Version 5.01.0 - 11/10/2022
Production Release Date: Oct 11, 2022 | Version: 5.01.0 |
UAT Release date : Sep 13, 2022 |
The Release webinar is available from here; EPA Pro Release Demo 5.01.0 16-09-22 Recording.mp4
Note: you can copy and share this link with other people in your organisation. The recording has chapters added, so by hovering over the progress bar you will see the ticket reference to that section of video.
We have added a new column on the table below called “Action Required” this shows several new status labels:
SETUP_REQUIRED - some setup will be required to use this element
NEW_PERMISSIONS - new permissions have been added
RECOMMEND_TRAINING - training is recommended - usually for new major features.
screen_changes - changes have been made to existing screens
This is to help highlight to you anything you need to ensure is set up for the day of release or in advance of this. We do still recommend that all of the release notes are read.
We are also adding a column for potential Impact to you our customers, this is an estimation of any impact to your businesses the work may have. This is just offered as a guideline, as we appreciate you all use EPAPro slightly differently.
This release includes the major work around the Assessment Plan screen rewrite. Other work includes hiding files against results/QAs/certifications until after publishing, new Assessment Schema and Assessment Component reports.
Epic | Key | Type | Action Required | Summary | Release Notes Description | Potential Impact |
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| FEATURE |
| Assessment Booking - New Pending Notification | A new This new notification sends after a user books assessment components via the “Assessment Booking” screen and they are entered into a This change does not affect or change any existing process. | Low Impact as this is opt-in only. | |
| 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. | Low Impact high importance | |
| FEATURE |
| Reporting - Added planning meeting length to standard report | Added the following columns to the “Miscellaneous → Standards” report:
| Low Impact | |
| 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. The permission pertaining to the this report has been granted to the owner user and awarding organisation roles by default. 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. | medium Impact As you may need to amend permissions for custom users. | |
| 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. | Low Impact | |
| FEATURE | SETUP_REQUIRED | Emails - added email_name variable to component emails | We have added the epa_name variable to the following emails:
This variable can be accessed, as usual, by adding | medium Impact If this variable is required you will need to update the communication templates | |
| 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. | Low Impact | |
| 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. | Low Impact | |
| 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”. Access to this report is granted by the new permission “Reporting → Assessment Schemas”, which is given to the admin, owner & awarding organisation user roles as standard. 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. | medium Impact Some setup required to add the permissions | |
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:
Clicking either the apprentice name or the Epa name on this section will open their details in the side drawer, making it easier then ever to get more information from the assessment plan screen. Components:
Detach ProctorU from SurpassWe 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 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:
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:
The following changes have been made to these notifications:
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. Please Note: When an invigilator has been requested on the component, the invigilator details can be entered in either the “ProctorU“ or “Other“ options under invigilation. 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:
Please Note: For ease of use, the assessment plan screen will not prevent you from booking an assessment if the booking is shown as conflicted on the timetable. The timetable is there to give awareness of the availability of the selected Epa, and to make scheduling decisions easier. Permission: Permissions for the assessment plan screen have been reconfigured to be more straight forward. The permission changes are as follows: Assessment Plan
Elements/ Components
More details can be seen here - Coming Soon - Assessment Plan/Calendar Rewrite | high impact Major screen changes with full redesign Changes to how notifications are handled for element notifications | ||
| 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. |
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| 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 |
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| BUG |
| Assessment Booking - Employers able to see apprentices attached to other providers or employers | Assessment Booking -
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| BUG |
| SMS History Report - Issue with CSV Export button | SMS History Report -
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| BUG |
| EPAs - various minor fixes to EPA users. | Have fixed the following bugs relating to EPA users:
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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