This page lists some of the recent changes to PICS. We also have a list of known issues being investigated.
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10th August
Learners
Data capture for learners now allows entry of 2024 ILR data:
Three new programmes have been added for capturing the new ILR funding models:
Tailored Learning (FM11)
Adult Skills Fund (FM38, no programme type code)
Combined Authorities Programme (Adult Skills Fund) (FM38, programme type 33)
The Tailored Learning Outcome field has been added.
An additional OET Employment Status Monitoring field has been added.
Planned Hours is now available for Tailored Learning component aims.
LLDD code 18 (down syndrome) is now available.
All historic data entry fields for 2022 have been replaced with 2023 fields.
Planned Learning and EEP Hours fields for 2025 are now available.
OET, NLM, SOF, LDM and DAM code lists have been updated.
T Level Tranistion Programme has been renamed T Level Foundation Year.
Framework and Pathway codes are no longer required for learners starting from 1st August 2024.
Learner Validation has been updated to conform to the ESFA 2024 ILR validation rules specification. However we have not removed references to Traineeships or Destination and Progression records as these rules can still be used to validate existing data within PICS.
The Learner List has a new optional column of “Learner ID”, this shows the learner’s internal PICS LMS episode ID.
The Advanced Learner Loans payment calculator has been updated to generate the first expected payment on the third Wednesday of the month following the second Thursday of the month on or after the loan start date.
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Scope ordering on the radar charts for target scans was not respecting decimal points in the scope code. Now fixed.
Files
Files with no file extension or where the extension is .svg
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, .htm, .py, and .apk can no longer be uploaded.
Month End
ILR Exports conforming to the 2024 ESFA ILR Specification can now be produced. 2022 ILR files can no longer be created, but existing files can be downloaded.
The QAR Reconciler can now read 23/24 QAR data extracts.
Funding calculations have been updated for the 2024 ILR Year, this includes the addition of Adult Skills Fund FM38 funding.
Reports
Changes to the Qualification Achievement Rates report:
The QAR report has been updated to conform to the 2023/24 QAR Techincal Specifications.
Traineeship aims are now included in the Education and Training report.
T Level Adult Pilot aims (LDM384) are now excluded from the E&T report.
A new option is available for the QAR report: Include previous-year Overdue Planned Breaks as withdrawals. This allows aims which started a planned break in the year before the report year to be included as withdrawals (as they were previously), or exclude them from the report. This is to remove withdrawals where the learner could theoretically still return before the year and and not negatively affect the achievement rates. Aims which are excluded are included in the Minimum Achievement Rate forecast as withdrawals.
The QAR calculation to determine the year an aim was first reported completed or withdrawn (which affects the overall/hybrid end year) now uses change logs from all years, not just the report year. This means that totals for previous years should not change when the report is run for a subsequent year.
Aims which ended more than 4 years ago but the Achievement Rates Overall Year override field is set to a year within the last 4 years will now be included in the QAR report.
Learner reports containing ILR data have now been updated to use the 2024 version of annual fields, unless the report field explicitly shows a different year.
Tasks
The Cancelled status is now available for Tasks using workflows.
Organisations
Organisation Automations could not be edited due to a missing link. Now fixed.
Provisions
Using the Add Another feature of provisions with certain types of provision would fail to correctly reload the create page. Now fixed.
29th July
Month End
Funding calculations were failing if there were any learners with a missing residential postocde postcode or aim delivery postcode. Now fixed.
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There are new fields for the officer job title value available on forms that already had the ability to add officer detail fields.
Organisations
Creating a new officer from the organisation summary page will now allow the relationship to be set directly rather than having to additionally set the relationship type.
Provisions
Adding provisions to a record has been streamlined by allowing you to indicate that you want to add another one immediately after adding the first one.
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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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Funding Forecasting now allows profiling up to 9,999 planned starts per period per age band per Qualification Plan.
The FM35 AEB Funding Calculations were calculating the wrong Devolved Authority Disadvantage Uplift for the Greater London Authority. Now fixed.
Organisations
Signup forms for employers/organisations, now have an option for Invoice Name.
Creating an organisation at the same time as providing their main contact record will now display the main contact in the organisation’s officer list.
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The filter to show officers with current learners was including officers with current applicants too. Now fixed to just limit to learners.
Organisations
Creating a new organisation will allow you to create their main contact at the same time
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Searching for courses to enrol a person onto will now correctly sort when mixing Online and Offline courses.
