We have made some significant changes to the Assessment Planning screen; it has had a full redesign in order to demonstrate a clearer flow throughout the whole process.

Summary of changes

Plan Details:

• The apprentices’ name has been put in the header for convenience

• The apprentices name is also a link, clicking on it will open the side drawer

• The apprentices’ details are listed on the left hand side of the section.

• The Epas name is a link which will open the side drawer, allowing you to check their availability, epa & user details, and their address.

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• The Schema details for the plan have been listed on the right hand side of the section.

• To update the schema of the plan press the “Change Schema“ button if available and select the new schema in the following pop up window.

• We have added a convenient button to view an apprentices reasonable adjustments. Clicking the “View” button will open up the information in a new pop up window.

Components:

• New actions on the top right hand side of the section allowing (when available) to view the assessment profile, submit a plan and cancel a plan.

• New list of components for the plan with key information displayed;

  • including the current status of the element,

  • the location type of the element,

  • which Epa is assigned

  • the current date scheduled for the meeting.

• Clicking on a component with the pencil icon, will open up the details of the plan and allow you to make changes.

• Clicking on a component with the eye icon, will open up the details of the plan, but will not allow you to make changes.

• A new message will display at the top of the components section if the selected component cannot be loaded for any reason. For example if the element has a pending QA against it.

Component - Details section:

We have introduced a new staged process with sections of the component being displayed on the left hand side and the details of the component being displayed on the right. You can easily jump to any section of the component by clicking the section on the left hand side, or by using the “Next” and “Back“ buttons at the bottom of the component details.

The sections for a component are:

• Date/Time & EPA - This section contains the details of when a booking is going to take place, as well as the EPA that is assigned. A convenient calendar showing the epas availability, either by week or day view is also displayed in this section. Please see this section for additional information:- Scheduling an assessment/ Epa availability

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• By using the next and previous arrows <> the user can navigate to check the selected epas availability for that day/week.

• Hovering over the item in the calendar will show you further details

• Location - This section contains the location of the booking. You can choose whether the booking is physical, online and where it’s taking place.

• Online Meetings - This section contains details of any online meetings that might also need to take place, allowing you to choose a service and input an email address.

• External Assessment - This section contains details of any external Surpass assessment that may be required, allowing you to select a test and add time.

• Proctor/ Invigilation - This section contains details of any ProctorU invigilation, that is required for the booking. Allowing you to add accommodations and notes. If ProctorU is not available for this booking, then this section will be hidden.

• Attendees - This section contains details of any attendees for this booking. You may delete an attendee from the list shown, or alternatively add a new attendee by clicking the “Add attendee“ button and filling out the relevant details. If you know the name of the user you can locate them from the Select User drop down list.

  

We have also included a search box on this drop down list so you can find the user more quickly.

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  You may also delete an attendee from the list using the Delete option as per the below image.

There is also the option to add a guest attendee manually.

• Reschedule Reason - This section allows you to add a reason for rescheduling the component. It is only available when the plan has been submitted.

• Declaration - This section is where you must tick the declaration fields and sign the page in order to reschedule a component. Again this section is only available if the plan has been submitted.

As you work through the sections and fill out the information, the page will update to show you if there are any problems. For example the sections on the left will be given a red exclamation mark to quickly give you an idea of where the problem is, or a green tick to let you know that that section is complete.

When you try to save or reschedule a component, the page will also check all the sections again and let you know if there are any problems. If there are problems, you will be taken back to the relevant section, with a list of what may need changing.

Notifications

To accommodate the changes to how attendees are dealt within an element, we have changed how the configuration for these notifications is handled and also deprecated a number of settings which are no longer supported, these will remain for the time being for backwards compatibility, but will be migrated to the new system in a future release.

The following changes have been made to these notifications:

• These user types have been deprecated and will be migrated to the “Element Guest” user type in a future release, moving forward these guest types should be added as a guest attendees or regular attendees

  • Apprentice’s On Programme Assessor

  • Apprentice’s Workplace Mentor

  • Element Employer/Mentor

  • Element Provider

  • Employer Contact

  • Provider Contact

• The Element Guest now encompasses all guest attendees and not just the technical expert attendee

• Employer user type now only applies to employer users who are an attendee of the element and does not send to all employer users

• Provider user type now only applies to provider users who are an attendee of the element and does not send to all provider users

• EPA user type also includes any other EPAs that are an attendee of the element and not just the Apprentice’s EPA

• EPA Manager user type also includes any other EPA Managers that are an attendee of the element and not just the manager of the Apprentice’s EPA

ProctorU / Surpass

Detach ProctorU from Surpass

We have adjusted our ProctorU integration so that it can now be used with any assessment component, not just Surpass ones. This means that if enabled on your environment, the ProctorU tab will be visible in all assessment components and if enabled will provide the option to book a ProctorU test.

