Study Group Session 111: August New Releases, General Question and Answer
Session Notes
Resource Sharing Updates
Diana Borges, OCLS
The All-Colleges Page 1+ Digital Resource Sharing Implementation Meeting will be held on August 14th from 11am-12:30pm. We will introduce the configuration instructions and sample workflow for staff to send and fulfill digital resource sharing requests using Alma and Primo.
Please use this link to register for the August 14th meeting.
The All-Colleges Page 1+ University Resource Sharing Partnerships Meeting will be held on August 21st from 11am-12:30pm. We will share instructions for configuring digital and physical resource sharing with university partners in the Omni network.
Please use this link to register for the August 21st meeting.
everyone is welcome to attend
colleges aren’t obligated to join resource sharing, but are welcome to attend the meetings
the meetings will also be recorded
Questions for Ex Libris from the last Study Group
1. Does Ex Libris delete or archive closed Support tickets and, if so, what is the schedule for this/how long do users have access to their closed tickets? - Louis Lacelle, Collège La Cité
We don’t have a published policy on Case retention. Our practice is not delete or archive cases except for when Support Center migrations happen from one system to another. For example, when we moved to the current Support Center (Salesforce instance) in 2021, we only migrated closed cases back to 2015, per https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Cross-Product/Support/Integrated_Ex_Libris_-_ProQuest_Support_Center/The_New_ProQuest%2F%2FEx_Libris_Support_Center%3A_What_You_Need_to_Know
So, we do not have a schedule to delete or archive closed cases but have not committed to making closed cases available indefinitely.
Other information regarding Cases is included in the Support Portal User Guide at https://knowledge.exlibrisgroup.com/Cross-Product/Support/030_Salesforce/Support_Portal_User_Guide
Will Primo VE customizations be carried over to NDE? A staff member at Niagara College asked if they should continue with their re-design (using angular JS 1.8) or pause this until the transition to NDE? - Dana O’Hagan, Niagara College
From Frequently Asked Questions - Go NDE - Ex Libris Knowledge Center:
On Customization
Do I have to rewrite my customizations?
Yes. Your current customizations will not carry over to NDE UI.
How will NDE affect my customizations?
Your existing customizations on top of the Primo VE original UI will not carry over to your NDE view. To transition to NDE, you will need to review your current customizations for compatibility, leverage new configuration options, and determine which customizations require adjustments for the Angular-based framework.
For branding customizations, such as replacing logos, icons, and themes, adjusting the homepage, or making CSS changes, you must download the new NDE UI customization template, apply your updates, and upload it to your NDE view. Detailed instructions will be provided soon.
Documentation and resources for more advanced customizations, including developing new components, will be available on GitHub. NDE continues to offer extensive customization capabilities, enabling institutions to tailor their discovery experience while transitioning to a modern and flexible framework. We will provide training, guidance, and a live demo to support you through this process.
On Timeline
Will there be a cut-off period when institutions must move to NDE?
Institutions will have 2-3 years to plan and transition to the New Discovery Experience (NDE) once it becomes generally available. You can choose when to switch to the new interface, knowing that NDE will ultimately replace your current Primo VE interface at the end of this period. We understand that transitioning interfaces is often best done during semester breaks, and we encourage you to plan your migration accordingly within this timeframe.
Thus: Niagara’s decision on continuing with Primo VE UI redesign or pausing it will be influenced by their decision on when to move to NDE, which may be over a 2-3 year period. Customizations will not be carried over to NDE.
Besides the FAQ linked above, this page has a wealth of material on NDE transition: Go NDE - Ex Libris Knowledge Center
Discussion Forum Posts
NovelBranch book vending machines and Alma
St Lawrence College has just purchased 2 NovelBanch book vending machines from Convergent Library Technologies. Our IT team is looking to connect with someone in IT at another college who has already gone through the set up process and got the machines to work with Alma.
Algonquin shared their process for setting up STunnel on our Bibliotheca and Convergent machines via e-mail; was this helpful? does anyone else have suggestions?
