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CU Law: New Borrowing Request Notification

Notifies CU Law staff when an ILL request is submitted via Primo.

At a glance

  • Status: Active

  • Environment / Tags: Live; Community Use Case

  • Applies consortium-wide?: No

  • Runs on: CU Law Alma production environment

  • Trigger: Event-driven. It starts whenever Alma reports a REQUESTS update.

  • Primary outcome: Sends an email to a shared staff inbox when a new interlibrary loan borrowing request is created.

  • Who receives results: csl-circ@cua.edu

Why this exists

When a patron submits an interlibrary loan request through Primo, Alma creates the borrowing request, but staff may not see it until they manually check Alma. This workflow closes that gap by sending an email notification as soon as a qualifying new borrowing request is created. For member library staff, that means faster response time and less repeated checking of Alma when nothing new has arrived.

What it does

  • Listens for Alma REQUESTS update events.

  • Checks whether the event is specifically a newly created request.

  • Checks whether the request is specifically a borrowing request in resource sharing.

  • Stops immediately if the event does not meet both conditions.

  • For matching requests, looks up the patron record in Alma using the requester’s primary user ID.

  • Pulls the patron’s full name and user group so the email is more useful to staff.

  • Sends an HTML email from LibOW@wrlc.org to the CU Law shared circulation inbox.

  • Uses the subject line “New ILL Request in Alma (CU LAW)”.

  • Includes request details in the email body, including material type, requester, title, author, volume, issue, and part.

  • Converts Alma material type codes in the email body so BK displays as BOOK and CR displays as ARTICLE.

Where it runs

  • Alma IZ(s): CU Law production

  • Systems touched:

    • Alma Trigger for request events

    • Alma API to retrieve patron details

    • Alma Mail to send the notification email

  • Reports / queries used:

    • No Alma Analytics report is used.

    • Alma API call: get/almaws/v1/users/{user_id} in the users area.

How it works

  • If results exist:
    If the incoming Alma event says the request was created and the resource sharing status is REQUEST_CREATED_BOR, the workflow looks up the patron and sends the notification email.

  • If no results:
    If either condition is not met, the workflow follows the false branch to No Operation, do nothing and ends without sending any email.

Artifacts produced:
The output is an HTML email notification sent to the shared inbox.

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