A new setting has been added to the System Management → Configuration screen for additional text within an email when ProctorU is enabled, this is to accommodate the requirements from ProctorU on including certain information when communicating with apprentices. This new setting is under the new Proctoring tab. The setting also accepts a {{account_url_link}} variable which will be replaced with a “click here” link which will take the apprentice to their ProctorU profile to see their bookings.

This screen is accessible by the AO Owner user

We have updated our ProctorU integration to decouple it from Surpass, allowing for it to be booked for other components too.

We have improved the error handling of external calls when scheduling or rescheduling an assessment. Where possible we will store the error and where it happened and display this on the element booking screen. The user can then click to retry, if it was a temporary issue.

We have also improved our Surpass integration, so that if we try and delete a test that doesn’t exist, for example, if it’s already been deleted via the Surpass dashboard, it will continue without any issues.

Scheduling an assessment/ Epa availability

We have made significant changes to the way we show Epa availability when scheduling an assessment. We have included a new time table in the “Date/Time & Epa“ section to give an indication of when an Epa is unavailable. By default this timetable will show the following:

• The booking date and time that you have selected. If the booking conflicts with anything else on the Epa’s time table it will appear in a bright red colour to let you know at a glance.

• The timetable will also show all the Epa’s other events for the week. This is to allow you to look for a more suitable time if one exists.

• Using the right and left arrows above the timetable, you can also change the week that you are looking at. This will show all the events for the Epa on that week.

• Using the Day/ Week buttons above the timetable, will allow you to change the timetable into a day or week view. Using the day view will allow you to more easily see the detail of what events are scheduled on that day and the week view will give you a detailed overview of all the events for that week.

Permissions

Assessment Plan

• In order to create an assessment plan, a user must have the create-assessment permission.

• In order to manage an assessment plan, a user must have the create-assessment or update-assessment permissions.

• In order to view an assessment plan, the user must have the read-assessment permission.

• In order to submit or cancel an assessment plan, the user must have the update-assessment permission.

• In order to change the assessment schema, the user must have the update-assessment-plan-schema permission.

Elements/ Components

• In order to see the details of an element, the user must at least one of the create-assessment, update-assessment or read-assessment permissions.

• In order to save an element, the user must have either the create-assessment or update-assessment permissions.

• In order to rebook/ reschedule any assessment type, the user must have the update-assessment permission.

External Assessment - General External Assessment "Other" Option:

We have added a new option for external assessments. When deciding that an assessment plan element requires an external assessment, you are no longer required to use surpass as the option available. We have added a new “Other“ option to allow for general external assessment information to be entered for any other service that you may wish to use.

Create/Edit Assessment Component:

• Under the “External Assessment“ tab you will now be able to select Surpass and Other. You may select either or both if you want to have the option on the assessment plan element.

  • When selecting Surpass you may enter the references as normal.

  • When selecting Other, the option will show up under external assessment in the assessment plan element.

Assessment Plan:

• Under External assessment for an assessment plan element, the selected options for that component will be visible to the user. If none were selected, then the external assessment section will not be visible and will automatically be set to “no external assessment” for that element.

• When selecting “Surpass” the details will be enterable as before, however when selecting “Other” the user will see 3 new text entry fields, which will allow them to supply the information for the assessment. These fields are:

  • provider name

  • assessment reference

  • any notes for the assessment.

These fields are designed to be generic and allow for any required information to be added.

note

Please Note: When completing the fields under “Other“, you should provide all the information required for that assessment to be able to take place, including any URL’s, passcodes or required information etc.

Component Reports:

• Reports have been updated to include all selected external assessment options for that component to be listed.

• Where possible the reports will also include details of the provider name, reference and notes added to an external assessment where “Other” has been selected.

Notifications:

• The “assessment_details“ notification variable for element notifications has also been updated such that when Surpass has been selected as the external assessment, the relevant assessment details will be provided, however when Other is selected for the external assessment, details of the provider name, reference and notes will be provided.