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

What have we done? Added validation that checks a learner's planned programme hours against the minimum Off-the-Job (OTJ) hours required by their apprenticeship standard.

Why have we done this? Programme administrators needed a way to catch potential compliance issues at the point of creating a learner record, rather than discovering them later.

How will you benefit? You'll receive a clear warning whenever planned hours fall below the required minimum, helping you stay compliant with programme standards from the outset.

Details:

• The warning appears when creating a new learner if the planned programme hours entered are below the minimum OTJ hours defined for that standard on the Skills England website.

• An audit trail is maintained so that any validation events are recorded for compliance purposes.

• This affects programme administrators and anyone involved in setting up learner records.

What have we done? Updated all reports that use annual and historic ILR fields so they correctly reflect 2025 historic values, 2026 current values, and 2027 future planned values.

Why have we done this? Each new ILR year requires field references to roll forward so that reports remain accurate and compliant with the latest data specifications.

How will you benefit? Your ILR-based reports will reflect the correct data for the 2026/27 year without any manual adjustment needed.

Details:

• The HE Aim report no longer includes the "Completion of Year" field, as it has been removed from the ILR specification.

• The Learner Payments report has a new Include RIP Records filter, allowing you to report specifically on the new RIP (Recognition of Prior Learning Income Payment) records.

• The ILR Learner and Aim reports now include outputs for the new aim planned hours RPL reduction (hours type 4).

What have we done? Updated the Epiroll tool to support the new 2026/27 ILR year, including how data is written for new episodes and aims.

Why have we done this? The Epiroll process needed to reflect current and previous year ILR fields correctly, and to incorporate new RIP and RPL hours reductions introduced for 2026/27.

How will you benefit? Epiroll submissions will accurately represent your learners' data under the new ILR year rules, reducing the risk of errors or non-compliance.

Details:

• The tool now uses both current year and (where applicable) previous year annual and historic fields when writing Epiroll data.

• RIP (Recognition of Prior Learning Income Payment) and RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) hours reductions are now included in the Epiroll process.

• Improved funding calculations for the FM38 Adult Skills Fund to reflect the updated 2026 rates, ensuring historical funding data remains unaffected.

• Updated FM25 funding calculations with the new rates for 2026, keeping your funding reports accurate for the current year.

• Updated QAR (Quality and Achievement Rate) calculations to support the 2026/27 reporting year.

• Applied a range of behind-the-scenes ILR compliance updates to keep PICS aligned with the latest 2026/27 ILR and funding regulations.

• Fixed an issue where a Cognassist refresh would produce an error for learners who had completed their assessment but had not been identified as requiring additional support — these learners will now be handled gracefully without showing an error message.

• Fixed an issue where emails sent with a Dropbox address in BCC were not reliably appearing in the Client Communications section of PICS.

• Fixed an error that could occur when updating the status of multiple forms at the same time, which was caused by a database transaction conflict.

• Fixed an issue affecting the copying of applicant files.

What have we done? When approving an "Edit Applicant in WebForms" form, PICS now automatically detects if any fields on the applicant's record were changed after the form was originally sent out, and displays a clear warning table highlighting exactly which fields are in conflict.

Why have we done this? Previously, approving a completed WebForm could silently overwrite manual changes made to an applicant's record in the meantime — for example, if a Main Officer was reassigned while the form was still outstanding — causing unintended data loss.

How will you benefit? Approvers can now see at a glance where conflicts exist and choose which value to keep, giving you full control over your data and preventing accidental overwrites.

Details:

• The warning table appears on the approval screen and lists each conflicting field, showing both the current applicant value and the value captured in the form.

• For each conflicting field, you can use radio buttons to select which value should be retained.

• The current applicant value is selected by default, so no action is needed unless you specifically want the form's value to take precedence.

• This applies to all "Edit Applicant in WebForms" approvals where the applicant record was updated after the form was created.

What have we done? When previewing a Microsoft Office file (Excel, PowerPoint, or Word), PICS now generates a secure, time-limited URL that expires one minute after it is created.

Why have we done this? Previously, the preview URL generated for Office files remained publicly accessible, meaning it could potentially be shared with — or accessed by — people who do not have a PICS account.

How will you benefit? Your files and reports are better protected, as preview links become unusable after one minute and cannot be shared to grant unauthorised access.

Details:

• This applies to previews of .xlsx, .pptx, and .docx files.

• After the one-minute window, any attempt to reuse the link — including clicking "View full size workbook" in an Excel preview — will result in an error. Simply re-open the preview from within PICS to generate a fresh link.

• This feature only affects organisations that have File Preview enabled.

