The Patron Load process in Alma is configured with some important, but not well documented features (or limitations, depending on your perspective). These will be covered here, with references to Ex Libris documentation.

Some fields associated with an External Patron record can only be updated by the Patron Load process. Other fields will not be updated if a manual change has been made. For most of the functionality discussed below (e.g. reviewing patron info), you will need the "User Administrator" role.

The fields that are 'owned' by the Patron Load process will display as disabled 'grayed-out' inputs in the Alma Patron form. This means that those fields can only be modified by data that comes in to Alma by way of your SIS system. To make a change to these fields, that data must be changed in the external SIS system then loaded in via the Patron Load process. See the Ex Libris documentation for more information.

In the above screenshot, you can see that the name fields, gender and other fields are disabled and cannot be modified. These fields can only be updated by the Patron Load Process.

Some fields will not be updated via the Patron Load process if an update to that field has been made manually. For example, suppose a Patron's User Group value is changed from 'Student' to 'Staff' by a library staff member. During the next patron load, that value will not be overwritten if the Student's information is contained in that patron load data. The other fields associated with the patron will be updated, but the manually set value will persist. See the Ex Libris documentation for more information.

These fields are:

1. User Group

2. Job Title (not set by GIL Patron Load)

3. PIN number (not set by GIL Patron Load)

4. User language (not set by GIL Patron Load)

Patrons can have multiple 'blocks' for contact information, including addresses, phone numbers and email addresses. The SIS system will provide up to 3 addresses, two phone numbers and a single email address that will be loaded into Alma. These blocks will be labeled as 'External Data' on the Patron form.

Contact blocks can be added manually and freely updated. Contact blocks marked as 'External' cannot be modified, except by the Patron Load process.

Below is some helpful information about common issues that can lead to rejected patron records during the Patron Load process.

It is possible to configure Alma to require certain values be set when creating new Patrons. Changes to the required fields will impact both the manual creation of patron as well as the creation of patron via the Patron Load process. Please work with GIL support if you need to modify User Mandatory Fields.

If user mandatory fields have been set, and a user in the patron load process does not contain the required data, all of the information from the patron load data will be rejected and the patron's Primary ID will appear in the 'Rejected' list on the Patron Load Job Report. The missing required field will be noted.

1. User is set to 'Internal'

   • Only users marked as 'External' can be updated via the Patron Load process. In some cases, this may be intentional. If not, a User Administrator can change the user to External Type so that they can receive updates via the Patron Load process. For more information on the distinction between Internal and External users, see this section in the Alma FAQ.

2. "Identifier is already taken..."

   • A user should only appear once in the file processed by Alma. GIL's processing scripts will merge any duplicate patron records found in the provided patron data file(s). If you see patrons rejected for this reason or have have question about how the patron merging works, contact GIL support.

3. Barcode errors

   • Some institutions provide barcode values for patrons. These are stored in Alma as secondary identifiers. All identifiers in Alma must be unique, so if a barcode value is identical to any other identifier (including Primary ID) values already present in Alma, the patron record will be rejected.

4. User Group errors

   • GIL scripts will map the user group information contained in the patron file to values that exist in Alma (e.g. 'STUDENT' in the patron file might map to 'Undergraduate Student'). If user group codes are modified in Alma, GILs scripts will need to be modified to reflect any new values. Please work with GIL staff when making changes to user groups that are used by the Patron Load process (these are typically standard undergraduate and graduate student groups, and sometimes faculty and staff groups).