**Alma/Primo VE Main Resource Guide

Administrator Access Do's and Don't's

User Roles

Do Not

• Assign new administrator roles or modify existing administrator roles given to library staff at your institution until FLVC provides additional training and guidelines.
• Make any changes to the Alma Administrator (Primary ID: admin) user at your institution.  
• Add a user role to library staff unless they require access to that functional area of Alma to perform their job duties.
• Modify existing Ex Libris or FLVC role profiles.
• Create generic user accounts.  

Do 

• Review the Ex Libris documentation Managing User Roles to verify exactly what permissions are granted by a role before assigning it to a user.
• Verify that all active roles assigned to a user have been assigned the appropriate scope and/or parameter(s).  
• Consider exporting or recording assigned roles before making deleting or making extensive changes.  
• Promptly remove all non-patron roles from any staff or student assistants who are no longer associated with your institution.  
• Send any outstanding questions about assigning or managing user roles to the help desk at help@flvc.org.  

Guidelines for the User Management Menu

The User Administrator Role allows access to the User Management Menu in Alma's configuration area. The following is a list of menu options, some details about them, as well as some cautions about making changes. 

Rules of Thumb

• Read the documentation before making changes. Use the Help Menu --> Help for this Page to make sure you understand what each table does and how it might affect other settings.​
• Test everything in a sandbox first!​
• Alma does not have a revert function. Take screen shots or export code tables before making changes in case you need to go back to a previous configuration.​
• Configuration settings are Institution-wide. Get consensus before making changes.​
   

User Management Menu

Roles and Registration​

Profiles – Use this to create Role Profiles for easier role assignment.​

Role Assignment Rules - Can be used along with other tables to assign Roles at patron creation automatically. Not recommended.​

User Registration Rules - Can be used along with other tables to apply registration fees etc at patron creation. Not recommended.​

Roles Report - Provides a detailed list of what a user with a particular role can do in the system.​

Privileges Report - Provides a list of the privileges associated with each role.​

Users Restricted for Editing – Can be used to restrict certain roles from editing patron records.

Mandatory Fields​

The links under this label take you to code tables that allow you to configure mandatory fields for manual user creation. ​

Public - All Students, Faculty, Staff patrons should be created as Public (including library staff).​

Staff – This should not be used. Accounts created as Staff will not be updated by the patron load.​

External Contacts - This is used for Vendor contacts etc.

User Details​

User Groups – Defines User Groups used by the institution.​

• DO NOT CHANGE THE CODES. This will break circulation policies and your patron load.​
• Changing the description field will update what shows in Alma drop downs. ​
• Put in a help desk ticket to add or remove User Groups. ​
• This is the same as your Patron Statuses in Aleph.​

User Record Type/User Group – Defines the User Groups available by Record Type​

• This would be updated when adding or removing User Groups.​

Job Categories – Defines Job Categories – not currently used.​

User Record Type/Job Category – Defines the Job Categories available by Record Type​

User Name Display – Allows you to change how a user's name appears in Alma.​

Statistical Categories – Defines Statistical Categories​

• These were your Patron Types in Aleph.
• Contact your IT if you need them to be mapped in your patron load.

Category Types – Defines types of Statistical Categories​ - this is related to Alma Analytics.

Statistical Categories/Types - Maps Statistical Categories to Category Types.​

• This menu option may not appear unless you have defined Category Types.​

User Titles – Defines honorifics.​

• You can change the description or add lines. If you add lines you should contact your IT department if you would like to have them mapped in your Patron Load.​

Genders – Defines gender options available in the user record drop down.​

Library Notices Opt In – Allows you to define which notices patrons should be opted into by default. 

Patron Charges​

Fines/Fees Behavior - Defines the types of fines and fees.  Determines if a fine can be waived, refunded, manually created, etc. ​

Reasons for Waiving Fine/Fee - Populates the Waiving Reason dropdown options when waiving a fine.  ​

• Do not disable or delete the MINFINE line if it appears in your list. This is used by an FLVC API to automatically remove fines below your minimum fine rates.

Fines/Fees Notification Profiles - Determines which users get the Ful Fine\Fees Notification Letter when the Fines\Fees Notification job is run (the Fulfillment Administrator role is required to access Fulfillment Jobs Configuration).  ​

Bursar Transaction ID - Pertains to the Cash Export.

General​

Other Settings​ - Used to configure various user management customer parameters.​

User ID Generation​ - Use this to define a prefix for user identifiers. 

Delete User Policy​ - Allows you choose what's retained when a user is purged. - DO NOT CHANGE. Whenever you change the policy to be more restrictive (remove more data), Alma applies the new policy to all previously purged users as well.

User Notification Types - Used to modify the User Notification Letter to send custom messages to users via the Update/Notify Users Job.

Contact Information Pop-Up​ - Allows you to configure what is shown in the user pop up. 

Manage Operator Details Visibility​ - Allows you to hide operator information in History.

Record Last Patron Activity Date - Allows you to determine if "last patron activity date" is recorded in the patron record.

Collaborative Networks

Used to configure reciprocal borrowing.  ​

In order to maintain the integrity of this service we request that institutions do not make any modifications to these settings.  

User Jobs

The User Administrator Role allows access to some new jobs. The following is a list of jobs, some details about them, as well as some cautions about making changes. 

Rules of Thumb

• Read the documentation before making changes. Use the Help Menu --> Help for this Page to make sure you understand what each job does and how it works.​
• Test everything in a sandbox first!​
• Check and double check your sets before running batch jobs. Depending on the job, batch changes are rarely able to be batch fixed. We do not have a back up of Alma data like we did with Aleph. 
   

Purge User Records  

Admin --> User Management --> Purge User Records​

• Used to delete users in block whose purge date has passed.  ​

• FLVC will run this job on an annual basis: Only patrons with no fines, current loans or outstanding requests attached to their record will be deleted.  ​

• There is no way to recover users who have been deleted via this job. 
   

Bulk Fine Waiving​

Admin --> User Management --> Bulk Fine Waiving

• Can be used to waive all fines assigned to one or more user groups and/or fine types.  ​

• There is no way to set a date range on this job.  ​

• Any fines waived via this job would have to be manually re-applied. ​

If more fine tuned fine waiving is required, please create a help desk ticket and we will configure an API to waive your fines.
 

Merge Users ​

Admin --> User Management --> Merge Users

• Merge Users: moves all fulfillment activities (loans, requests, fines/fees, interested users and circulation history) to the new user record and includes an option to decide which segments to merge (contacts, Identifiers, notes, blocks, demerits, statistics, attachments and proxy for)*. ​

• Changes are permanent.  To undo you would have to manually re-create the merged user.  
   

Update/Notify Users

Admin --> Manage Jobs and Sets --> Run a Job

Used to make changes or send notifications to users in bulk(*).​

Possible functionality includes:​

• Notifying users that they need to update their password​

• Manually updating the expiry date and purge date.​

• Changing user group, activity status, statistical category, etc. ​

• Add and remove a block type.​

• Adding or removing a user role.  Note: You cannot define scope or role parameter in this job. As a result, this job works for roles scoped at the institution level.  See Ex Libris documentation: Manual Jobs. ​

Changes made by this job can potentially be overwritten the next time a patron load is performed.​

When modifying users, best practice is to use an itemized set .