This page lists some of the recent changes to PICS. We also have a list of known issues being investigated.
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7th March
Target Scans
The user experience when setting up target scope has been improved to allow scope stages to be created faster and with a more visual indication of what the value means.
Learners
When creating learner milestones, the milestone description is defaulted from the description of the relevant base data milestone.
Reports
The No Planned OTJ Hours recorded and No Actual OTJ Hours recorded at Apprenticeship completion fields in the Apprenticeship Accountability Framework report are now only set for aims with Funding Model 36. This is because these fields are not
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available in the ILR for other learners.
WebForms
The option lists for the Programme Aim ACT and Apprenticeship Contract Type fields have been updated to clarify that the options are for levy and non-levy employers.
Imports
BKSB_USERNAME and SMARTASSESSOR_ID can now be used as import fields on learner import.
Users
SaaS user type is now a column on the user list.
Indicator on the User Summary Screen if 2FA is required at system level.
Vacancies
New sort option on Vacancy list for “Closes” field.
Target Configuration
Option to Add Another when creating a new Target Scope.
Option to Add Another when creating a new Target Scope Stage in single and bulk mode.
Licences
The following Licences have been renamed within the system to better represent the features they govern:
Old Licence Name | New Licence Name |
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eApply | Sign Up Forms |
FCA | WebForms |
APIsForPICS | API |
eDashboard | Dashboards |
SchedRep | Scheduled Reporting |
19th February
Officers
Creating an officer from the main officer list was failing. Now fixed.
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Course Session and Course Enrolment Reports: Main Tag and Course Tags fields would only work if attendance based fields had been selected. Now fixed to include tags whenever they are requested regardless of other field selection.
Applicant based reports now have an additional output option, “ILR EHC”.
The Course Session Attendance Report has had the following output options added: Programme Type, Attendee Start Date, Attendee Expected End, Attendee Actual End, Sex, Disability, Age, Ethnicity, Episode Planned Hours, ILR Planned Hours, and Programme Status.
The filter “All Appointments between dates” on Applicant, Officer and Organisation appointment reports is now working as intended.
Imports
Organisation multi record update can now add and remove sites using the new fields: ADDSITES and REMOVESITES. For each column, the code of the site to add or remove must be provided. If more than 1 site needs to be adjusted, then a list of sites can be provided using the * character as a separator.
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When copying a WebForm design, it is now possible to change the type of the copied form. Note that any fields not compatible with the new form type will be removed from the copy.
Vacancies
The Vacancy Edit form’s list of Contacts was not being limited to those for the selected Employer. Now fixed.
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The LRS integration now uses the latest LRS client certificate, expiring in November 2024. You do not need to action any requests from the LRS to update your certificate as this is handled automatically by PICS.
Vacancies
When editing a vacancy, the list of Contacts would not always be of those related to the Employer. Now fixed.
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We can now enable the Advanced Mosaic theme by default for all users upon request
HTML Editors would not allow a link to be added correctly. Now fixed.
Fields that are always required now have a visual * indicator next to their label.
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General
Saved Reports list can now be sorted by Type, Created, or Name.
Appointment Description has been added to all Appointment reports.
Output of just the code values for User Defined Dropdown and Checklist fields has been added.
Database Administrators can now see all running reports from the Available reports tab, and abort them if required.
Duration can now be output for calls in all Communications reports.
Created By User information can now be output in all Files reports.
Learner
🆕 a Learner ILR Aim FAMs report has been added.
🆕 a Learner Vacancy Application report has been added.
ILR Learning Aim Report generation has been optimised.
ILR Destination & Progression Report generation has been optimised.
ILR Learner Report - Output of Actual OTJ Hours is now available.
Learner Component Report - Filtering by Component Type and Stage is now available.
Learner Component Report - Sampling Method now included in IQA summary.
Learner Sessions Report - Output of Attendance Notes is now available.
Episode Original Start and Learning Original Start dates can now be output on all Learner reports.
Reviews report can now be filtered to reviews that are Late or Overdue by a range of days.
Reviews report can now output the number of days Late or Overdue a review is.
Reviews report can now output if a review was Late or is Overdue.
Learner Data Changes report can now be filtered to records that have the Learner Main Qualification Reference in the Extra Key.
