This page lists some of the recent changes to PICSWeb.
| Expand | ||
|---|---|---|
| ||
Month End
Reports
|
11th May 2022
Report output of UDF Single & Multiple Items from a list may have output only the code. Now fixed.
WebForm notification emails sent as part of a Status Workflow did not have fully formed URLs. Now fixed.
Adding Evidence to a Learner could result in a Bad Request error. Now fixed.
...
Bug Fix: Picklists for DLA, EDF and SEN are now available.
All “File” WebForms not longer require “Applicant/Learner Send to Form Capture” and can now be created by any user with the “FCA Client User” or “Forms Management - Create Forms” permissions.
Bug Fix: When using the Create WebForm button to create an empty instance of a WebForm the link in the email will no longer be broken.
Bug Fix: WebForms can no longer be submitted multiple times by having the same form open in multiple tabs/windows.
Reports
Optional Field searching now works better with expandable fields, such as officers and organisations.
Enrolment reports can now be filtered by the Course Start and End dates.
Claim History report performance has been improved.
Opportunities report now has output of Qualification Plans and linked Learner and Applicant counts.
Applicant Report now has output of ILR Prior Attainment.
Bug Fix: Communications reports were incorrectly reporting the Type.
Learner Qualification report can now be filtered by Registration Number.
Learner Qualification report can now be filtered to include Deleted and Archived Learners.
Learner ILR Aims report can now be filtered to include Deleted and Archived Learners.
Learner ILR Aims report now has output of Delivery Qualification Status.
Learner Units report can be now be filtered by Unit Reference and Linked Qualification.
Form History report can now be filtered by the History Status.
Added Notes reports for Learners, Applicants, Officers and Organisations.
The Projected Funding reports now includes learner ILR output fields.
Added Status History report for Learners
Learner report now has an optional output for Workflow
The Projected Funding By Learner, and Projected Funding By Learning Delivery reports now have an output option of “Total Overdue”, which is the sum of funding which has been projected into the next unfinalled period because they are overdue.
The Projected Funding Individual Items report now has an output option of “Overdue Projected Item” to identify funding items that have been projected into the next unfinalled period because they are overdue.
The “Projected End Period” output in the Projected Funding reports was showing the next unfinalled period at the time the report was run. It now shows what the next unfinalled period was at the time the projected funding was calculated.
The data change reports for learners, applicants, organisations and officers can now be filtered by old and new values.
A new System Logs Report is now available.
Month End
The Funding Calculator’s Funding Details report’s Summary sheet now separates out PMR totals from the FM36 totals as an additional row.
The QAR Reconciler no longer shows a “Value cannot be null” error when reconciling an Education & Training report.
The Projected Funding Calculator now produces a downloadable report against each year that summarises the funding calculated and highlights any process warnings encountered.
...
Bug Fix: Deleting a widget could sometimes fail with an error of “Widget not found”. Editing a widget could result in an unexpected status behind the scenes that would prevent the delete. Editing widgets no longer does this, but some widgets may have already been broken. If you can not delete a widget, please contact our support team.
Bug Fix: Setting the course sessions list to your home page would fail to load when clicking the home page icon. Now Fixed.
Bug Fix: The AEB funding calculation was applying the Level 3 National Skills uplift incorrectly which was affecting the funding cap of applicable learners. Now fixed.
Bug Fix: The funding calculation was showing a process warning for devolved AEB learners who were studying a level 4 aim as not part of an apprenticeship, even when the aim was recorded with DAM code “023: MCA/GLA Delivery Exclusion” and was not calculating funding for these aims. Now fixed.
Reports
Improvement: The Projected Funding reports now have an option to show “Postcode Uplifts”.
The Interactive QAR Report no longer includes excluded leavers in the Achievers total if they are excluded from Achievement Rates.
The QAR now has additional optional fields to display the SSA code and title. These show the standard/framework SSA code for Apprenticeship Programme reports, and the aim SSA code for other report types. This is consistent with the data used by the ESFA.
The ILR Learners Report no longer shows Yes in the Has ILR Aims with LSF column when the LSF aims contain a null code entered in desktop PICS.
...
Learner validation now includes an audit check for FM25 Condition Of Funding.