Sonja Irving, St Lawrence:
The process provided was very helpful but IT team wants to talk to somebody who's actually in an IT role at another college. That's what they're hoping to find. So I'm trying to work between them and the documentation to say you have what you need.
Lindsay Bontje, Humber: Humber has lending machines, but they're managed by the library, not IT. IT that did not help with initial setup.
Sonja: Ours are managed by the library, but just for the initial setup we need a place to store an S tunnel, a certificate to create an S tunnel and it has to be on a server that doesn't shut off and that's where I need the IT help because I don't have access to that in the library.
Diana: Has anyone else here had experience with setting up vending machines? If you want to offer Sonia any more examples or contact your IT department, that would be great.
Error: PO Line "has EOD true."
Has anyone run into an issue processing POL’s from any recent invoices?
[…] acquisitions folks were attempting to edit the price to reflect the actual cost and they were repeatedly getting the error pop up saying that the POL they were working on “has EOD true.”
[…] the Vendor record (Rialto) had another new and strange message saying “Mandatory information is missing or erroneous”.
So far all POL on the current invoice seem to be effected
[Algonquin] put in a ticket but has anyone else experienced this/have a suggestion?
August New Releases
Diana Borges, OCLS
OCLS sent out communication to the Page 1+ Listserv on July 29, 2025 and has made the new releases summaries available in the Alma and Primo VE Guide: https://clo.libguides.com/clsp-almaprimoguide/new-features
In the communication to the listserv, OCLS outlined some issues that we thought might require college attention/actions. OCLS also provided a list of features we thought may be useful to colleges.
We wanted to also provide some time for discussion/questions regarding new releases going forward. Have you tried any of them? Have you had any issues?
Marie Song, OCLS:
We are also curious to know if there were any features that were of interest to you that you’re going to enable or start using in your IZs. That will help us with our evaluation of new releases moving forward and it would also be helpful to share with the group.
I also have summary of some features and some follow up questions relating to them:
Primo VE - Automatic Suppression of Titles Without Inventory in Primo VE
Rebecca Pearson: does it count physical and electronic inventory?
Marie: yes, it applies to both
Rebecca: And you said it only applies going forward. What's the default setting?
Marie: I believe the default setting is that it it's not turned on. You'll have to turn it on. I'll have to double check the the Ex Libris documentation for that.
Marie: Is this feature of of interest to to anybody? Is this something that you'll be enabling in your in IZs or not really that that interesting to you?
Dana O’Hagan, Niagara: It definitely is of interest to me. I tried to find it in Alma and I could not locate that is.
Is there documentation provided by OCLS to turn this on or would you prefer that I go ahead and find it myself?
Marie: We don't have anything prepared other than what was in the August release notes, but we can definitely find that information and share it.
Rebecca: How often does Ex Libris do the indexing?
Marie: Twice per year.
Rebecca: So it will clean up periodically, but it's not quite automatic. My final thought was, I don't think this is such a big deal at Lambton, but I think some people, some colleges have added their subject guides to their Primo VE so that they're searchable, and I don't know that those would have inventory. Now that's an old record, not a new one, so maybe it wouldn't get reindexed. But anyway, lots to consider. I I'm not sure it's quite an easy answer.
Dana: You're correct, Rebecca, about the subject guides.
Marie: And I think it's a good point about the like Lib Guide integrations as well. I don't think Ex Libris documentation was that clear about what will happen with those, though I imagine they probably won't be impacted by this suppression rule. Something to to look into and if anyone else also has similar questions, we can raise it with Ex Libris on on behalf of everyone.
Marie: The other you question I had is that there is also a parameter that we can turn on in the network zone that will apply to networked records and records in the network zone. The logic you know is if there's no for physical items/inventory in IZ or in the network zone. For electronic records, no inventory in IZs or the the network zone as well. I think we're still thinking through how we want to move forward on this, but curious to know if anyone has any thoughts or preferences or concerns with this.
