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

We also have a report on potential breaking changes to any third party tools using reports from PICS in our Report Field Changes Log

Coming Soon

31st May 2025

Integrations

• Postcode updates were failing where descriptions for linked Wards contained characters with diacritics. Now fixed.

Users

• Users that are set up to use oneAdvanced Identity / Single Sign On were unable to update their email addresses from PICS LMS if multi-factor authentication was enabled. Now fixed.

Reports

• The Learner Enrolments report and Applicant Enrolments report were failing if the Course Attendance Summary or Learner Attendance Summary output options were selected. Now fixed.

24th May 2025

API

• The following have been made available via the Learners endpoint: LearningExpectedEndDate, StandardCode, and Standard Level.

Dashboards

• On rare occasions Widgets on the Dashboard would show a “Data cannot be found” error, with no facitily to remove the widget. A new option has been added to these widgets to allow the dashboard owner, or DBAdmin, to remove the widget.

Forms

• When editing Single Select questions on Applicant WebForms for system-set answers, a new option has been added “Update to empty when no option selected?”. When selected, any blank reponses for that question when editing an Applicant will clear the data linked to that answer.

• Signup Forms for courses that prevent overbooking, but have been overbooked, now prevent the applicant from completing the form and instead displays a message saying that the course is overbooked.

• Date and Time fields on UDFs that are set to Mandatory would only respect the Mandatory condition if a Min or Max value had also been specified. Now fixed.

Imports

• Applicant imports were not correctly identifying duplicates. Now fixed.

Learners

• When editing the Start Date a reinstated aim (after a break in learning) the corresponding Delivery Plan Qualification’s Start Date would incorrectly also be updated. Now fixed.

Reports

• The Users Report now has the optional output “ASSO ID”

Target Scans

• When editing a Delivery Target, a new option, “Show full Target Scope desciptions in Target Scans” has been added. This will display the full description alongside the truncated title of the Target Scope when answering a Target Scan for that Delivery Target.

Workflows

• When setting up Validation for a Workflow Transition with a Record Type of “Appointment” selected, the Appointment Type list would sometimes not show. Now fixed.

Configuration

• A new section has been added to both Applicant and Learner configuration, “Custom Action,” which can be used to set up custom action buttons which will be displayed on each Applicant/Learner record.

General

• Prior Qualification lookup lists on WebForms and on edit forms for applicants and learners would often take a long time to populate, and would freeze a users web browers if there were a huge number of Prior Qualifications configured in the data. Now fixed.

Users

• The Advanced SSO ID is now displayed on the User Summary for any users using Advanced SSO/Identity

12th April 2025

Courses

• Entering some GLH times (such as 01:04) against session attendance would result in the stored value changing by one minute. Now fixed.

Learners

• When comparing target scans on the Target Scope page, the labels on the spider diagrams were incorrect. Now fixed.

• Surveys and Functional Skills Assessments are now visible to Learners when logged into PICS.

• Performance enhancements have been added when sending SMS messages to multiple learners.

Workflows

• A Send Notification workflow status change action is now available for Payment workflows.

Month End

• Funding Calculations were failing to run when there existed an invalid Apprenticeship Achieved date against any learners included in the calculations. Now fixed.

29th March 2025

• Any user with the Use Target Scans permission can now validate target scans.

15th March 2025

User Defined Forms

• Editing a User Defined Form would sometimes take a long time to load, or in rare cases would time out and return an error. Now fixed.

13th March 2025

Courses

• There was an issue not being able to delete enrolments from Learner or Applicant Summary pages. Now fixed.

Forms

• Clone and Retire would error if signature reminder automations were configured without a form template filter. Now fixed.

8th March 2025

Learners

• The ILR validation now conforms to version 5 of the ILR validation rules specification.

Forms

• Signup forms can now be used in iframes on external web sites.

• Responses that contain unknown codes now display “Unknown: [code]” when displaying UDF details.

• A warning message is now displayed when editing a UDF or Survey that already has responses.

• When Clone and Retiring a Webform, an option is now displayed to link any signature reminder automations to the newly cloned version of the form.

• Where a signature reminder automation is linked to a retired version of a Webform, the webform name will be prefixed with “(Retired version n)” in the Template name list.

• A new option has been added to Signature Reminder Automations to “Send Reminders for all versions of the selected Form Templates”. When selected, reminders will be sent for all versions of the Webform in the list of Templates.

• It is now not possible to delete a Webform Template which is linked to a Signature Reminder Automation.