Provisions
SOC code provisions for vacancies, learners, applicants and opportunities now use SOC2020 codes. Any existing codes will be displayed as SOC (2020) codes.
When entering SOC provisions, we also use the job titles list to search for relevant SOC codes.
When matching vacancies, or filtering learners, applicants, vacancies or opportunities using SOC code, we will now show matching records where the SOC code starts with the filter, or where the filter starts with the SOC code.
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bksb
A new setting has been added to allow Diagnostic Skills Assessments to be downloaded.
Smart Assessor
A new setting has been added to set the Student ID in Smart Assessor to the PICS Learner Reference Number.
It is possible to create learners to Smart Assessor in bulk from the Learner List page when using the multi-select check boxes.
OneFile
A new setting has been added to allow changes to Learner and Qualification Start and Expected End dates to be pushed to OneFile when a Learner is synced.
Miscellaneous
File lists have been updated to allow multiple files to be downloaded in a single zip archive.
Notes: Notes no support HTML, and you can mention colleagues to notify them via PICS message by typing @ and then searching for them.
HTML Inputs: The font size drop down was not working. Now Fixed.
Sign Up Forms has improved double click protection to help avoid duplicate submissions
Temporary user accounts for PICS support staff will now need to be sent to the support member’s @oneadvanced.com email address rather than @pellcomp.co.uk.
Multi-day calendar events will now display as All Day events in day and week views
In rare situations, the Apprenticeship Details tab on the Qualification Plans page could constantly show and error. Now Fixed.
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List of organisations linked to an officer now has a status filter.
Organisations
List of officers linked to an organisation now has a status filter.
New tab on an organisation summary page for showing courses linked to the organisation.
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When enrolling people onto a course it was possible for them to be enrolled twice. Now fixed.
Organisations
Some subcontractor rates would show as “Unknown”. These now have relevant descriptions.
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The Tutor picklist on Session bulk edit is now correctly filtered by role.
Session Status is now displayed on Session lists.
Filtering by Session Status, Course Leader and Session Has/hasn’t Enrolments have been added to Session lists.
Organisations
Main Tag has been added as an optional display on Organisation Lists.
A Company Registration Number field has been added.
Organisation import can now update Name.
Email and Phone number are now shown on the list of related Officers.
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Data capture for learners now allows entry of 2022 ILR data:
It is now possible to record two OET values against an Employment Status record.
OET codes 2 and 3 are now available.
Skills Bootcamps can now be recorded with Funding Model 37 and Programme Type 32. Contract Reference Number and DAM FAMs have been enabled on programme aims to allow for this.
Combined Authorities programmes can be recorded with Programme Type 33. Learning Start Date Postcode has been enabled on programme aims to allow for this.
Preferred Method of Contact (PMC) cannot be recorded for learners starting on/after 1st August 2022.
Restricted Use Indicator (RUI) codes 6 and 7 cannot be recorded for learners starting on/after 1st August 2022.
Aim HE field Student instance identifier (NUMHUS) is no longer available in the 2022 ILR and has been moved to the 2021 fields section.
The LDM code list has been updated.
All historic data entry fields for 2020 have been replaced with 2021 fields.
Learner Validation has been updated to conform to the ESFA 2022 ILR validation rules specification.
Data capture, WebForm fields, imports, reporting has been added for the new Recognised Prior Learning fields required in the Apprenticeship Service Bulk Upload.
The new Recognised Prior Learning fields required in the Apprenticeship Service Bulk Upload are now included.
Data capture has been improved for aim Export In Year and Historic fields to allow for incorrect data to be corrected.
When creating a PICS login for a learner with multiple episodes, any existing login on a different learning episode will be moved to the selected episode instead of a second login account being created.
It is now possible to manually move a learner login from one learning episode to another.
Learners can now be removed from a workflow with the option to clear the current status and status history. This option functionality is only available to users with the DB Admin permission.
Users with Portfolio Edit permissions can now edit learner notes.
Learners signing reviews can now complete the learner rating field.
Signatures for Reviews and Evidence that have not yet been completed now have an option to Send a Reminder.
Deleting a review which had some signatures attached would appear to succeed even if the review wasn’t deleted. An error message is now correctly shown if the review could not be deleted due to it having signatures.
Gap Analysis: The mark achievements as done feature will now work with units without outcomes, and outcomes without criteria, rather than just at criteria level.
Users with Edit Portfolio permission can now create contact hours from course sessions.