Learner Data Changes report can now be filtered Learner Achieved Target field.
City & Guilds Status can now be output in ILR Aim and Qualifications reports.
Prior Year Partner UKPRN can now be output in ILR Aim reports.
Needs Authorisation, Has Attachment and Unique ID are now available for output on Learner Change Request reports.
Contract code is now available for output.
Other System ID is now available for output.
More ILR Work Placement details are available for output on Placements reports.
Applicants
🆕 a Applicant Vacancy Application report has been added.
Created By User information can now be output.
Forms
Form Report generation has been optimised.
Filtering by Form Template is now available.
Form IDs are now a navigation link in interactive reports / dashboards.
Officer
Task Report - Output of Regarding and Done By Types and IDs is now available.
Projected Funding
Projected Funding By Learner Report - Two new optional outputs, “Total Episode Funding” and “Total Programme Funding” have been added.
Projected Funding By Learning Delivery Report - Two new optional outputs, “Total Aim Funding” and “Total Programme Funding” have been added.
Courses
The Course Session Attendance Summary report is now available. This allows you to see a summary of course attendance records broken down by type (present, late absent). The report is also available for use in dashboard widgets.
For Qualification details are now available for output.
Vacancies
The current user will be defaulted to the officer when they create a vacancy application.
Additional filters added for applications for Has CV Sent, Has Application Sent, Has Ended.
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⚠️ Column visibility on the Course list is now user controlled.
A Main Tag optional field is now available on the Course list.
Delivered For & Delivered By are now available on the Course list as optional fields and filters.
My Courses Only user permission has been renamed to View My Courses, this is now the required permission to see courses. View Courses has been renamed to View All Courses.
Users without View All Courses permission were not able to see any courses they created if Course Leader was not set to themselves after creating the course. Now fixed.
Users without View All Courses permissions was not restricting course base reports to just their courses. Now fixed.
Vacancies
Vacancy Applications now has bulk editing of more fields including Start & End dates, Contact & Officer and Outcome.
Vacancies & Vacancy Applications lists can now be filtered by Employer.
The Vacancy Application list now respects the sites of the linked Learner or Applicant record in Strict Site mode.
⚠️ The Vacancy Applications list is now filtered by the Vacancy’s Employer Sites in Strict Site Mode.
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Some subcontractor rates would show as “Unknown”. These now have relevant descriptions.
Users
⚠️ Important: Enforced Two Factor Authentication for all users can now be enabled in Users & Permissions.
A user's Two Factor Authentication settings can be reset in the User summary in cases where they have lost access to the device where the authenticator application is set up and they don not have access to any recovery codes.
User Group and Status has been added to Bulk Edit Users.
User Status has been added to Group membership list.
User Group list no longer shows irrelevant columns.
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⚠️ Important: Editing and display of Functional Skills Assessments have been brought in line with the Learner version. They are now displayed on a new tab “Functional Skills Assessments“. This includes the Date of the Assessment and Result fields.
Applicant List now has a filter for Course Enrolments with options Current, No Current, Future Starting and No Future Starting.
Assigning an Qualification Plan to an Applicant now defaults the Employer if specified in the Qualification Plan.
Qualification Plan and Applicant’s Home Postcode SOF are displayed on the Programme details.
Main Tag has been added as an optional display on Applicant Lists.
When entering new prior qualifications, the Title list no longer shows dormant titles.
LRN has been added as a filter on the Applicants list.
Email and Phone number are now shown on the list of related Officers.
Contracts can now be entered against applicants.
Applicants can now be registered on the LRS and a ULN downloaded. This feature is only available if the LRS Integration is enabled.
The LRS Personal Learning Record (PLR) can now be printed.
Imports
Updating Imports of Applicant records could be very slow if a significant number of User Defined Field answers were recorded for the records being updated. This has been significantly improved.
Single record Updating Imports of an Applicant will now perform the update rather than starting the interactive new Learner process.
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Document generation support has been added for Opportunities.
The Opportunities list can now have the fields displayed specified by the user.
The Main Tag optional field has been added to the Opportunities List.
Vacancies
⚠️ Important: In Strict Site Mode vacancies will only be visible to a user if the User has any of the Sites associated with the Employer Organisation linked to the Vacancy.