Reports

• Aim are no longer excluded from the QAR report if the Overall Year Override flag is set.

• The Days Since Last Completed Activity field in the Opportunity Report was not outputting data for recently completed activities. Now fixed.

• The “Most Recent First” options for Sort Order on the Learner Reviews Report were not being respected. Now fixed.

Users and Accounts

• A new setting is available on the User List to update the email address of OneAdvanced Identity (ASSO) user accounts when the email address in PICS is changed.

Courses

• A new option has been added to the options screen for Courses: “Prevent Overbooking”. When selected, users will not be given the option to ignore overbooking warnings when enrolling participants on courses with no remaining seats.

8th February 2025

Applicants

• A new status workflow post-transition action is now available: Create Linked Contact User Account. This allows you to trigger account creation and invitation emails for any contacts linked to the applicant via the specified relationship types, or where the applicant employer is the contact’s main organisation.

• When viewing a Target Scan for an applicant, the status workflow dropdown would show options for a learner instead of an applicant. Now fixed.

Configuration

• KSBs for an Apprenticeship Standard can now be imported from IfATE into an empty delivery target.

Imports

• Adding tags to imported records is now optional for Applicant, Organisation and RAA imports.

Learners

• Validation rule LearnDelFamType_122 would be triggered incorrectly if DAM 023 is recorded or if the aim has LARS category 37. Now fixed.

• A new API endpoint is available to retrieve learner placement and employer information: /api/v1/learners/{id}/placements.

Month End

• LSF payments are now only paid to Adult Skills learners (FM38) if the LSF FAM is active on the last date of the month or if the aim starts and ends in the same month.

Signup Forms

• Signup form answers to questions in User Defined Forms with a visibility group restriction would not be saved. Now fixed.

1st February 2025

Enrolment Forms were displaying dormant Prior Qualification Grades and Levels. Now fixed.

29th January 2025

Learners

• LDM codes have been updated

26th January 2025

Courses

• It was not possible to enter notes when edting Attendance for Sessions when more than one record was checked. Now fixed.

22nd January 2025

Learners

• Sending out a Review with Contact or Learner UDFs for signatures would fail to load. Now fixed.

• Contact and Learning Hours with On Job Type not set were hidden. Now fixed.

18th January 2025

API

• Various security improvements have been implemented.

Applicants

• The data on the RPL tab can now be exported to spreadsheet.

Appointments

• Cloned appointments now have the same Status Workflow as the source appointment.

• The Appointment conflict checking feature (if activated) now only checks for conflicts when an appointment is saved, reducing the number of database queries required and improving performance.

Configuration

• A matrix view is now available when configuring a Target Scope. This allows bulk updating of Stages across different Sxope items.

• A new Learner configuration option has been added under a new “Files” section, “Default files to visible”. When selected, any file that is generated or uploaded for a learner will default to being made visible to the learner.

• A new section has been added to the Section Configuration: Vacancies with an Applications tab with a single option “Default Application Officer to Vacancy Officer”. When enabled, on creating a new vacancy application, the officer of the application will be set to the officer of the linked vacancy.

General

• When editing mobile phone numbers against learners, applicants or officers, the value entered is now validated to check it is a valid phone number.

• When entering the body of an SMS message, the number of characters and number of messages to be sent is now displayed.

• When sending bulk SMS messages, the number of recipients, and the total number of messages to be sent for all recipients is now displayed.

• The description for “Skills Bootcamp - DPS Competition” Contract Items has been updated to include the contract “Wave” version.

Learners

• An RPL tab is now available on the ILR for customers on our RPL early adoption programme. This shows any RPL data imported from the applicant when the learner was created.

• The Actual Funding and Projected Funding tabs on a Learner’s ILR record' Funding Details list was showing funding back to only the first period of 2019. This has been fixed and now displays funding back to the first period that the learner received funding.

• The ILR validation now conforms to version 4 of the ILR validation rules specification.

• The Status Change button for Review Details access from a calendar view were not working. Now fixed.

Officers

• A new tab, “Applications,” has been added for officer records. This tab displays a list of vacancy applications that are linked to the officer.

Reports

• Optimiations have been made to improve the performance of the Officer and Learner Appointments reports.

WebForms

• The most recent validated Target Scan can now be shown on a WebForm.

• Qualification Plan selections are now limited to those linked to the site of the learner or applicant when the Site selection does not exist on a form

12th December

• Qualification Plan lists on WebForm instances were not initally being filtered to those linked to the site of an Applicant. Now fixed

7th December

Month End

• Completion payments were not being generated by the funding calculator for FM38 learners. Now fixed.

