Talis Aspire offers a mandatory importances feature. This is optional, but was introduced due to customer feedback that some institutions have created workflows where having mandatory importances would have benefits for the library - eg in terms of calculating the number of print titles / EBook licences that need to be purchased for a given title. This is in addition to their usefulness for students who are navigating a reading list.
How to turn on
Currently you will need to raise a support ticket so that our Operations Team can enable this feature for you. It can also be revoked if required.
Adding new items
When mandatory importances is switched on for an institution, it means that when a user adds a new item to their reading list - either via My Bookmarks or via the extension (Create & Add to List option) - they will be forced to select an Importance before they are able to add an item to their list. As you will see in the screenshot below, the Importance field is marked as Required and the user will not be able to proceed with the bookmark until an importance is selected. Note: this does not apply to items added via 'Add Resource'.
Existing items
When a user hits the Publish button on a list which includes existing items without an importance, they will be prompted to Set Importances for those items (see screenshot below). However, they can bypass the option at this point by just clicking Publish.