Dana: No concerns. If you guys do decide to turn it on in the network zone, that would be awesome. If there's other colleges that do not agree, I can totally respect that.
Marie: It's definitely I think helpful for us to to know from everyone if you have a particular preference one way or another. We certainly don't want to make a change on behalf of everyone that some folks feel really strongly about. So if anything comes to mind as you're kind of like going through and like testing with this or thinking about it, please feel free to reach out to us and let us know what your thoughts are.
Combination of eResources Activated at Network Zone and Institution Zone for Display Logic Rules
Marie: I wanted to raise it here because it might be of interest as well and see if there were any questions or or thoughts about this one.
Exact Phrase Search by Title or Title: Subtitle
Marie: Does this sound interesting? Are there any concerns about this and how how your users might be using the the sort of exact equals exact phrase operator in Primo?
Dana: Wouldn't using a boolean operator and quotations give you the exact phrase?
Marie: I think if you if you put in the quotation marks that'll still work in a standard search. I think this is about specifically if you use the equals exact phrase operator in an advanced search in Primo. Using the equals exact phrase operator and you're searching for a title and it has a subtitle, you only put in the title. So yeah, the boolean operators will still work as normal in a regular search.
Rebecca: I think it is better, but I am not sure I am marking it as high priority.
Andriana: yes, useful
Marie: So I think the sense that I'm getting is that it does seem useful, like an improvement from the previous behavior, but is not going to be a huge impact to your end users. I think that's really helpful feedback for us to get. Yeah, please feel free to reach out with any additional feedback you have. We're going to continue kind of thinking on this in the network zone and let you know when we've made any progress or made a decision on this one.
Diana:
Primo VE - Thumbnail Display for Collections – Upcoming Change Beginning January 2026: Currently, if a library has not defined a thumbnail to serve as the background image for a collection on the collection discovery page, an image is taken from the first level below the collection. Starting January, 2026, this fallback behavior will no longer be applied, and collections without a defined thumbnail will appear without an image. For more information, see Managing Collections in the Alma documentation.
Rebecca: Is the functionality where book titles are used to make a collage for the thumbnail of the collection disappearing?
Diana: My understanding of the new release notification about thumbnails for collections is that the system won't display images from the subcollections and items if you haven't defined them but it will still display a maximum of 4 images in the tile from the ones you have added/defined: Managing Collections - Ex Libris Knowledge Center.
Fulfillment and Resource Sharing, Setting Status of Renewed Lending Requests to Renewal Accepted: It is now possible to set the lending_requests_renewed_status (Fulfillment > Other Settings) parameter so that a renewed lending request is set to a status of 'Renewal Accepted'. Currently, the request status reverts to 'Received by partner'. For more information, see Managing Lending Requests.
Fulfillment and Resource Sharing, Internal Reject Reasons for Lending Requests: It is now possible for libraries to configure internal reject reasons (Configuration > Resource Sharing > Configuration > Internal Reject Reasons) that align with their own workflows. This is optional and only viewable by the lender library. For more information, see Advanced Resource Sharing Configurations.
Fulfillment and Resource Sharing, Creating a Resource Sharing Request from a Purchase Request: It is now possible to convert a purchase request into a resource sharing request through a new Create Resource Sharing Request action from the Purchase Requests list (Acquisitions > Purchase Requests > Manage Purchase Requests). This option is available regardless of the purchase request status and users will be prompted to choose whether to reject or keep the purchase request when submitting the resource sharing request. The new option is available for Purchase Request Operators or Managers who are allowed to create resource sharing requests (have a Fulfillment Services Operator/Manager role). It requires a dedicated privilege to be turned on for the Purchase Request Operator/Manager role. To activate this privilege, contact Ex Libris Support. For more information, see:
Rebecca: I think having discussions around new releases is a valuable way to fill some of this time, especially on weeks where we might not have had a chance to explore something new that we need help with.
Next Session
August 27, 2025 at 11-11:30 a.m. Open Question & Answer
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Recording
Transcript