Annual Procedure for Collecting Alma NERS Enhancement Requests

Summary

NERS (New Enhancement Request System) is used for assigning “Road-Map Commitment” from Ex Libris. It is the most direct and impactful way to influence the road map. The Idea Exchange is used to communicate between the user community and the Ex Libris product management team, to help the team set development priorities; however, ideas posted there do not have a Road Map Commitment.  

NERS Timeline

1. Requests have to be submitted by November to ensure they are eligible for review. Prior to November we should make a concerted effort to ensure any ideas we want to submit are explored.

2. In February to early March, a team made up of ELUNA members goes through requests submitted to NERS to remove duplicate entries and group related entries.

3. ELUNA members begin the voting process in March.  It consists of two rounds.

   1. Members vote on all eligible requests for the first round.

   2. The 20 most-voted requests from the first round are assigned "complexity points" by Ex Libris that represent the amount of work to implement the requests. Typically, NERS is allotted 200 complexity points per year.

   3. The second round determines which requests are going to be implemented in the coming year. Members vote on the 20 top requests, and entries are accepted by Ex Libris in the order of ranking until the allotted complexity points are assigned.

NERS Schedule Summary

Gathering Input from Staff

The primary avenue of getting request ideas comes from interactions with teams at scheduled check-ins. At these meetings, difficulties experienced with Alma in day-to-day work are shared, as well as ideas on ways to improve efficiency or functionality in the system. In the process of resolving issues and exploring options, they typically fall into 3 categories covered in the next section. While collecting the ideas is a continuous process, a final concerted effort should be made before the November deadline to ensure we have explored and reviewed all ideas that we want eligible for voting in the year's NERS process.  

Path for Identifying Enhancements

1. Is it functionality that exists, but isn't working? This is a bug that is reported to Ex Libris. Based on the response from Ex Libris, this can become an enhancement request.

2. Is it a workflow issue, where staff don't know how Alma works? This is a training opportunity.

3. Is it functionality that does not exist in Alma? This is an enhancement request.
   
   

When it has been determined that an enhancement request is a reasonable option, there needs to be a review of previous submissions by others in NERS and the Idea Exchange. This is an important step because it allows us to highlight differences between the requests. It also helps to gauge interest in the request to see how many votes an idea already has. This step determines if a new enhancement request should be made or if we should support one already established. Questions to weigh if there is a prior idea already expressed that is similar to the one being explored:

1. Is there something new to our idea, or has the situation changed so that the need is more pressing?

2. How much support has the idea received from the community?

Finally, if we are ready to make a submission for NERS:

1. Make a github ticket using the NERS Template.

2. Have a clear title that concisely explains what the purpose is.

3. Draft a description of the request, and confer with group members and staff that were part of the initial discussion to ensure agreement that every aspect is represented.

4. Upon submission of NERS request on the site, close the Github ticket.  

Document Enhancement Requests Sent

In order to properly track the progress of a NERS request, make an entry on our NERS Ideas Sent table on Confluence. We can also use this page if we decide a request already submitted by another institution matches our idea enough that we support it. The inspiration for this page was from https://wiki.harvard.edu/confluence/display/LibraryStaffDoc/Alma+Known+Issues , which lists the following for submitted enhancements:

• Summary of problem/issue

• Impact on staff/system

• Date submitted

• Disposition of the request (voted on, rejected, etc.)

• Relevant SalesForce ticket if applicable
  
  

NERS Ideas Submitted

Alma Enhancement Voting

ATT Tasks

Each spring, we are invited to participate in voting for Alma enhancements to go onto Ex Libris’ development roadmap. This means the winning ideas will actually be implemented in Alma. There are two rounds of voting, the first in March, the second in May. When we receive candidate enhancements (end of Feb - early Mar), ATT does the following:

• Creates GitHub tickets

  • Review NERS enhancement candidates (see #1007 as example)

  • Submit NERS Alma enhancement requests

• Copy the full list of candidate ideas into a Google Spreadsheet within the Alma Enhancement voting Google folder 

• Create a tab for each functional area:

  • Acquisitions and Finance

  • CaMS

  • Fulfillment

  • Serials & E-Resources

  • ATT

• Notifies each functional area of the upcoming vote and requests them to copy their selections into their respective tab

• Reviews each functional area’s selections and places top choices into a Consolidated tab

• Finalizes the division of PUL’s 100 votes among the winning ideas

• Submits votes through the NERS site

• Communicates to the functional areas that voting has been completed

The same steps are repeated for round 2 (May).
For details on how we submit ideas for inclusion into the list of enhancement ideas, see the section below.

PUL’s Previous Votes