Reviews: A new attended option “By Video” has been added
It is no longer possible to record Planned Learning Hours multiple times when creating a learner and moving back from the Additional page to the Programme page.
When the ILR Export Status of a ILR learner is changed, the learner-level Planned Learning and EEP Hours values are recalculated.
The Planned Learning and EEP Hours values are no longer removed when the hours are edited on a Withheld learner.
Learner change logs for payment records (table pcTrnPay) now include an extra key showing the Expected Date, Actual Date and unique ID for the payment record to assist in identifying which record has been changed.
Entering payment records (including automatically generated loan payments) no longer result in a “Maximum key has been reached” error.
Deleting a learner placement that was a custom relationship type would result in a “Placement not found” error. Now fixed.
The Status field is now displayed in the Learner Assessments list.
The Grade and Cross Reference fields are now displayed in the Learner Assessments list if there is data to display.
Learner Validation now includes Audit warnings for conditions reported in the OfS HE data credibility quality report.
Evidence: It is now possible to clear the IQA and EQA date on an evidence file for users who have the Database Administrator permission.
Qualifications: It is now possible to clear the IQA and EQA date on a qualification for users who have the Database Administrator permission.
Month End
Funding Calculations:
The funding calculator was excluding learners that have validation errors. They are now included.
FM36 Apprentices eligible for “National Skills Fund: Level 3 Adult Offer” were being assigned the wrong disadvantage uplift. Now fixed.
Balancing payments were not being paid for some Apprenticeship Standards on completion of their End Point Assessment. Now fixed.
The FM36 funding calculation was sometimes calculating framework uplifts incorrectly where residual TNPs had been added. Now fixed.
The FM36 funding calculation was withholding employer incentives for apprentices aged under 19 when they were recorded as a care leaver. Now fixed.
The projected funding calculation for FM36 apprentices was setting the effective date of overdue unpaid PMR derived claims to the PMR record’s expected date. This was resulting in the items not appearing in the Projected Funding reports. The effective date is now projected to be in the next unfinalled period.
Funding Reconciliation:
The “Price Episode Actual End Date” column has been added to the report generated by the Apprenticeship Data Match reconciler.
Additional filtering options have been added to ESF Contracting.
The QAR Reconciler is now available. This allows an ESFA QAR data extract to be uploaded and a report is produced showing any differences between the ESFA data and the PICS QAR data. A new QAR Reconciler permission has been created to restrict its use - this will need to be assigned by a database administrator before it will become visible.
...
Session GLH will now be defaulted based on the start and end time when creating a session
Added GLH to the export to excel function for the course sessions list
Total Sessions GLH has been added to the course summary page for Fixed Start Date Courses, this will sum up all the Sessions GLH for that course to compare with the Course Total GLH
Reports
Reports will now be aborted if they take more than 90 minutes to run. It was previously 120 minutes but this has been reduced in line with other report optimisations.
Customers with many UDF fields may have experienced an error with the ILR Aim Report. Changes have been made to avoid this in future.
Data Change reports are now available for Learners, Applicants, Officers and Organisations. These allow reporting on changes made to these records.
QAR Reports
The Interactive (Beta) option is no longer available for QARs. Instead, saved reports using Interactive output mode should be used.
The Interactive QAR now uses the terms Leaver, Achiever and Completed instead of referring to aims. This is to standardise with the terms used by the ESFA on the QAR reporting dashboard.
An Export Table option is now available in the Interactive QAR. This will export the current table view to a spreadsheet.
QAR Charts now show a title describing the report. These will also be included when exporting the chart to an image.
QAR charts and tables now use the multi-year format for years e.g. “2020 to 2021” instead of “2020”.
Learning Delivery Monitoring (LDM FAM) and Aim Provider Monitoring outputs are now available.
More fields are included by default when creating a new QAR report. This is to ensure that all information is available which details how the year and achievement data for a learner has been calculated.
Timely achievement rates no longer include learners who are still in learning and have not past their expected end date by more than 90 days on the date the report is run.
The QAR report can now be filtered by multiple contracts instead of just one.
Interactive reports which include calculations on decimal numbers now round the values to two decimal places.