20th November

• Distance Field now available in the Applicant Vacancy Applicantion Report

  We’re excited to announce a new enhancement to the Vacancy Application Report! We've introduced a dedicated field Application Distance that enables customers to easily determine the distance between the applicants postcode and the organisation's postcode. This new feature is designed to provide significant value, helping customers make more informed decisions when matching learners to local vacancies.

• Assigning Delivery Targets to a Qualification Plan - This is no longer part of the PICS Portfolio license and has been moved into the Skills Scan License.

19th November

• There was an issue with some dropdowns disappearing when redirected to the edit form after creating a record. Now fixed

13th November

Sign Up Forms

• When editing or creating a sign up form, the list of new fields to add was always empty, which isn’t very useful. We’ve put the available fields back in now.

12th November

Forms

• Remote Signature Sequencing was not being respected. Now fixed.

Month End

• Reports created from Funding Reconciliation would be blank. Now fixed.

9th November

Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

Various new features are now available to early adopters to assist in the calculation of adjustments to apprenticeship duration and off-the-job (OTJ) hours as a result of RPL. These include:

• Assigning duration and OTJ hour reductions to KSB stages

• Validating target (skills) scans to ensure an appropriate KSB stage for the applicant is selected

• Using the validated scan to calculate reductions to duration, OTJ hour and negotiated training price (TNP)

• Applying any reductions to the learner record when created from the applicant

Applicants

• A new configuration setting has been added, “Automatically generated Learner Reference Number”, which will automatically generate Learner Reference Numbers for applicants added to the system.

Appointments

• Learner and Applicant attendee names are now shown in the event popup in the appointment calendar view.

• New bookmarks have been added to the appointment workflow transition Notification action:

  • Learner Main advisor Email

  • Learner Main advisor Mobile

Automations

• Some tooltips for contact methods in Applicant, Appointment, and Organisation based communication automations incorrectly referenced “Learners”. Now fixed.

• New bookmarks have been added to Appointment communication automations:

  • Appointment Organiser Mobile Number

  • Appointment Organiser Email Address

  • Training Officer/Careers Officer/Placement Officer/Mentor First Names

  • Training Officer/Careers Officer/Placement Officer/Mentor Surname

  • Training Officer/Careers Officer/Placement Officer/Mentor Email address

  • Training Officer/Careers Officer/Placement Officer/Mentor Mobile Number

• New bookmarks have been added to Course Enrolment communication automations:

  • Course Leader Email Address

  • Course Leader Mobile Number

  • Delivered By Name

  • Delivered By Address (1 - 5)

  • Delivered By Postcode

  • Next Session Start Time

Learners

• Learner FAMs EDF, HNS and SEN can now be imported when creating a new learner record.

• A Plan ILR Planned Hours import field has been added to WebForms to show the Planned Hours set against the Qualification Plan selected in the dropdown, if that field is also on the form.

• When creating a Task from a learning component with a Task Template containing UDF fields, the new task now contains all UDF answers from the template where the location is set to Create & Details or Details. Previously, only answers for location Details would be defaulted.

• When viewing a Course component where the learner is enrolled on the course, a new Course Sessions tab shows a list of course sessions relevant to that enrolment.

• The MathGrade_04 and EngGrade_04 validation rules incorrectly referred to the HNS FAM code. Now corrected to refer to MCF and EDF respectively.

• Weekly working hours can now be added to learners during the creation process. These will be used in future features to calculate and validate the minimum required off-the-job hours for an apprentice.

Month End

• The ILR exporter no longer sends apprenticeship financial records with a date after the year end.

• The ILR exporter now longer suppresses achievement dates after the year end unless the aim funding model is 36 or 99.

• The funding calculations were not paying LSF payments for Adult Skills Fund learners with a planned duration less than one month. Now fixed.

• Achievement payments were not being paid for some devolved Adult Skills Fund learners. Now fixed.

• The Funding Calculator’s T-Level funding report now displays the T Level Framework and Pathway

Reports

• The QAR English or Maths field could show the opposite value for some learning aims. Now fixed.

• The ILR Aims report now populates the Aim Planned Hours field for Tailored Learning component aims.

• A Tailored Learning Outcome Area field has been added to the ILR Aims report.

• FM38 (Adult Skills Fund) aims are now included in the Education and Training QAR report.

• FM11 (Tailored Learning) aims are now included in the renamed Community and Tailored Learning QAR report.

