1. Implementing Alma in Six Months
Maribeth Manoff Monica Ihli Joe Ferguson Mike Rogers ELUNA 2015 Minneapolis, MN
Implementing Alma in Six Months

2. 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)

3. 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

4. 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
Implemented Primo Central One Search tab in August 2014
Interlibrary Loan System = ILLiad
One of Atlas’s first customers – pre-2000

5. 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

6. 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’!!!

7. What About Those Six Months?
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)

8. 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

9. Rethinking the Systems
Work individually with staff to document their existing workflows
High Level:
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

10. 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.

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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?

14. 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.

15. 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
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)

16. 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:
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:
10:00 – 18: X – WRONG!
10:00 – 18:00
7:30 – 10:00
18:00 – 23:59

17. 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.

18. Configuring Printing Say Good-bye to printing as you know it:
Receipt Printers are obsolete in Alma
Printing is handled as s.
Must have 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

19. 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!

20. 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

21. 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

22. 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.

23. 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

24. Implementing Primo: Considerations
Advantages
Disadvantages
Already using Primo:
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
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:
New to Primo:
May be easier to do setup from scratch
ExLibris may be able to do a default “out- of-box” setup, thus saving the site much effort/time
Steep learning curve
Lack of familiarity may be harder for identifying problems w/ data checking

25. The Alma “Last Minute Scramble”
Patron loading
Notices/letters
Ongoing record loading
Work order departments
EDI invoice loading
Requests
Self-check machines
Delivery skin for Requests
Spine label printing
Initial Analytics reports
Budget setup
Final Primo tweaks
User accounts

26. 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:
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)

27. 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!

28. Thanks for your attention!
Any Questions?
Maribeth Manoff
Monica Ihli
Joe Ferguson
Mike Rogers