Version 5.01.0 - 11/10/2022

Production Release Date: Oct 11, 2022

Version: 5.01.0

UAT Release date : Sep 13, 2022

EP-3418

FEATURE

Assessment Booking - New Pending Notification

A new Assessment Booking Pending notification has been added to EPAPro. This is disabled by default and completely opt-in.

This new notification sends after a user books assessment components via the “Assessment Booking” screen and they are entered into a Pending state. Note that if an Awarding Organisation user books via this screen the subsequent assessment elements are automatically approved and will be in an active state, as such this new notification would not be sent out.

This change does not affect or change any existing process.

EP-3411

FEATURE

Apprentice - Remove start date validation against standard version dates

Following customer feedback, we have removed the validation that rejected an apprentice create, update, or new programme if their start date was not within the standard’s “Version Earliest Start Date” and “Version Latest Start Date”. These two dates against a standard are now for reference and do not add functionality.

This change affects the create / update apprentice screens, start new programme screen, create / update / start new programme API endpoints, and the create / update / start new programme bulk upload screens.

EP-3387

FEATURE

Reporting - Added planning meeting length to standard report

Added the following columns to the “Miscellaneous → Standards” report:

• planning_meeting_length_minutes shows the planning meeting length set against the standard, in minutes.

EP-3386

FEATURE

NEW_PERMISSIONS

Assessment Component Report

We have written a new report that details out Assessment component details, called Assessment Components which can be located on the Miscellaneous tab of the Reporting area.

We have provided filters to enable filtering by standards, assessment type, grade profile, whether an invigilator is required and whether the component uses ProctorU. The search enables searching by component name.

EP-3306

FEATURE

screen_changes

Communications - Previewing of emails and SMS

We have updated the communication templates screen to provide a way to preview an email or SMS message. A new “Preview” tab has been added for both, showing an on-screen preview of the template with variables related to fake data.

Email templates can also be saved and then sent to the currently authenticated user, allowing it to be seen with the full email frame inside an email client. Similar to the on-screen preview the variables will be replaced with fake data.

The fake data will use randomly generated names, addresses, ULNs etc. standard names, specialism names, component names, and schema names will all be based on data within EPAPro.

EP-3305

FEATURE

SETUP_REQUIRED

Emails - added email_name variable to component emails

We have added the epa_name variable to the following emails:

• Component Resit,

• External Assessment,

• Result Available,

• Result Required,

• Component Cancelled,

• Component Invitation

• Component Rescheduled

This variable can be accessed, as usual, by adding epa_name to the email content.

EP-3303

FEATURE

Global Search - Include EPA apprentices for EPAMs

The global user search has been updated for EPAM users to include apprentices that their allocated EPAs (both primary and secondary) can search for, in addition to their own results.

EP-3144

FEATURE

Apprentice Files - Hide files to providers if linked to an unpublished result

We have updated the apprentice files system to not show files to external users; providers, employers, and apprentices, when the file is linked to results, QAs, or certifications that have not yet been published. Once the underlying entity has been published the linked files will also be published.

However, if the same file is linked to another result, QA, or certification that has been published then the file will be visible. Also, if the file is linked to another entity such as Gateway or Assessment Info then it will also be published and visible due to it being linked to a record the external user would be able to see.

The published status of a file will be recalculated every time it is linked to another entity, or when the QA, result, or certification has been published.

During the deployment of this change, a migration will be run to unpublish any files that are visible but should not be following this new logic.

EP-3036

FEATURE

NEW_PERMISSIONS

Reporting - New Assessment Schema summary report.

A new report has been created for viewing summary information against assessment schemas. This new report can be found in the reporting suite, under “Miscellaneous → Assessment Schemas”.

This new report shows all of the fields allocated against an assessment schema that are not component level, such as name, standard, specialism, start/end/review dates, active/inactive status etc.

If permission to run this report is given to lower level users (provider, employer, EPA(M) etc.) the users will be limited to only seeing the schemas associated against standards they are set up for.

https://covalenttech.atlassian.net/browse/EP-2788

EP-2788

FEATURE

RECOMMEND_TRAINING

screen_changes

SETUP_REQUIRED

Assessment Plan/Calendar - Rewrite

The Assessment Plan screen has had a full redesign.

Breaking down by section:

Plan Details:

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

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

• 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.

• Convenient button to view an apprentices reasonable adjustments. Clicking the 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.

