Feature - EP-2997 Assessment Centre Bulk Booking

NEW PERMISSIONS SETUP REQUIRED TRAINING RECOMMENDEDscreen changes

Changes to Functionality

Assessment Centre Data Clean Up

We have removed a number of fields that were in the database, but that have not been used, this should not affect any existing or new functionality.

New assessment centre fields

We have added two new fields to the assessment centre screen:

• Owner Type - This is a way to identify the centres owner for billing purposes. This is an optional field, but if provided can be one of “EPAO”, “Provider”, or “Third Party”

• Additional Information - This is a formatted text field for additional information about the assessment centre, such as directions, car parking etc.

Provider Assignment to Assessment Centres

In addition to the owner type dropdown to help identify if an assessment centre is owned by the EPAO, Employer, or Provider, we have added a second dropdown that will show if the “Provider” owner type is checked. This will allow you to select the provider that owns the assessment centre. This will allow for two things.

Firstly, if the provider is given permission to “Read Assessment Centre” it will allow users of that provider to see the assessment centres they have been assigned within the assessment centre listing screen. This allows for the provider to also be given the “Read Capacity” and “Update Capacity” permissions allowing them to manage the capacity of their own assessment centres.

Secondly, once an assessment centre has been assigned to a provider, the centre is no longer available to other providers via the assessment booking screen. The assessment centre dropdown and selection on that screen will now only show assessment centres that have either not been assigned to a provider, or have been assigned to the provider doing the booking.

The assessment centre listing screen has also been updated to show the owner type and provider name, along with two new filters for owner type and provider.

Assessment resits report

We have added the Owner Type field as “assessment_centre_owner_type" to this report.

Addition of new capacity management

We have added additional flexibility around how capacity can be managed for an assessment centre. This allows for more fine-grained control of availability on any day.

When on the edit assessment centre screen there will be a new “Manage Capacity” button at the top. This button will take you to the assessment centre capacity screen.

Open

Edit Assessment Centre Screen

Open

Assessment Centre Capacity Screen

This new screen will have a calendar, where you can create as many capacity entries as needed. Each capacity entry has a start/end date, a total capacity, and one or more components each with its own capacity.

Open

Creating capacity entry

It is not possible to create overlapping entries. If this is needed, then the better approach would be to update existing entries with the new values, or split your time into multiple blocks.

For example:

• Given you have a capacity of 50, split across components A and B between 9am and 12pm, however, you have additional resources after 10am allowing you to handle an additional 10 assessments, you would enter the following

  • Create a new entry for 9am - 10am with capacity of 50 and the component capacities of 50 each

  • Create a new entry for 10am - 12pm with capacity of 60 and the component capacities of 60 each

Entries can be highlighted by clicking and dragging on a day, this will provide the option to copy the selection, delete the selection or create from blueprint (see the section below).

Clicking on a single day will provide options to “Create”, “Copy”, or “Delete”. “Copy” and “Delete” will apply that action to the full date.

Open

Clicking on a single event will provide options to “Create”, “Edit”, “Copy”, or “Delete”. “Copy” and “Delete” will apply that action to the event.

Open

When copying one or more events you can click on another date to paste those events. The first event in your selection will be added to the clicked day, with subsequent events being spread out to match the positioning relative to the first event.

We have also added a “How do I use this” box to the top of the screen which will help guide the user, should they be unsure how to use the screen.

Open

Capacity Usage

The capacity screen will calculate the current usage of each entry on the calendar. This usage is then shown within the entry “Usage: X/Y”. Hovering over the entry will show a popup with a breakdown of the usage on a per-component basis. The colour of the entry will also change based on how full it is:

• 0 - 69% usage will show as a default blue

• 70 - 99% usage will show as yellow

• 100%+ usage will show as red

The capacity is calculated in real-time so adding new entries will automatically update the usage.

Open

Assessment Centre capacity on the assessment plan

The location stage of the assessment plan screen has been updated to include a similar version of the capacity calendar, but for easily identifying usage when booking an element. When an assessment centre is selected, the week of the booking will be shown and each capacity entry will be shown as defined in the main configuration screen for the assessment centre.

Open

Similar to the assessment centre screen, the usage will be shown, however, unlike the assessment centre screen all of the entries will remain blue, this is to prevent confusion as the entries overlapping that booking for this assessment will be shown in colour depending on the status. If there is space for this booking then they will be green, if there is no space then they will show as red.

Addition of new blueprints for capacity management

To help with creating repetitive capacity entries for the assessment centre we have added Capacity Blueprints. These can be accessed by clicking the “Manage Capacity Blueprints” button from the edit assessment centre screen or the assessment centre capacity management screen.

Open

Create Blueprint screen

The blueprints screen functions similarly to the capacity screen except it’ll only show a weekly view. This allows for a Monday - Sunday blueprint to be configured that can then be used within the assessment centre manage capacity screen to quickly create capacity entries when a reusable blueprint is needed.

Open

Creating a blueprint

Open

Open

Copying and Pasting a blueprint event.

