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This page lists some of the recent changes to PICS. We also have a list of known issues being investigated.

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Learners

  • The ADL and ALB FAM values recorded against learning aims were not being set when a learner is reinstated after a break in learning. Now fixed.

  • The Aim Planned Hours field is now visible when creating a new Tailored Learning learner. If a value is stored against the main aim in the qualification plan, this will be used to populate the field.

  • The ILR validation now conforms to version 3 of the ILR validation rules specification.

Month End

  • The Apps Co-Investment Contributions funding reconciler has been updated to recognise the multi-sheet xlsx version of the report.

Reports

  • The output options “Learner Funding Age Band” and “Aim Funding Age Band” found on some ILR based reports were not outputting a value for FM38 Adult Skills learners. Now fixed.

  • Three new fields have been added to learner reports:

    • Functional Skills Maths Required

    • Functional Skills English Required

    • Functional Skills ICT Required

  • Some small optimisations have been applied to the reporting tools in general.

Generic

  • The File sections for both Learners and Applicants have been updated to appear more consistent between the two areas.

  • When an error is encountered sending a message in an SMS Communication Automation (such as a badly formatted mobile phone number), the automation would stop and no further messages would be sent. This has been fixed so the automation will continue and remaining messages will still be sent.

  • Workflow Diagrams will now hide statuses not included in the workflow by default. There is a toggle to show them if required.

  • Some automations now have an option to give a short summary of the last run.

API

  • We are implementing a rate limit of 100 endpoint calls per minute on the PICS API. The API will return status 429 for users that exceed the limit as which point you will be required to wait (up to) a minute before being allowed to do more calls. Authentication calls are not included in this limit and have a separate one of their own.

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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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  • 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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