This work was loaded to your Production environment in release 5.03.0 on Dec 7, 2022 & Dec 8, 2022

Extensions to the user rights for Providers /Employers

We have made changes to allow the Provider Primary User to be able to assign other roles to other provider users, or employers and to restrict them to read only access.

We have introduced a number of new permissions as part of this functionality. See the details below.

General tweaks to provider/employer screens

We have tweaked these screens to improve the user experience. The tweaks include:

Added a confirmation box when navigating away or refreshing if you have unsaved changes
Added loading icons to the delete and primary user buttons within the user list
Added a new “Bulk Import” button to the employer and provider user lists. This is shown if the user has permission, further details on this below, and provides a way for sub-users to import apprentice assignments and/or standard assignments

Sub user creation/editing improvements

To accommodate the changes and additions we’re making to sub-users the create, edit and view functions for providers and employers will now be controlled via a new screen, rather than in a small popup. This provides more space for these new features and also improves user flow and performance. On this new screen, we have also added indicators under the page title so you know the user’s current status and the provider or employer name. This way you can always see the organisation’s name you’re managing the sub-users for.

Standards and specialisms against providers and employers

We have added the ability to assign standards and specialisms against provider and employer sub-users. The primary user can adjust these for other sub-users, however, an AO user will need to adjust them for a primary user. Sub users are unable to adjust their own standards and specialisms.

If no standards or specialisms are defined against a user, then it will default to using what is defined against the provider.

We recommend only adding standards or specialisms to sub-users that require a subset of the apprentices, otherwise, it will a require regular admin to keep the sub-users in sync with the provider entity.

The standards or specialisms selected for a sub-user will change the visibility of apprentices and other standard based entities within epaPRO and reporting. It will also adjust the notifications they receive, so that they will not get notifications for apprentices that are on standards they have not been assigned.

Two new permissions have been added to support this:-

Assign Standards and Specialisms under Employer Sub Users

Assign Standards and Specialisms under Provider Sub Users.

These two permissions will allow the user to manage the standards and specialisms assigned, providing they also have update permission. Users will not be able to edit their own.

Apprentice assignments to provider and employer sub-users

Please be aware that this change has required tweaks to security throughout epaPRO and reporting, so please do ensure that your business processes are still supported following these changes.

We have added the ability to assign apprentices to provider and employer sub-users. Once an apprentice has been assigned to them, their visibility within epaPRO and reporting will be restricted to just that apprentice. They will also only receive notifications for that apprentice.

If no apprentices have been assigned to a sub-user, they will continue to see all apprentices, as they do now.

Please note that assigning an apprentice to a provider or employer sub-user does not affect entities that are tied to standards and not apprentices, for example, news and support materials. Standard assignments should be added in addition to the apprentice assignments, to ensure the visibility of these entities are also filtered.

Two new permissions have been added to support this;

Assign Apprentices under Employer Sub Users

Assign Apprentices under provider Sub Users.

These two options will allow the user to manage the apprentices assigned, providing they also have update permission. Users will not be able to edit their own.

Both of these permissions have been given to the owner and awardingorganisation roles by default.

Roles that can be assigned by provider/employer users

We have extended the roles functionality by introducing two new flags “Assignable by Provider” and “Assignable by Employer”. These can be toggled on for both custom and system roles.

We have also added two new permissions to accommodate this;

Change Role under the "Provider Sub Users" section

Change Role under the "Employer Sub Users" section.

Both of these permissions have been given to the owner and awardingorganisation roles by default, although no change will be seen as awarding organisation user types have the ability to do this already.

Users with this role will be able to edit the roles/permissions for the relevant sub-users. If these permissions are given to a provider or employer sub user then the following will happen:

We do not recommend giving the employer change role permission to providers, as this is intended for allowing the organisation to manage their own users based on a subset of roles the EPAO makes available to them. It will be better to give the permission to a designated employer sub-user instead.

If providers are given “Change Role” for provider sub-users then they will able to change the role against their organisation’s users. They will only see roles that have been flagged as “Assignable by Provider”. If the provider is given “Change Role” for employers then they see a similar functionality with employers except they will only see roles that are flagged as “Assignable by Employer”, this is to prevent the provider from assigning provider-level roles to an employer user.
Employers will work in a similar way.

If the user has been given, or is assigned a role that is not on the list, it will show however be greyed out and disabled. This means the provider can change the role, but will be unable to revert it back.