• Fixed an issue where the Main Aim Planned End Date was not being updated when a duration reduction from the RPL (Recognition of Prior Learning) calculator was applied — the end date now correctly reflects the reduced programme length across all relevant aim records.

• Fixed an issue where EPA and gateway aims (non-funding-body tracking aims) were not having their start and expected end dates rolled back when an RPL duration reduction was applied, so these aims now align accurately with the adjusted programme timeline.

• Improved the RPL Notes field in WebForms (Applicant, Learner, Applicant File, Learner File, and Learner Change Request) so that it now displays as a multi-line text area, making long notes much easier to read rather than appearing as a single unbroken line of text. (Note: existing forms will need to be cloned and updated via Configuration > Forms and Themes > WebForms to benefit from this change — please contact your administrator for assistance.)

What have we done? We've added a dedicated Skills Scan page accessible from the left-hand navigation panel in the combined learner experience.

Why have we done this? Learners previously had no single place to review and compare their Skills Scan responses over time.

How will you benefit? You can now easily track your progress by comparing your Initial and Most Recent Skills Scan results side by side, all in one place.

Details:

• Access the new page via the Skills Scan item in the left-hand navigation menu.

• Filter results by respondent type — Learner, Assessor, or Employer — for both your Initial and Most Recent scans.

• Filters default to Learner for both columns when you first open the page.

• Results are broken down across Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviour categories.

• This feature is available to learners using the combined UX.

What have we done? A new **Create SmartAssessor Assessor** button has been added to the Officer details panel, allowing officers to be set up as assessors in SmartAssessor directly from PICS.

Why have we done this? Previously, officers had to be created manually in SmartAssessor separately, creating extra administrative steps when setting up the integration.

How will you benefit? Administrators can now create an officer's SmartAssessor assessor account in a single click, saving time and reducing the risk of errors during setup.

Details:

• The button appears on the Officer details panel and is only visible when:

- The officer does not already have a SmartAssessor ID.

- The SmartAssessor licence is active for your organisation.

- The logged-in user has both Edit Officer and Smart Assessor Integration permissions.

• Clicking the button opens a confirmation popup. The officer must have a valid email address on record — if they don't, the process cannot proceed and a message will explain why.

• On success, a confirmation message is shown and the page refreshes automatically.

• Once an officer has been created in SmartAssessor this way, the existing learner enrolment integration will continue to function as expected, linking the assessor to learners automatically.

What have we done? Administrators can now configure whether welcome emails and password reset emails are sent by PICS, by OneAdvanced Identity, or not at all — on a per-user-type basis.

Why have we done this? Organisations adopting OneAdvanced Identity need a consistent, centralised way to manage credential emails across all their users, without PICS and OneAdvanced Identity sending conflicting or duplicate messages.

How will you benefit? Your organisation gains full control over how identity-related emails are delivered, ensuring a seamless and consistent experience for users during and after migration to OneAdvanced Identity.

Details:

• Email behaviour can be configured separately for Users, Learners, Applicants, and Contacts.

• Options include sending the email from PICS (LMS), from OneAdvanced Identity, or not at all.

• A redirect URL setting is also available to control where users are taken after completing the set-password flow.

• This is an opt-in feature configured at the customer level — existing behaviour is unaffected unless changes are made.

What have we done? File upload validation across PICS has been tightened to use an approved list of 46 permitted file types, replacing the previous approach of blocking only known harmful extensions.

Why have we done this? A security review identified that the previous approach left gaps that could allow potentially dangerous files to be uploaded.

How will you benefit? Your organisation's data and systems are better protected against malicious file uploads, with consistent restrictions applied everywhere files can be uploaded in PICS.

Details:

• The new restrictions apply across all file upload points in PICS, including documents, import files, profile pictures, and API attachments (tasks, learners, and appointments).

• Only files with extensions on the approved list will be accepted. If you attempt to upload a file type that is no longer permitted, you will see a clear error message.

• If you regularly upload file types that are now being rejected, please contact your system administrator or PICS support for guidance.

• Fixed an issue where ending an episode or starting an End-Point Assessment (EPA) was not working correctly for organisations using the SQL Server database platform.

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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.

• 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.

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

• 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.

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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

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

• 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.

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

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

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

• 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.

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

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

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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

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

• 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.

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

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

• LDM codes have been updated

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

• 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.

• Various security improvements have been implemented.

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

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

• 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.

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

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

• 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

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

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

• 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.

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

• 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.

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

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

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

• 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.

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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.

• Officer Report: New Optional Field for Additional ID

• 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.

• 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.