22nd October

Reports

• Officer Report: New Optional Field for Additional ID

7th October

Files

• Learner and Applicant File Deletions would fail. Now fixed.

• Downloading a file from Review signing as a guest would ask the user to login. It now recognises their guest status.

• Signup forms including attachments could error if the title of the file was over 50 characters long. Now fixed.

5th October

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.

25th September

Month End

• The FM36 Funding Calculator was generating Co-Investment Payment claim items instead of Levy Payment claim items for Levy funded apprentices that started on or after April 1st, 2024 and were under 22 years old when they started their programme. Now fixed.

Courses

• The course timetable report would error when ran from a room summary page. Now fixed.

Calendar

• Appointment start time would be incorrectly defaulted when using appointment templates. Now fixed.

21st September

Month End

• Aims starting in the 2024 ILR Year on programmes that started in previous years were sometimes preventing some learners from generating funding when running the funding calculations for the 2023 ILR Year. We now exclude aims starting in future years from the funding calculations.

14th September

Appointments

• The appointment type can no longer be changed if the appointment is linked to a PICSWeb template, regardless of the version.

• Calendar views are now refreshed when an appointment status is updated in the preview screen.

• iCal Feeds were starting to take a little while to load, so we have speeded them up a bit.

Courses

• When searching for a course for a learner or applicant, if the course starts and ends on the same day and only has a single session on that day, the session time is displayed.

• A Course Details tab is now available on the Component Summary page when viewing a course component and the learner is enrolled on a course.

Generic

• Document Generators have had some performance improvements.

• The OneAdvanced Mosaic Theme now has an option for dark mode. This is a beta feature.

8th September

Webforms

• Using a links to complete a web form, sign a review, or complete a survey could result in an error about an Invalid Token. Now fixed.

7th September

Month End

• Earning Adjustment Statement for 2024 is now available.

Calendar

• The workspace calendar will now use officer appointment templates if configured.

Workflows

• When using the Notification status transition post-action to send an email, any email bounces are now detected and shown on the Recent History tab of the record where the status was changed. The Retry button can be used to resend the email after any changes to the email address has been made.

2nd September

Month End

• The FM38 Adult Skills Fund funding calculations were not calculating achievement payments for North East Mayoral Combined Authority (SOF 120) learners recorded with DAM 002. Now fixed.

31st August

Learners

• DAM code lists have been updated

• Document generator for ILR learners could fail to merge ILR specific fields. Now fixed.

Month End

• The FM38 Adult Skills funding calculations have been updated to match the latest version of the FIS.

• Study Programme Historic Rates are now available for 2024.

• Process Warnings have been updated within the calculation process.

• Funding Reconciliations are now available for 2024

Reports

• Cancelling the report options screen could be a touch on the slow side, so we’ve speeded it up.

Generic

• Starting a trial licence, such as the Apprenticeship Accountability Framework Dashboard, could take an hour for the trial to kick in. These will now start immediately.

30th August

Month End

• When running funding calculations for the 2023 ILR year, the FM36 Apprenticeship Funding Calculation was excluding aims from episodes where the episode originally started before the 2024 ILR year and there exists a restarted programme aim starting in the 2024 ILR year. Now fixed.

21st August

Learner Validation

• Rule LearnDelFAMType_02 now displays the correct funding model in the error message.

• Rule LearnDelFamType_117 is no longer triggered for aims with a LARS Learning Delivery Genre code EOU.

17th August

Learners

• ILR Validation:

  • LearnDelFAMType_22: The 2023 Full or co-funding indicator (FFI FAM) must not be recorded for aims with 2023 Funding Model 10, is no longer triggered whem the 2023 Funding Model is 10.

  • LearnDelFAMType_111: The 2023 Full or co-funding indicator (FFI FAM) is required for aims with 2023 Programme Type 32 is now triggered if the 2023 Programme Type is 32 and there is no 2023 FFI value entered.

  • ILR Export Status is Required is no longer triggered for Destination and Progression records.

• The 2022 export status fields are no longer visible in Destination and Progression records.

• The Action Plan validation level can now be configured in Configuration > Sections > Learners > Validation. When set to Error, Action Plan documents and WebForms can not be created.

• Deleted task records are now hidden when viewing learner components.

• When creating a task component using a task template, any UDF answers from the template are now populated against the task.

• When adding a learning aim using the Add Learning Aim from Qualification Plan menu item, any aim Provider Monitoring fields specified in the qualification plan will now be populated against the new aim.

Month End

• Funding Reconciliation reports were duplicating data across report sheets. Now fixed.

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.

• 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, .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.