Feature - Planning Meeting Booking screen (Phase 1)
- Lisa Clancy
Further changes to the Planning Meeting Booking screen were implemented in Phase 2 of the work released live Aug 16, 2022 in version 4.28.0 we suggest you read this info below first.
From version 4.21.0 onwards, Providers will be able to use the new Planning Meeting Booking screen.
Click here to view the Release 4.21.0 demo video which goes into more details.
Planning Meeting Listing Screen
We have created a new listing screen to manage assessment planning meeting bookings. From this screen it will be possible for users (with the correct permissions) to book, edit the booking date and time, and cancel planning meetings.
As a part of this work we have introduced three new planning related permissions:
Book Planning Meeting Post Gateway Approval
Book Planning Meeting Post Gateway Submission - will show apprentices that have had their gateway submitted but not approved.
Book Planning Meeting Pre Gateway Submission - will show all on programme apprentices, regardless of their gateway status.
Any user that has any of these three permissions will have access to this new listing screen.
Planning Meeting Booking Screen
We have also created a new Planning Meeting Booking Screen (seen when you select book or edit meetings) to allow planning meetings to be initially scheduled with a preferred date, before they are accepted by the AO. This scheduled date can be changed as many times as is required until it is accepted by the AO.
This screen will only show where blocks of availability exist for the standard that the planning meeting is being scheduled for (the planning meeting duration can be set against the standard via the standard management screen).
Capacity Group Management Screen
User Groups
A new management screen has been created for the Owner AO user to configure user groups. This is located under the User Management section.
By default, a non-deletable user group called “Planning Meeting Bookings” is provided; editing this group will allow the adding/removing of AO users into the group, along with changing the group’s name.
Capacity calculation/engine
As part of the planning meeting booking system, we’ve integrated a capacity calculation engine that takes data we know about users who would be involved in the meeting and builds a list of known slots the user can subsequently select.
The capacity engine will use the following data points when calculating capacity:
User’s working hours
User’s absences
Other planning meetings the user is an attendee of
Assessment elements the user is assigned to
Any “Busy” or “Tentative” events in the linked Microsoft calendar
The calculation will be made for users inside the “Planning Meeting Bookings” user group, which can be configured via the new “User Group” screen introduced in the planning meeting work.
It will collate the availability of these users in this “User Group” and aggregate the data, in order to show the total availability for this group as available slots.
If the group has no users, then the capacity engine will fall back to the apprentice’s assigned EPA. If no EPA has been assigned then we’ll be unable to calculate capacity.
The “slots” are defined based on the planning meeting length set against the standard, this is in minutes and defaults to 60. For performance reasons, we’ve restricted this field to between 15 minutes and 1440 minutes. 1440 minutes would equal 1 day.
Any dates in the past will automatically be made unavailable.
Permission to update this information is given to the owner system roles by default.
Awarding organisation availability
In addition to this, an “Availability” tab has been added to the create/edit awarding organisation screens. This new tab functions in a similar way to the existing availability tab within the create/edit EPA(M) screens.
Awarding organisations can now have daily work hours assigned to them, along with absences for holidays/sickness etc. These details are also updatable via the awarding organisations “Edit profile” area.
Permission to update this information is given to the owner & awarding organisation system roles by default.
Edit Planning Meeting / New Planning Meeting Statuses
As part of our new planning meeting booking process for providers, we’ve added two new statuses and changed the planning meeting screens to handle these new statuses.
These new statuses have meant we’ve had to make changes in various places across EPAPro, primarily within assessment to ensure these new statuses are correctly used/ignored.
Please ensure the assessment areas still functions as you expect for your business following these changes.
Pending - A pending status indicates the planning meeting has been booked, via the new planning meeting booking screen, and is awaiting a decision to approve or reject the meeting.
Rejected - A rejected status indicates the planning meeting booking has been rejected.
New Fields
These new fields are only relevant to the new planning meeting flow and so historic meetings will not have these values. Any meeting created via the traditional process will also not have these fields completed.
We have added three new fields to planning meetings. These are also shown in the planning meeting details and planning meeting history reports.
decision_user_id - The ID of the user that approved or rejected the meeting.
decision_date - The date the meeting was approved/rejected
decision_info - Additional information relating to the decision. This is where the rejected reason will be.
Listing Screen Changes
The following changes have been made to the planning meeting listing screen:
Planning meeting status filter has the new statuses; Pending and Rejected
Pending planning meetings cannot have a plan booked
Added a button for pending planning meetings Approve/Reject Meeting
Edit Screen Changes
The following changes have been made to the edit planning meeting screen:
The reschedule/cancel reason fields are hidden for pending meetings
New reject / approve buttons are shown for users with permission
The add other attendees modal now shows the AO users inside the planning meeting user group
New Permissions
We’ve added two new permissions that are under the Planning section. These new permissions are given to the owner and awarding organisation roles by default.
approve-planning-meeting - Grants the user the ability to approve a planning meeting booking.
reject-planning-meeting - Grants the user the ability to reject a planning meeting booking.
Notifications
Notifications have had the wording updated to cater for the potential change in process due to the new planning meeting booking work.
The changes are:
Gateway Completed notification now mentions to the user that the planning meeting can be booked (if the user has permission).
Planning meeting invite notification has been changed from “has been created.” to ”has been scheduled.”