Open

Once the day is selected, selecting the appropriate day allows you to paste the event

The manage capacity screen has also had a “Create from blueprint” button added when clicking on a single day, or a selection. This will open a popup allowing for the correct blueprint to be selected.

Open

The blueprint will be inserted based on the day of the week you clicked on. For example, if you click “Create from blueprint” after selecting 2nd, 3rd, and 4th December those days will be populated by the blueprint entries for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday respectively.

Open

Removal of the old capacity configuration

We have removed the Components and Capacity fields against the business hours for assessment centres, the addition of the capacity management and blueprints above now supersedes this.

As mentioned above this data has been used to populate 3 months worth (one month in the past, and two months in the future) of the new capacity. It has also been moved into a default blueprint, this can be edited as needed after the release, but ensures the existing setup is easy to reuse for future weeks.

Updates to assessment booking

We have updated the assessment booking screen to accommodate the new capacity structure we have introduced. Functionally, users should not see a difference in how capacity is calculated or handled. The following flow determines if a slot is available.

Auto Booking on the assessment booking screen

We have added a new auto-book button to the assessment booking screen. This new button will allow the user to click a time and epaPRO will try to book all of the selected components within the selected assessment centre’s capacity allowances. Each component will be separated by its defined notice period and will be booked with the configured duration in mind. Should a component need to be split and span multiple time blocks it will do so automatically.

Open

If one or more of the components in unable to be fully booked within the week being viewed, the auto booking will be cancelled and an error shown.

Open

Multiple contacts against assessment centres

A new tab, “Contacts”, has been added to the edit assessment centre screen.

Open

New Contacts tab

This allows for multiple contacts to be added to an assessment centre. Each contact can have a name, email, phone number, and role assigned. Any contact with the role of “Booking Coordinator” will be able to receive component-based notifications, see more information below. The editing of assessment centre contacts falls within the existing assessment centre permissions.

Assessment Centre Booking Coordinator guest type against component communications

A new guest type “Assessment Centre Booking Coordinator” has been added to the following communications:-

• Component Invitation,

• Component Resit,

• Component Reschedule,

• Component Cancellation

This new guest type is disabled by default and encompasses any assessment centre contact with the role of “Booking Coordinator” that has been selected against the element’s booking.

Addition of a new assessment_centre_additional_information comms variable

A new variable has been added to the following communications

• Component Invitation

• Component Rescheduled

• Component Cancellation

• Component Resit

The new variable assessment_centre_additional_information, will contain the contents of the "Additional Information" field against the assessment centre assigned to the booking. Similar to the "location_details" variable, if a custom location has been entered then this new variable will be empty, even if the booking also has an assessment centre linked.

Improved multi-day support for assessment bookings

We have improved the support for multi-day assessments where they need to span multiple days, either due to availability or the assessment being longer than a single working day. The assessment booking screen when clicking a component and then clicking on a time will behave exactly the same as it did before. However, if you click and drag you will be able to create a partial booking for that element. Allowing you to create multiple partial bookings to make up the full duration.

The component box has been updated to display a “Booked duration” line, this will indicate how much of the element has been booked. An alert will also show below the component if the booked duration is too long or too short compared to the expected duration of the component.

Open

The capacity calculation (to decide if the booking period is available) is calculated based on the custom selection, allowing for a single element to span multiple days, or times of day whilst still calculating the capacity as would be expected.

EPA assignment for assessment bookings

We have added the ability to assign an EPA to all of the components, when booking elements in bulk via the assessment bookings screen.

Open

The list of EPAs will be built based on all of the apprentices in the popup. If any of the apprentices have a conflict with the EPA, then the EPA will be flagged as such.

Open

If the EPA is still selected then it will not be possible to process any apprentices that have a conflict, the affected apprentices will also be highlight in the final confirmation stage of the process.

Assessment Plan changes

The assessment plan has been updated to support the changes required to allow for multiple time periods for a single booking. If an element has been booked via the assessment bookings screen and has more than a one-time block then the scheduling stage of the assessment plan will be updated to show this. Allowing for each time block to be edited, or deleted.

Addition of end date on the assessment elements report

The assessment elements report has been updated to include a new end_date field. This date is used for assessments that have been booked across multiple time blocks, or days, and indicates the end of the last time block. Note, that the scheduled date (meeting_at) and the end_date may add up to more than the duration when an element has had multiple time blocks booked across multiple days, or with gaps in between.

Notifications ICS Attachments

The ICS invites that are attached to component-related communications have been updated to take into account an element potentially spanning multiple blocks of time. There will be one ICS attachment per block of time.

Microsoft 365 / Google Updates

Our Microsoft 365 and Google integrations have been updated to take into account an element potentially spanning multiple blocks of time. The events will be created to match the initial time blocks of the element.

Availability calculations

The various areas where we calculate availability, including EPA Availability and Book Planning Meeting slots, have been updated to take into account an element potentially spanning multiple blocks of time.