• Elements with a Pending QA status will not be clickable. This is to avoid releasing information about the QA before it is complete.

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 is available to the AO Owner User.

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 timetable is also displayed in this section, showing the Epa’s availability.

• 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. If Surpass is not available for this booking, then this section will be hidden.

• 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.

• 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 handled within an element we have changed how the configuration for these notifications are 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 notifications have been affected:

• Component Resit

• External Assessment

• Component Cancelled

• Component Invitation

• Component First Reminder

• Component Second Reminder

• Component Rescheduled

The following changes have been made to these notifications:

• The following 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 a 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

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.

Permission:

EP-3437

BUG

Assessment Bookings - Not possible to reject an apprentice via Manage Assessment Bookings

Fixed a bug where a pending assessment booking could not be rejected due to pre-existing dependencies.

EP-3434

BUG

QA Audit Report - CSV download fix

We have applied a fix to the QA Audit report to ensure that the CSV can still be downloaded when the date_qa_added column is removed from the report output.

EP-3424

BUG

Assessment Booking - Employers able to see apprentices attached to other providers or employers

Assessment Booking -

• Fixed an issue in which employers were able to see apprentices that were attached to other providers or employers. An employer can now only see apprentices that are relevant to them.

EP-3417

BUG

SMS History Report - Issue with CSV Export button

SMS History Report -

• Fixed an issue that prevented a CSV of the SMS History Report from being exported. The CSV export button will now work as expected.

EP-3406

BUG

Support Materials - Issue fixed when no support materials are available.

Support Materials:

Fixed an issue relating to when no custom support materials were available. The page will now show information text telling you that no custom support materials are available.

EP-3391

BUG

Assessment Profile - Sidebar: Accurate EPA list

Assessment Profile - Sidebar:

Updated the list of available EPA’s, within the Edit Element EPA section of the side bar, to show an accurate list of available EPA’s based on the apprentices standard and specialism.

EP-3374

BUG

EPAs - various minor fixes to EPA users.

Have fixed the following bugs relating to EPA users:

• If given permission to read EPA managers, users will gain access to the EPA managers listing screen, but will not see any results returned.

• If given permission to read EPAs, users will gain access to the EPA listing screen but will only see their own record within the results returned.

• Can no longer add absences via the view mode of the EPA entity screen (they can still be added via the profile)

• Can no longer change the assigned employer via the dropdown (both in the EPA entity screen and profile).

EP-3325

BUG

Awarding Organisation - No longer possible to edit non-AO users using the edit AO screen.

Fixed a bug that allowed the owner user to edit non-awarding organisation users via the edit awarding organisation screen by amending the URL.

EP-3287

BUG

Apprentice - internal fix to clean up the error log when creating an apprentice via the API.

Fixed an internal issue that caused an error to be logged when a provider user created an apprentice via the API.

EP-3285

BUG

Global Search - Prevent errors when fetching employer users with broken data.

Fixed an issue whereby the global search could return an error if employer user records have had the relationship with the employer severed.

Have also written a migration to clean up these rogue employer users by marking them as deleted.

EP-3205

BUG

Permissions - EPA/EPAMs with view caseload permission can no longer access edit apprentice with the URL

Amended security to prevent users with apprentice caseload permissions from being able to access the edit apprentice screen by manipulating the URL.

EP-3169

BUG

Bulk upload - Update Employer: Now possible to update esfa_preferred_address to none

Fixed a bug that prevented the “esfa_preferred_address” from being set to “None” when using the employer bulk import functionality.

EP-3140

BUG

ESFA - More generic error messages now returned to the user on failure.

Fixed a bug that returned detailed database errors to the front end user when an error occurred - these should now return a more generic “An unknown error occurred.” message.

EP-3137

BUG

Awaiting Acceptance - Apprentices in complete status now show on screen

The Awaiting Acceptance screen has been updated to always show apprentices that are at Complete state - this allows EPAs to accept apprentices that have been assigned to them whilst on programme, but have subsequently gone to complete to due all of their elements being completed.

EP-2490

BUG

Sub users - Users with the right url can no longer delete other sub users without delete permission

Amended security to prevent provider/employer users from being able to delete sub users without permission, by editing the URL.

EP-2267

BUG

Sub Users - prevent non-primary provider/employer users from editing user records by editing urls.

Security has been enhanced to prevent non-primary provider/employer users from updating other users, by editing the view URL to be edit.