The Qualification Plan and Qualification Plan Elements reports now include the following optional outputs:
Plan Training Negotiated Price
Plan Training Employer Contribution
Plan Training Employer Contribution Spread
Plan Assessment Negotiated Price
Plan Assessment Employer Contribution
Plan Assessment Employer Contribution Spread
Element Awarding Body (Elements report only)
Element Awarding Body Reference (Elements report only)
Element Level (Elements report only)
The Learner Claim History report would throw an error if there were any incomplete ESF records in the data for the report. These records are now not included.
Output of just “Non-ILR Aims” in the ILR Aims report was incorrectly identifying aims as “Non-ILR”, this has been corrected.
The HE fields have been removed from the ILR Aims Report and added to a new “Learner Higher Education Aims Report”.
BETA Feature: A beta version of Dashboards is now available for customers who have the eDashboard licence.
...
The wording of whether a Learner, ILR Aim, Destination & Progression, or Workplace is included in the ILR has been standardised across data entry and reports. The variations of Export Status, Report in ILR etc. are now all referred to as ILR Export Status with options of Include in ILR Export or Withhold from ILR Export. This will need updating in existing reports and documents that use this field.
Ending a Break-in-Learning will now copy forward the HHS, DAMs, Subcontractor/Partner UKPRN and Learning Start Date Postcode where appropriate.
Actions that change a Learner’s Break-in-Learning status now refresh the whole page to ensure that the correct Start, Cancel, and/or End options are shown.
Learner Sex is now an optional for non-ILR Learners.
Learner Status filtering now includes an option for “In Learning and Last Year Leavers”.
The Learner Reference Number can now be set if there is not already an existing LRN for that learner. This only affects commercial learners who have been stored in PICS for several years, or where a new learning episode has been created for such a learner.
Editing the postcode on the ILR Learner Edit screen will now trigger a background update of postcode information.
Changes have been made to the ILR validation to reflect the ESFA Validation Rules version 5. These include:
New rules LearnDelFamType_108, Fworkcode_07, AchDate_12 and R133.
EmpId_13 (Employer ID cannot be 999999999) has been downgraded to a warning.
Minimum duration rules for Apprenticeship Standards (DateOfBirth_46 and DateOfBirth_47) are now applied.
...
The filters for Reference and Purchase Order have been made easier to use in Any Of / Start with mode.
Reports
Reports will now be aborted if they take more than 2 hours to run.
Reports are now limited to 200 optional fields.
For outputs linked to organisations, the following fields have been added to help report on the geographic spread of linked organisations: Ward, Ward Name, Region, and Local Authority.
Site filters in all reports are now multi select.
New Reports
A new report, Contracts Report, has been added to report against contracts.
A new report, ESF Contracting Report, has been added to report against ESF Supplementary Data.
Learner Report:
Performance improvements have been made to populating fields defined on the base Learner report.
Performance improvements have been made to populating UDF fields.
Filtering by Apprenticeship Service Status has been added.
Output of Age Band has been added to show the current Age Band.
Output of Programme SSA Tier 1 Title has been added.
Output Programme SSA Title has been renamed to Programme SSA Tier 2 Title. This will need updating in existing reports and documents that use this field.
Output of Source Applicant ID has been added.
Output of ILR EPA Organisation ID and Location have been added.
Output of the “Current LSF” field has been fixed. It was previously showing “Any LSF”.
Output of Start / End Reported Period fields has been added.
Learner Assessment Report
There were 2 fields name Title - for the Learner honorific and the Assessment Title - which could cause errors. The Assessment Title field has been renamed “Assessment Title”. This will need updating in existing reports and documents that use this field.
ILR Learner Report
Non ILR Funding Organisation can be included in this report - you must specify the Funding Organisations to include in the report options.
Filtering by ILR Employment Status has been added. This will return Learners that have any Employment records with the selected Statuses
Filtering by ILR Employment Monitoring has been added. This will return Learners that have any Employment Monitoring with any of the selected values.
Learner ILR Aims Report
Non ILR Funding Organisation can be included in this report - you must specify the Funding Organisations to include in the report options.
Non ILR Aims can be included in this report - you must specify the Aim Types to include in the report options.
Filtering by “Aim records added between dates” has been added.
Filtering by “Aim records with completion fields changed between dates” has been added. The fields are End Date, Completion Status, Learning Outcome, and Employment Outcome. Achieve date is also included on Programme Aims.
Output of EPA Organisation Location has been added.
