management that is important. But we are quite confident that Alma improves constantly.
2. Trevor: We still provide access to the OPAC because of the lacking functionality in Primo that I mentioned. But we all talked about our working relationship with Ex Libris and we are confident that those functionalities will come.
Bar: We found that a lot of customers were still using the OPAC, the browse functionality is coming out soon, this forces ex Libris to look at those missing functionalities and we will be delivering those.
Angela: We are still unhappy with the OPAC! So we've very much customised Primo

Question:
Have you had the opportunity to test the community zone?

Answer:
Diane: There is not much to test, it is a promise of Alma and there is still lots to do, but it works well with bibliographic data. We will eventually discontinue our external authority control activity.

Question:
How does your staff cope with the monthly update to Alma?

Answer:
Diane: We know they're coming, in some cases we can anticipate what is in the release because it is an answer to one of our requests, in some cases we don't know and we would use the sandbox (a wonderful tool!) and we can start experimenting. We alert the staff there there is being a release. Mostly it is a state of mind. Mostly we have to remind staff that they are still testers.
Bar: We are going to introduce something which will help to deal with this, it is called "walk-about" and will show a "do tour" and you will be able to see an option, so you can take a tour in a pop-up screen. The whole training of Alma will be in Alma. This is coming out on the 1st October

Question:
What if you don't want a functionality? Can you turn it off?

Answer:
Diane: There is not an option to turn off a functionality but we can still decide if we want to use it or not. If there is anything wrong with it, it is our job to report it.
Trevor: as development partners, at this stage we don't have the luxury to test things that we want to do in the testing environment, but once Alma becomes a little more robust, we can work on more customisations in the production environment but at this point it may not make sense
Bar: The notion of sandbox is different in Alma, there are 2 flavours: the standard that every one gets as part of the system with standard data from Ex Libro and the primo sandbox that is an option and that you can populate with your data. In terms of the ability to control the functionalities, it is still limited now but in the future we will increase it. The new releases in the sandbox will also come a little sooner but at the moment the monthly realeases don't allow that