The Employer Organisation can now be specified when adding a Vacancy.
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Surveys for PICS are now available in BETA for anyone with an existing eSurveys licence.
Vacancies
Vacancy matching lists now have an Export to Excel option in the search filters More drop down.
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Trainee Assessors are not being included in the Edit Officer OneFile ID form. Now fixed.
Smart Assessor integration now has an option to push changes in qualification status up to Smart Assessor.
Reports
Important: Output of Postcode fields has been separated from general Address fields. We will be upgrading your stored reports to include this field if the Address field has been selected but please check the report outputs to ensure this has happened successfully.
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A new report template, “User Sites Report” has been added which shows the Sites each user is linked to (or not).
Filtering by Status has been added to the User report.
Filtering by Site on the User report has been changed to allow “Any of”, “All of”, “None of” options - this will break existing stored reports that have selections in this filter - please check your reports if you have used this. At the time of writing there is 1 customer with 1 report.
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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.
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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.
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It is now possible to select multiple records and add the same Note to them all.
Vacancies
Recruit An Apprentice vacancies have a new tab for selecting the qualifications candidates should have.
Recruit An Apprentice tab has had a significant rework and many fields have been changed or removed to match the new API Specification
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A form type of “Applicant File” has been added
Many Applicant fields were included in a form when editing an Applicant which could overwrite changes made - we now only include fields that are wanted on the template to prevent this.
WebForm Designs now support multiple sites.
Date and Checkbox defaults answers should now be working correctly.
Long text fields will now properly display new lines in the downloaded word document.
Added an ability to select the Authorising officer when approving a Learner Change Request form where the Change Request type requires authorisation.
Added the ability for Applicant, Applicant File, Organisation File and Learner File forms to be automatically approved and imported on completion.
Non mandatory signatures are no longer being treated as mandatory.
A field has been added for ILR Learner Support Funding (LSF) to Learner forms.
Learning Expected End Date will now be correctly calculated after switching to a different qualification plan.
Learning Expected End Date will no longer show as 01/01/1970 if there are no aim fields on the form.
Fields that end up off the page during the design process will be moved back onto the page.
Locked Organisation Details fields will now save correctly instead of becoming blank.
WebForm Designs can now be retired without creating a new version.
Redisplaying a Qualification plan field will now show both the reference and title instead of just the reference on the redisplay.
The left side page navigation is now visible on screens down to 1200 pixels wide. We now also show the page number on hovering over these.
The “Submit Form“/”Send for Remote Signature(s)” button should now more reliably show the right text.
Guest Fill & Sign is now much more resilient to timeouts caused by filling in long forms.
Users
A new user permission “View Learner Funding” has been added. Users with the “Funding Calculator“ permission will have the new permission added.
User list now shows Last Login
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An optional field for EDS reference has been added.
A filter for EDS reference has been added.
The organisations tab now allows adding Head Offices and Branches.
Vacancies
Recruit an Apprentice vacancies and their upload status are now indicated on the Vacancies List.
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Where a signature email has failed to reach the recipient (bounced, blocked or error) it is now possible to see more details by clicking on the email status.
More fields have been added to Learner File Forms including UDFs, UKPRN, Site Organisation, ILR Prior Attainment, Programme Name, Learning Expected End, Apprenticeship Standard and TNPs.
The codes behind picklist fields can be seen in the field editor.
WebForm templates can now be exported from, and imported into PICS.
Improvements to Fill and Sign validation that will allow for more flexibility when the form owner signs.
Aim level column for the qualification plan control.
Officer contact details display fields for Learners and Applicants.
Date fields can now do fixed or rolling max/min/defaults.
The Subcontractor field on Learner and Applicant forms is now working.
Fixed a bug that prevented Employer details showing on forms if the Employer selector was not on the form.
Users
It is now possible for Database Administrators to provide Pellcomp staff with temporary user accounts to assist in supporting issues. This tool should only be used when requested by Pellcomp.
Bulk update of User records has been adding including facilities for Add/Remove Sites, Deletion and Permanent Deletion.
Database Administrator Users can now edit a Users “Username”.
User list can now be Site and Permission filtered
User list now has an Update All feature for adding and removing Site links.
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