Alma Electronic Resources Management

When troubleshooting an access outage in Alma, it's helpful to consider in which system(s) the problem is occurring. Successful full text access to content relies upon Alma, the off-campus proxy, and the vendor platform all working together properly. To diagnose where the problem is happening, consider the questions listed below. If the answer is "no" to any of the questions, it's an indication the problem may be occurring in that system and further investigation is necessary.

Alma:

• Can you locate the portfolio in Primo and see available electronic services in View Online?
• Upon clicking an electronic service in View Online, are you directed to the appropriate vendor platform or login page for off-campus access?

Vendor:

• On the vendor platform, can you access full-text?
• Do you see an error message about the item not being found or not being available?
• Use the Journal Transfer : Enhanced Alerting Transfer Service Tool (issn.org) to see if the title has changed publishers

EZ Proxy:

• Does an error message appear when off-campus which says the host is not configured correctly?
• Can users authenticate properly and get to the vendor platform?

If after investigating an issue, you are not sure if the problem is widespread or limited to your campus's instance of Alma, or if you are not sure if the issue is expected behavior or not, it can be helpful to post a message to the SUNY Basecamp site for Alma to seek further insight from your SUNY colleagues. It's a good practice to take and share screenshots of the issue.

If the issue cannot be fixed locally and Ex Libris needs to get involved, submit a Salesforce ticket. In cases of bad or missing metadata, please submit a Salesforce ticket to Alma Data Services so Ex Libris is aware of the problem metadata. Select Alma Data Services in the Asset menu of the case form:

Finally, most troubleshooting efforts in Alma will focus on one of the three following areas:

• Linking:
  • Proper account set up for linking parameters in electronic service
  • Proper linking metadata from vendor to Alma
• Proxy:
  • Proper set up of off-campus proxy
• OpenURL/Link Resolver:
  • Proper set up of OpenURL and Alma link resolver

See the SLS FAQ and recorded training sessions posted below for more information on each of these areas as well as the Linking page of this guide.