Output of HE fields has been added.
Reviews Report
Output of Count of Attached Files has been added.
Change Request Report
Filtering by the Date the request was rejected has been added.
Output of the Date the request was rejected has been added.
Output of the User who rejected the request was has been added.
QAR Report
A new report type has been added: Apprenticeship Component Aims. This allows you to report across all apprenticeship component aims instead of just the programme aims. This is the equivalent of the “Report on comp aims (not prog aims)” option in desktop reports.
Completion, Retention and Pass totals and charts are now available for all report types, not just Education and Training reports. A new menu to select the type of table you wish to display has been added to allow this to be selected.
Achievement Rate forecasting (minimum and maximum rates) has been added to the QAR report. This will calculate a maximum learner total based on learners who are still in learning and could potentially still achieve, this is added to the existing achievement rate. Maximum rates assume that all of these learner will achieve, minimum rates assume that none of them will. A new menu to select the type of table you wish to display has been added to allow this to be selected. Any existing reports must be re-run to calculate the forecasting data.
New QAR reports will default to use the Interactive output mode. Existing saved reports are unaffected.
Output of Outcome Grade has been added. This is taken from the Main Aim for reports based on Programme Aims.
The QAR report can now be filtered by Site, Contract, UKPRN, or ILR Export Status for learners and aims.
The QAR dataset now includes a QAR Notes output which provides helpful notes when the overall year is modified due to events such as overdue planned breaks, or programme aims at EPA.
Learner Timeliness report. This is a new report which shows the time taken to enter key dates on a learner or aim, such as start, end, or achievement. It also includes changes to key dates to allow better monitoring of when these changes occur.
...
Attachments now properly lock when the user they are assigned to has signed the form. This is indicated by a padlock symbol in front of the attachment name.
Attachments now show when they have failed validation. This is indicated by an “X” symbol in front of the attachment name.
Users with the DB Admin and Form Builder permissions can create test forms - these forms will auto fill with test data and are intended to help testing the placement of fields on the output signed document.
Added the ability to set the minimum and maximum length of answers for text and long text fields.
After a form is submitted, the system takes a bit of time to generate the signed document. While this is happening, the form’s status will now indicate that this is happening. You will need to wait until it has finished generating the document before the form can be approved.
Check boxes for users that have already signed the form will no longer be reset when the form is saved again.
Added a new section for all users that have FCA. This section will show all WebForms that you have been assigned as a signatory on. You will be able to navigate directly to these forms once they are ready to sign.
Added a new workspace tile that shows how many WebForms are ready for your signature. Click on the tile to view these forms.
Month End
Funding Calculator
The Funding Details report’s Process Warnings sheet now shows where a learner’s episode has ILR validation warnings or errors.
Projected Funding Calculations
Where an apprentice is in EPA, the calculation would forecast completion only in the next unfinalled period. It now forecasts completion on the expected end date if this is in the future.
ESF Contracting
It is now possible to bulk update the Payment Claimed, Payment Received, Subcontractor Claimed and Subcontractor Paid fields.
The ability to copy a single Supplementary Data Item, and the ability to copy forward multiple Supplementary Data Items has been added.
...
OneFile: A log of the most recent learner refresh can be viewed from the learner delivery plan summary.
OneFile: Improvements to support multi centre support for officers and organisations.
OneFile: DB Admin users can manually edit the OneFile ID of a qualification in PICS.
Smart Assessor: A log of the most recent learner refresh can be viewed from the learner delivery plan summary.
Smart Assessor: When enrolling a learner, we will automatically create any missing officer or employer records in Smart Assessor if they have not already been connected in PICS.
Smart Assessor: DB Admin users can manually edit the Smart Assessor ID of a qualification in PICS.
Postcode data is now automatically downloaded after a new postcode has been entered into PICSWeb. This includes Region, Local Authority and Ward. There is also a new Postcode Data section under Integrations where it is possible to download postcode data for all postcodes currently in the database. These fields have also been added to various reports.
Recruit An Apprentice has been updated to work with the new API, any existing keys will no longer work see the following blog post for more details https://www.pellcomp.co.uk/theblog/the-recruit-an-apprentice-api-is-changing
SMS: We are releasing a new SMS integration for PICSWeb using Twilio.