Calendar Export Token

Our calendar export token feature has been updated to take into account an element potentially spanning multiple blocks of time, ensuring the events are created as they have been booked within epaPRO.

Result Required Action/SLA

The result required action (SLA - Time from element scheduled to result being added) has been updated to now trigger based on the end date of the element, rather than the schedule date. This means that if an element has the following time blocks:

• Monday 9am - 5pm

• Tuesday 12pm - 5pm

• Wednesday 9am - 2pm

The action will be triggered and SLA begin counting from 2pm on Wednesday.

Communication Attachments

We have added foundational support for attachments on certain communications. This will allow for a file to be uploaded to an entity and then that file will be attached to email communication relating to the entity.

We have also tweaked how the ICS invites interact to bring that and this new attachment system in line. The first entity to receive support for an attachment is the Assessment Component entity.

Assessment Component Communication Attachment

Two new fields have been added to the assessment component screen;

• Communication Attachment Name

• Communication Attachment.

These two fields allow for a file to be uploaded and a friendly name given. If a file has been uploaded then it can be downloaded/removed. If it needs to be replaced then a new file can be uploaded via the file upload field.

Open

New Fields on Assessment Component screen

Open

Once uploaded and the component saved, you can download the file or remove it.

,

The file that is uploaded to this field will be attached to all of the following emails :-

• component invitation

• component rescheduled

• component resit communication

Record of Achievement tweaks

The RoA attachment logic has been tweaked behind the scenes to make use of the adjusted communication system to bring it in line with the assessment component attachment system.

Assessment Component Exercises

We have added the concept of exercises to Assessment components. These exercises can be created against a component using the new “Exercises” tab on the edit assessment component screen.

The purpose of these is to allow you to set up a tasks or exercises that relates to this assessment for a particular Standard.

For example - Advanced Carpentry & Joinery - your apprentice needs to perform certain exercises as part of the Practical component e.g. Create a dovetail joint, hang a door as part of the assessment, you can create an exercise to ensure that you detail this in the Component Invitation.

Open

Exercise tab on an Assessment Component

Open

Create Screen

Once created exercises can then be linked to a booking on the assessment plan via the new “Exercises” stage, or via bulk assessment booking via the new “Exercises” dropdown. Multiple exercises can be selected as needed.

Open

An exercise has a long-form formattable text field for information about the exercise, for example, instructions for the apprentice on tasks within a set exercise. A new variable has been added {{assessment_element_exercises}} to the component emails which will contain these instructions taking into account the formatting applied.

If an exercise has been used on a past result then the resit/retake booking of that result will tag the exercise with the “Used Before” label, so that the user booking can consider if the apprentice should have a different exercise or use the same ones.

The stage for “Exercises” will be visible in the Assessment Plan booking of elements even if you don't have these configured on an Assessment Component, the stage can be skipped past using the Next button.

Three new reports have also been added to support this:

• Assessment Component Exercises - Appears under the Miscellaneous category and will provide an export of the exercises configured by component.

• Assessment Element Exercises - Appears under the Assessment category and will provide an export of the exercises configured against element bookings.

• Assessment Centre Assessment Element Exercises - Appears under the Assessment category and shows a count of exercises configured against element bookings and assessment centres.

Bug Fixes

•  EP-3575  - We have fixed the error message when trying to save an assessment centre without any standards, assessment types, or components selected. This will now be validated correctly and state that at least one of each is required.

•  EP-3688  - We have fixed an issue with the view-only mode of the assessment centre screen not disabling some fields.

Other notable changes

• We have removed the file upload fields when bulk booking assessments, the same fields were removed from the single booking with the assessment plan rewrite and were no longer supported. Existing uploads will remain and be accessible in the assessment element side drawer as they were before. Assessment Info should be used instead for uploads against elements.

Impacted Areas

• Assessment Centre listing, create, and edit

• Assessment Booking

• Assessment Plan

• Communication Management

• Component Invitation Communication

• Component Resit Communication

• Component Reschedule Communication

• Component Cancellation Communication

• Assessment Elements Report

• Microsoft 365 / Google

• EPA Availability

• Book Planning Meetings

• Calendar Export Token

• SLAs

• Assessment Component

• Record of Achievement

• Reporting

Permissions

Read Capacity Allows the user to see a read-only view of the capacity management screen. Given to any role or user that has the Read permission for assessment centres.

Update Capacity Allows the user to update the capacity for an assessment centre via the new capacity management screen. Given to any role or user that has the Update permission for assessment centres.

Create Blueprints Allows the user to create blueprints for an assessment centre. Given to any role or user that has the Update permission for assessment centres.

Update Blueprints Allows the user to edit blueprints for an assessment centre. Given to any role or user that has the Update permission for assessment centres.

Read Blueprints Allows the user to see a read-only view of blueprints for an assessment centre. Given to any role or user that has the Read permission for assessment centres.

Delete Blueprints Allows the user to delete blueprints for an assessment centre. Given to any user that has the Delete permission for assessment centres.