Organisations
Organisations can now be removed from a workflow with the option to clear the current status and status history. This option functionality is only available to users with the DB Admin permission.
The Description field will now populate correctly when editing Additional Details.
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Archiving of records has been added the the Database Admin Actions.
Organisations
More fields including Main Officer, Main Contact, SEM and ACT have been added to the import specification.
More fields including Main Officer, Head Office, ACT, SEM, Size Band and H&S Band have been added to the bulk edit.
Main Officer has been added as an optional field to the Organisations List.
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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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Failed documents should now be correctly recovered if the retry succeeds.
Illegal XML chars will no longer cause document generation to fail.
Program end date will no longer be reset each time a from with a qualification plan selector but no aim fields is loaded.
Added the ability to save fields and then re-use them in other forms. This will be most useful for single selects with lots of answers.
Added an additional Learner Signature. This is intended for use when the learner needs to sign twice at different stages of the form. E.g. Learner → Officer → Learner → Form Owner.
Miscellaneous
The Licences and Accounts page now shows the number and size of files stored in PICS.
Employment Status fields were not being populated when Generating a Document for ILR Learner and ILR Learner Aims, now fixed.
The message shown when requesting a password reset from the login page no longer states that an email has been sent, and now suggests that an email has only been sent if the email address entered matches a valid user email address.
The import of csv data from Recruit An Apprentice has been brought in line with the changes made by the Apprenticeship Service.
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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.
The End date field has been added to the Additional details.
Organisations
It is now possible to select multiple records and add the same Note to them all.
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It is now possible to select multiple Qualification Plan records and set the status.
It is now possible to set the Review Type titles.
It is now possible to view and edit Provider Details in the Licences and Account area.
It is now possible to edit Assessment Grades.
It is now possible to edit Officer titles.
It is now possible to set Export in ILR and Aim Provider Monitoring (A and B) in Contracts.
It is now possible to edit Placement End Reason.
It is now possible to edit payment Cost Centres.
Learner configuration has been moved from the learner list to the Configuration section.
The Create button in Tags was only visible to users with the “Create Opportunities” permission. Now fixed.
It is now possible to set up ESF Subcontractor Rates for Contracts in the Configuration section.
Miscellaneous
Text filters now have a “Starts with” option.
Attachments sent via Dropbox email could be corrupted. Now Fixed
When entering addresses it is now possible to search for the address based on the entered postcode.
Attachments from FCA forms would not work in Remote Fill and Sign if it didn’t already exist. Now fixed.
Applicant Offer Provider Addresses were not populating in the Generate Document process . Now fixed
There is a new Show Permissions button in the top toolbar that will highlight features that need permissions.
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The officers tab now allows adding Superiors and Direct Reports.
Organisations
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.
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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.
Miscellaneous
If an email to a user account has been blocked (usually because the email address doesn’t exist), a warning is shown on the Workspace page when the user logs in.
EAS Export file was not using 24 hours clock for the time portion of the filename, this has been fixed.
The Home page now has tiles for Learner Change Requests that need Authorising or Actioning
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When using the SEM (Small Employer) monitoring field in WebForms, the code list now shows the correct SEM codes. Previously it was showing the code for SEI (Self Employed).
ILR RUI picklists no longer include Death and Illness options.
ILR DAM fields are now included.
ILR ACT picklist now includes an option for “ACT 1 Non Levy”
The source of form signatory emails and the order they get sent out in can now be defaulted at form design time.
New form type: Learner File Form. It’s like the Organisation File Form, but for Learners.
New display only fields for:
Learner/Applicant
Full Name
Age at Start (used in conjunction with the Qualification Plan)
Current Age (used in conjunction with the Date of Birth the field)
Form Owner
Full Name
Form owners will now have a little more control over their own forms until they are submitted. This means that issues like forms being sent out to incorrect email addresses can now be fixed directly by the form owner.
Improvements to single and multi-line field display on the Answers tab.
Form templates can once again be permanently deleted.
Change Request Forms will now properly attach to the change request regardless of the number of additional attachments on the form itself.
Added the ability to Clone an instance of a form to a new form instance using the latest version of the form template.
URL fields will now show in the downloaded word document.
Improvements to repeat fields which were not working in some instances.
Organisations
Many fields in the Organisation list are now optional.
An optional Roles field has been added to the Organisations list.
Organisations list now has filters for “Has Head Office”, “Has Branches“.
Contract Numbers for ESFA Agreement IDs are now limited to 6 characters to match the Apprenticeship Service specification.
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