Reports
Reports spreadsheets now have filters on the title row.
Optional Fields may now have
symbol to explain more about the data shown in the fieldSuperior Code and Name has been added to Officer outputs.
Reports can now be Re-run if they are not the result of a scheduled report.
“Database Administrator” users can now access all saved reports.
Report now have “Full Name” and “Surname, First Names” fields.
New Reports
have been added for Qualification Plans and Qualification Plan Elements.
reports on Communications (Call, Email, SMS) has been added for Learners, Applicants, Organisations and Officers.
have been added for Officer Tasks.
Learner Reports
filtering by Provider Destination & End Codes has been added.
filtering by Has ever had a Break-in-Learning has been added.
output of Learner Title has been added.
output of Programme Aim Planned Hours has been added.
output of Site Parent has been added.
output of User who Entered the Leaner has been added.
output of Beyond Expected End flag has been added.
output of Expected Days of Learning and Elapsed Days of Learning have been added. These are derived from the episode dates if there are no ILR Programme Aims.
output of Learning Actual End has been added. This is derived from the episode dates if there are no ILR Programme Aims.
output of Learning Start Date has been added. This is derived from the episode dates if there are no ILR Programme Aims.
output of ILR Programme Planned Hours Progress has been added. This is logged Actual OTJ Hours / ILR Programme Planned Hours.
output of ILR Programme Planned Hours To Date has been added. ILR Programme Planned Hours * (Elapsed Days of Learning / Expected Days of Learning).
output of ILR Completion, Outcome and Withdrawal Reason ahs been added.
output of PICS Portfolio Type has been added.
output of Current LSF status has been added.
output of Has ever had a Break-in-Learning has been added.
ILR Learner Aim Report
can now be filtered by “originally starting between” and “ending or expected to end between”.
can now be filtered by Only Main Aim and First/Latest version of Aims.
filtering by Provider Destination & End Codes has been added.
Learner Qualification Report
can now be filtered by “ending or expected to end between”.
can now be filtered by Only Main Aim.
filtering by Provider Destination & End Codes has been added.
Session Attendance Report
outputs of LRN and ULN for Attendees have been added
output of Main Tag for Attendees has been added
Organisation Report
can now be filtered by System Status.
Officer Report
can now be filtered by DBS Date and Last Modified.
Vacancy Report
can now be filtered by Created, Opens, Closes and Expected Start dates.
Projected Funding Reports
these would throw an error when UDF (User Defined Form) values are selected as optional outputs. Now fixed.
Forms Reports
output of Form Owner Signature has been added.
User Reports
can now be filtered by Permission.
output of SaaS User Type added.
Month End
The FM36 funding reports now only show funding up to the period being reported - not the complete year.
ILR Exports
The exports list now shows the user who created the export. This field will only be populated for exports created after this version of PICSWeb has been released.
The exports list now shows ILR years on individual tabs and files created in 2017-19 are available for download.
There is now a “No Site” option sites filter when creating a new export - this is visible if the user does not have site restrictions preventing them accessing learners with no site code.
The Projected Funding calculation was not limiting the number of years into the future calculations were run for which would result in a very long runtime if a learner had an incorrect start date far into the future. Now fixed.
The ESF Contract Managager is now available within PICSWeb.
The ESF FM70 Funding Calculation process was causing the Funding Calculator Finalling process to take a long time for some users. Now fixed.
...
A new integration with bksb has been added to PICSWeb.
OneFile integration will now search for existing officers and organisations before trying to create a OneFile record, if the Other System ID is not set in PICS.
Smart Assessor integration added to PICSWeb. This a Beta version so is not automatically available - please contact us if you wish to use it.
Reports
The Claim History report would fail if optional fields containing information from the latest Programme Aim were selected. This is now fixed.
A report for Learner Contact and Learning Hours has been added.
A report for Learner Units has been added.
A report for Learner Evidence has been added.
A report for Course Session Attendance has been added. This offers output of both recorded Attendance and Expected Attendance.
A report for Opportunity Provisions has been added.
A report for Learner Enrolments has been added this includes per Enrolment and pre Learner Attendance analysis.
An Age Band at Start field has been added to Learner Reports: The following bands are used 0-15, 16-18, 19-24, 25+.
A “Learning Expected End” Date field has been added to Learner Reports. This is taken from the latest programme end if there is one. Otherwise it is the same as the Episode Expected End.
Learner Export status filtering has been added to the Learner Reviews Report.
Filters have been added to the Learner ILR Aims report to show there "Aim not Ended but Delivery Aim is Ended" and "Aim End Different To Delivery Aim End".
ILR Aim Report now includes filters for “Export in Current Year” and fields for Export in Current and Prior years.
A Learner Self Assessed Disability filter has been added to appropriate Learner reports.
ESF Contract Actual records are now included in the Learner Claims History report.
Opportunity Report now includes Date of Latest Status Change and Status Change Notes.
Learner Report includes Delivery Target and Delivery Model descriptions.
Learner and Officer reports include PICS Username & Last Login fields.
Officer Report now includes fields for Current Learner Caseloads.
The QAR Report no longer excludes aims which are at End Point Assessment if they ended before 1st August 2019.
Deleting saved reports which were sent to multiple users no longer results in an error.
The Projected Funding By Learners report and Projected Funding By Learning Delivery report now have “Projected End Period” and “Projected End Status” columns to help identify learners/aims that are in learning beyond their planned end date.
The Forms and Form Status History reports now includes more information about each signatory including email address and status.
The Forms and Form Status History reports now include fields for data fields Site, Qualification Plan Code and Start Date.
Learner Reports now include Latest Placement, Delivery Location, School and College and their Start and End Dates.
Learner Reports now have a filter for “Leaver or Expected End” in the date range.
User Report now has Site filtering options.
Course Reports now include the Qualification Plan the course is linked too and any Qualification Plans the Enrolees are linked too.
Learner Reports now have a calculated Age Band field - 16-18, 19-24 & 25+.
The learner progress fields now output as percentages formatted to 2 decimal places.
Actual and Planned Contact Hours fields are now formatted to two decimal places.
A filter on “Has Files of Type” has been added to the Learner, Applicant, Organisation and Officer reports.
More output fields for Opportunities linked to Applicants and Learners have been added to Applicant and Learner reports.
Head Office Feedback, Site, Qualification Plan, Start Date and many signature related fields have been added to Forms reports.
Month End
The Month End Funding Calculator now includes the FM70 calculations for ESF ILR derived items.
The user interface has been improved to allow easier switching between financial years.
Earnings Adjustment Statement Funding Lines starting “16 to 18” and “19 to 24” have been updated to “16-18” and “19-24”.
The Projected Funding calculations were not projecting Apprenticeship Achievements if the Programme Aim ended in the previous ILR Year.
...
Many fields in the Officer list are now optional.
An optional Roles field has been added to the Officer list.
Reports
Organisation information in Reports has been brought into line with how we show Officer information. This may effect some saved reports and/or document generation templates as we have has to change some field names.
ILR Learner Report now includes output of Next Year and Prior Year Learning and EEP Hours fields
ILR Learner Report now includes output of Has Aims with LSF.
ILR Learner Report now includes output of Latest TNPs.
New Report Template for Learner Review Summary. This report will be a row per learner showing last and next review fields, gap between last and next reviews, summary of total reviews attended/missed, and review history.
Appointment type has been added as a filter for appointment based report templates.
The interactive QAR report has been improved and now offers a summary table and several charts. Any existing saved interactive reports will need to be recreated to be compatible with the new format.
Apprenticeship Standard aims at EPA with Completion Status = 1 and Outcome = 8 are now excluded from the Apprenticeship Achievement Rates Overall report.
Organisations report now has filters for “Has Head Office”, “Has Branches“, and fields for “Branch Count“.
New: Learner Files Report. Produces a filtered report of learners and their associated files.
New: Applicant Files Report. Produces a filtered report of applicants and their associated files.
Month End
The ILR Exporter will no longer export prior attainment and aim FAM records which are exact duplicates of another for that learner or aim.
Earnings Adjustment Statement has been updated with Funding Lines and Adjustment Types for 2021.
Projected Funding now has it’s own page and now has a setting to run the Projected Funding automatically each evening.
The Funding Reconciler now has the option to store uploaded files for re-use when updating reconciliations.
The Funding Calculator now has the option for users with the Database Administrator permission to delete the most recently finalled period in each year.
...