The permissions that the role has granted will be shown to the user, any permissions that have not been granted will not be shown.

Technical expert toggle for provider and employer sub-users

We have added a new toggle for provider and employer users to flag them as being a “Technical Expert”. This new toggle is available on a new “Sub-user details” tab when creating or editing a provider/employer sub-user.

The assessment plan has been updated to show a “Technical Expert” badge under user’s names when adding attendees, thereby clearly highlighting which provider and/or employer sub-users have this new flag toggled.

Reporting

We have added five new reports to accommodate this additional functionality. These reports will only return sub-users that have been specifically assigned something.

The new reports are:

Provider Sub-User Standards - This report will show the standards and specialisms that are assigned to provider sub-users. It will show a row per user, standard, and specialism combination.
Provider Sub-User Assigned Apprentices - This report will show the apprentices that have been assigned to provider sub-users. It will show a row per apprentice and user combination.
Employer Sub-User Standards - This report will show the standards and specialisms that are assigned to employer sub-users. It will show a row per user, standard, and specialism combination.
Employer Sub-User Assigned Apprentices - This report will show the apprentices that have been assigned to employer sub-users. It will show a row per apprentice and user combination.
Employer Standards - This report will show the standards that have been assigned to employers at the organisation level. It will show a row per standard and employer combination.

To help with organising these new reports, we have created two new reporting categories; “Providers” and “Employers”.

The existing provider and employer reports, which were originally under “Miscellaneous” have been moved to the respective categories:

Provider Details and Provider Standards, have both been moved to the new Provider category
Employer Details has been moved to the Employer category

Bulk Upload

We have added a number of new bulk upload imports for mass assigning apprentices and standards to provider/employer sub-users.

New Permissions

To accommodate sub-users being able to bulk assign apprentices/standards to other sub-users, when they have permission to do so, we have introduced two new permissions that controls the bulk upload/import for providers and employers:

Employers > Bulk Import
Providers > Bulk Import

If a user is granted these new permissions, they will be given visibility of the “Import Employers” and/or “Import Provider” buttons along with the relevant tabs on the bulk upload screen.

Note that his does not grant them all bulk import actions, these are still controlled via their respective permissions.

For example, following these changes if you wanted to allow a provider sub-user to bulk import apprentice assignments for other provider sub-users they should be granted the following permissions:

Providers -> Bulk Import - So that they can see and interact with the provider import screen
Provider Sub Users -> Assign Apprentices - So that they can assign apprentices to other provider sub users

The new permissions have been given to the following roles by default, this is based on the current access and functionality these roles already have:

Providers -> Bulk Import - owner, awardingorganisation
Employers -> Bulk Import - owner, awardingorganisation, provider

New Provider Import Tab

We have added a new “Import Providers” button to the provider listing screen and also a new “Provider” tab within the bulk upload screen. This is to accommodate the two new bulk upload imports for provider sub-users. The user requires the Providers -> Bulk Import permission to see this button, along with the relevant permissions for each import.

Bulk Assign Standards

We have added two new imports for assigning standards to employer sub-users and provider sub-users. The new import is called “Assign Standards to Sub-Users” and can be found under the “Employer” and “Provider” imports. This import has the following columns:

Employer Sub-Users

This requires the Assign Standards and Specialisms permission for employers.

employer_id - This is the ID of the employer the sub-user belongs to and is required
user_id_username - This is the user ID or username of the employer sub-user, this must be a sub-user of the employer_id given and is required
external_standard_id - This is the external_standard_id of the standard you would like to assign to the sub-user and is required
specialism_ids - This is a comma-separated list of specialism IDs that should be assigned, these specialisms must be part of the given external_standard_id and should be left blank if no specialisms should be assigned or exist for the standard

Provider Sub-Users

This requires the Assign Standards and Specialisms permission for providers.

user_id_username - This is the user ID or username of the provider sub-user, this must be a sub-user of the provider selected on the screen or logged in and is required
external_standard_id - This is the external_standard_id of the standard you would like to assign to the sub-user and is required
specialism_ids - This is a comma-separated list of specialism IDs that should be assigned, these specialisms must be part of the given external_standard_id and should be left blank if no specialisms should be assigned or exist for the standard

Bulk Assign Apprentices

We have added two new imports for assigning apprentices to employer sub-users and provider sub-users. The new import is called “Assign Apprentices to Sub-Users” and can be found under the “Employer” and “Provider” imports. This import has the following columns: