What's New and Coming Soon in PICS?

Owned by Mike Sothern
Last updated: Nov 12, 2024
131 min read

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

Nothing just yet, check back later.

 

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.

  • 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 postcode or aim delivery postcode. Now fixed.

28th July

Learners

  • Target Scan answers can now be exported to a spreadsheet from the Target Scan Summary page.

Dashboards

  • On the dashboard list, the export to Excel option would not work. Now fixed.

Reports

  • The learner files report field for File Description was incorrectly outputting the File Title field value. This has been corrected, and additionally a File Title field has been added.

  • The Learner Event Files report has been optimised to increase performance.

  • We have clarified the difference between Sharing and Sending reports to users and teams with some help prompts on the save and scheduled tab when setting up reports.

Workflows

  • There was an issue causing certain post actions in Employability to fail when run as an initial transition. Now fixed.

Targets

  • Target Scope, such as Knowledge, Skills, and Behaviours, now support decimal points in their codes.

Month End

  • The Funding Calculation process has been optimised to increase performance.

  • The FM36 Apprenticeship funding calculations were incorrectly paying 90 and 365 day payments from the start date of a restarted Programme Aim. Now fixed.

User Defined Forms

  • URL question types would not accept multiple URL parameters in the URL. Now Fixed.

18th July

Month End

  • The FM36 Apprenticeship funding calculator was incorrectly paying 90 day and 365 day incentive payments based on the start date of any restarted programme aims instead of only the start date of the original programme aim. Now fixed.

3rd July

Courses

  • When enrolling learners and applicants onto a course, we now give you the opportunity to set your search filters before we perform the search for suitable courses.

User Defined Forms

  • URL questions that contained the & symbol between parameters would not work correctly. Now fixed.

27th June

Month End

  • The Skills Bootcamp Occupancy funding reconciler was throwing the error “Cannot get a text value from a bool cell”. Now fixed

24th June

Reviews

  • Completing a review could cause an error on the signatures section of the wizard if no review settings had been saved to the database. Now fixed.

API

  • Updating a learner via the API would not update the Risk Band to the provided value. Now Fixed.

22nd June

Apprenticeship Accountability Framework Report & Dashboard

  • OTJ Hour indicators are no longer set to true for aims starting before 01/08/2019.

  • The No Actual OTJ Hours recorded at Apprenticeship completion and Minimum Actual OTJ Hours Requirement Not Met fields are now only set for completed aims where Completion Status = 2. Minimum OTJ Hours Requirement Not Met (Planned or Actual) will not check actual hours if the aim is not completed with Completion Status = 2.

  • A new report output is available: Expected Days of Learning (OTJ). This field shows the number of days between the start and planned end dates of the earliest programme aim within the episode. Expected Weeks of Learning (OTJ) now uses this field to calculate the number of weeks used in the minimum OTJ hours calculations - so the minimum OTJ hours will no longer change if a learner ends their learner before or after their planned end date.

  • The Create Apprenticeship Accountability Dashboard tool no longer creates widgets which identify where there are more than 250 records which are withdrawn, past planned end or on planned break. This is to reflect the June update of the AAF specification.

Learners

  • Review Summary now includes Planned and Actual OTJ hours to date for the review.

  • Review Signatures: It is possible to default which signatures are required when completing a review

Signup Forms

  • Dormant Signup forms are now hidden in the configuration section by default.

Delivery Targets

  • It is now possible to clone a delivery target from the Target summary screen in the configuration section.

Smart Assessor Integration

  • There is a new configuration setting to create OTJ records in PICS from OTJ records in Smart Assessor.

Automations

  • It is now possible to schedule email notifcations for Applicants, Learners, Reviews, Appointments and Enrolments at a specific time of day instead of 05:00. This feature was already available when sending SMS messages.

19th June

User Defined Forms

  • Editing the code for a multiple answer question could result in a loss of date. This is no restricted by preventing the code for existing answers to be changed when editing the design of a question.

Learners

  • The file list could throw a “null reference exception” if a file didn’t have a title in some scenarios. Now fixed.

Vacancies

  • Editing the outcome of a vacancy application will pop up a form to edit other applications for the same vacancy. This is now limited to the first 100 other applications.

5th June

Month End

  • The FM37 Skills Bootcamp Funding Calculations have been updated for HGV Contracts

  • The FM37 Skills Bootcamp Funding Reconciler has been updated to reconciler HGV Contracts

  • Funding Forecasting has been updated to handle the changes required for the Skills Bootcamp HGV Contracts

Applicants

  • When Functional Skills Assessments have been imported from bksb, a tooltip showing a description of the level is now shown.

25th May

API

  • Endpoints have been added to list and download file attachments for tasks.

  • Endpoints have been added to add, edit and delete functional skills assessments for learners and applicants.

Applicants

  • A new Payment Records tab is now available on the applicant summary screen where payments with a custom type can be entered against the applicant.

  • A new Recruit an Apprentice System ID has been added to applicants. This is visible when the Recruit an Apprentice integration is enabled. When importing RAA vacancy application files, this ID is now used in addition to the Other System ID to match applicants in the files to existing PICS applicants.

  • A new configuration option has been added for applicants: Validate Applicant’s Age Against Qualification Plan Age Checks. When enabled, editing an applicant will validate the applicant’s age (based on the Available To Start date) against the age limits definited against the qualification plan. The Programme tab will also display an error message when the applicant’s age is not within the qualification plan’s age limits.

  • Applicants logging into the system would receive an error when previewing a course session or opening their record in bksb. Now fixed.

Configuration

  • Answers in a UDF multiple-choice question can now be reordered.

  • Slashes and spaces can no longer be used in UDF answer codes.

  • In the Recruit an Apprentice (RAA) integration, a default workflow and status can now be specified for any new applicants and organisations created by the RAA vacancy application import.

  • Custom course enrolment statuses can now be created in Courses > Configuration > Custom Enrolment Statuses. These can be set against learner or applicant enrolments.

  • HGV Skills Bootcamp Contracts can now be selected when creating a Contract Item against a contract. Note: Funding calculations are not yet available for HGV Skills Bootcamp contracts.

Dashboards

  • Count widgets can now use string and string list fields as the Target Column in widgets based on saved reports. Once a column is selected any number of values can be entered and the count will show the number of report records with those values.

  • Count widgets can now be used to show a count of all records in the report. Report filters can be used to limit the records in the report.

  • DB Admins would receive an error if deleting a shared dashboard if they got the permission from a User Group. Now Fixed.

Imports

  • The following imports will now be performed as a background task. If an email address is set in your user profile, you will be notified by email when the import is complete. A summary view is available to show the import details, including the results and any links which would have previously been shown on screen.

  • When importing UDF date answers from an Excel (.xlsx) file where the cell is formatted as a Date, the time 00:00:00 is no longer imported alongside the date.

  • The Learner Off-the-Job Hours import process would thrown an exception if the RecordedBy or ContactType fields were empty. Now fixed.

Learners

  • Help guides are now available for ILR errors. When a help guide is available for a particular ILR rule, a link will be available on the ILR rule name - this will open the help article in PICS.

  • When Functional Skills Assessments have been imported from bksb, a tooltip showing a description of the level is now shown.

  • A new Past Learning Expected End status filter is available on the learner list. This will show all learners where the latest programme aim planned end date is in the past, or the episode planned end date if they do not have any programme aims.

  • When a break of learning is ended for an ILR learner, the Funding adjustment for prior learning is now calculated based on the number of census days which have already been paid, rather than the number of months the learner was in learning before the planned break.

  • The current year Export in Year field is no longer set to Always if the Employment Outcome field is changed between blank, 99 and 00, for an aim which ended in a previous ILR year.

  • The current year Export in Year field is no longer set to Always if data is changed for a prior-year ILR aim on the last day of submission for that year.

  • The End Episode and Aims tool will no longer show the Outcome Grade field if there are no component aims to be updated, as this field is not relevant to programme aims.

  • Validation now checks that an apprentice has been in learning for 365 days while they are in EPA.

  • Preview File when signing reviews would not open the preview form. Now fixed.

Reports

  • The ESFA have published new thresholds for the Apprenticeship Accountability Framework - specifically the indicators for Withdrawals, Past Planned End and Break in Learning. These thresholds have now been updated in PICS when generating a new AAF Dashboard - existing dashboards will need to be edited manually or recreated. To facilitate this, the AAF report includes two new fields to identify apprentices who are past their planned end date by more than 180 days, or by 90-180 days.

  • A new Applicant Payments Report is now available.

  • A new Officers File Report is now available.

  • The Learner Files Report has a new optional output: File Officer.

  • All reports that display Learner ILR data now require the View Learner Programme (ILR/PRaP) user permission.

  • The Learner Payments Report contains a new option, Include TNP Records, which will include TNP records in the report.

  • When nested output options were selected for the same entity type, only the options selected for the first nested entity would be respected. Now fixed.

Month End

  • Historic episodes that have been Archived are now included in the FM36 funding calculations. This is essential for the funding calculations to determine any required adjustments due to previous earnings for an apprentice’s programme.

General

  • As part of OneAdvanced suite of systems, PICS is known as the Learner Management System. We have started to transition towards using this naming convention within the system and you will start to see PICS Learner Management System, or more commonly PICS LMS, in any system level notifications and emails.

13th May

Reports

  • Interactive Run Now reports would not show in the available reports list. Now Fixed.

12th May

Dashboards

  • Dashboard widgets using “Set up the widget now” instead of a saved report will now cache the widget data for one hour instead of entirely reloading the data every time the widget is shown. Data will be refreshed automatically if the widget is reloaded after one hour, if the widget options are edited, or the manual data refresh button is clicked on the widget.

  • When using widgets or interactive reports with row and column analysis fields and a date Grouping Type (such as calendar month), clicking on columns would not show any data. Now fixed.

  • UDF number fields in interactive reports no longer show decimal places for whole numbers.

27th April

Learners

  • Entering new non-levy apprentices starting on or after April 1st, 2024, who are aged below 22 years old, no longer require Employer Contributions to be entered on the Apprenticeship Prices screen.

  • PICS Validation no longer displays an audit message regarding missing PMR records for non-levy apprentices aged below 22 years old, and who started on or after April 1st, 2024.

Month End

  • The FM36 Apprenticeship funding calculation now calculates non-levy apprentices aged below 22 years old who started on or after April 1st, 2024, as fully funded by the ESFA.

Reports

  • The Funding Forecasting Planned Starts Breakdown report was showing incorrect periods on rows where there is no actual funding for learners on that row’s qualification plan. Now fixed.

19th April

Learners and Applicants

  • Sorting of learners and applicants is temporarily case sensitive for performance reasons.

12th April

Workflows

  • There was a issue affecting some automated workflow transitions that could cause them to not run as expected. This has now been fixed and automations that failed to run should run as expected when they are next triggered.

Reports

  • A new template, “Funding Forecasting Planned Starts Breakdown Report” has been added. This report will allow reporting on Planned Start forecasted funding and actuals funding for a Planned Starts Profile.

Month End

  • Funding Forecasting has a new report option under the Planned Starts Profile’s export menu, “Funding Forecasting Planned Starts Breakdown” which will preload the selected Funding Profile and Planned Starts Profile into the Funding Forecasting Planned Starts Breakdown Report within the Reports workspace.

Imports

  • When imporing a Recruit an Apprentice applications file, we now match applicants using Name, Date of Birth and Postcode. This is to avoid erroneous matches when a vacancy has multiple applicants with the same name.

11th April

Learners

  • The data capture Learner and Aim Provider Monitoring field names have been adjusted to align with the ILR Learner and Aim reports.

Courses

  • A new Course Type filter is now available on the Sessions list.

  • Two new course filters have been added when enrolling a learner or applicant on a course: Delivered By and Delivered For.

Reports

  • A new Expected Weeks of Learning (OTJ) field has been added to the ILR Learners report. this matches the calculation method used in the OTJ Hours Calculator published by the ESFA.

  • There have been several improvements to the Apprenticeship Accountability report to align the indicators with the ESFA dashboard calculations:

    • We’ve added several new Off-the-Job Hours fields to the report based on the recent OTJ Hours Calculator published by the ESFA. The Create Apprenticeship Accountability Dashboard feature has also been updated with three new widgets including these fields with thresholds matching the ESFA supplementary indicators specification.

      • Minimum OTJ Hours Required

      • Minimum Planned OTJ Hours Requirement Not Met

      • Minimum Actual OTJ Hours Requirement Not Met

      • Minimum OTJ Hours Requirement Not Met (Planned or Actual)

    • We now include more programme aims in the report:

      • The aim ended before the report period but the Achievement Date is during the period.

      • The Export in Year field is set to Always for the ILR year of the Report Date.

      • The learning episode contains any aim (programme or component) where the Export in Year field is set to Always for the ILR year of the Report Date.

    • Aims ending within 42 days of their start date are now only excluded if they not restarted aims (RES FAM = 1)

    • Aims are no longer included in the report if their start date, or the date they were entered into PICS, is after the Report Date.

    • Aim end dates are no longer included in the report if they were first entered into PICS after the Report Date.

  • Interactive reports and Dashboard widgets which use the Sum function on a decimal or currency field no longer show an “Unable to cast object” error.

  • Saved interactive reports can error when creating the charts with an error “Unable to cast object…”. Now fixed.

  • The Saved Reports list spreadsheet output now includes the users and teams a report is shared with.

Users and Access Configuration

  • Changes to User accounts, including permissions, officers, sites and file types, are now logged in the PICS audit logs and can be found in the Miscellaneous Data Changes Report. A new Report Type of Users has been added to that report.

Vacancies

  • The Contract Type field is now available for RAA vacancies.

Workflows

  • Added the ability to fire off a WebHook as a Post Transition Action. Both GET and POST calls are supported.

  • Added a new date function for Post Transition Actions. The Effective Date function will use the date entered into the effective field. This can then be further modified by using the Add Days, Working Days and Date Only options.

  • Added a new Post Action for creating Learner and Applicant user accounts.

Month End

  • The funding reconcilers were not working with a “Stream was not readabable” error message. Now fixed.

  • The Data Match reconciler’s report now includes the column “Apprenticeship Service Status”

  • The Funding Forecasting export now has an option to split “Split Additional Amounts” which will replace the Additional column with additional rows for each claim type making up the Additional value.

  • The Create button is no longer available when viewing ILR Exports for 2021 or earlier.

API

  • Endpoints have been added to list and download file attachments for appointments.

26th March

API

  • The following fields are now included when downloading learner data from the API:

    • PICS System ID

    • Workflow

    • Workflow Status

    • Workflow SubStatus

21st March

Learners and Applicants

  • The validation of National Insurance Numbers has been improved - entered values must now end in A, B, C or D in accordance with HMRC guidance.

User Defined Forms

  • A new location has been added for User Defined Forms: Learner Qualifications. This location can be set for any UDF where Leaner is selected in the Form For field, and will be shown in the Qualification Summary page, and Qualification Tracking tab for ILR learning aims. Visibility filters for Qualification Reference, Qualification Type and ILR Qualification Type are available.

Reports

  • A new Learner Occupancy by Period report is now available. This will show all learners, broken down by period (calendar month or ILR period), and show the number of learners who started, ended or were in-learning in that period. The interactive output of the report will show a table displaying all periods and the total learners included in that period. This can also be published using dashboard widgets via the Saved Report widget type. This report is intended to replace the Officer Caseload report previously available in desktop PICS.

  • A new Column Analysis Field is now available in Interactive Reports and Dashboard widgets. This can be used with Table reports and when a field is selected, all values from that field will be shown as columns in the report, in addition to a Total column, similar to a pivot table in a spreadsheet. As part of this change, we’ve renamed Analysis Columns to Row Analysis Fields which provides a better description of their function.

WebForms

  • There was a bug causing Organisation File forms created via a “Create and Send Form” post action to not find the organisation’s email address when it was used to default the signatory address. Now fixed.

Workflows

  • When using workflows validation or actions where Qualification Plan, Officer or Organisation needed to be selectable from a drop down list, there was a bug causing the drop down to be empty. Now fixed.

8th March

User Management

  • Saving permissions was only saving the first 30 records due to a sequencing error. Now fixed.

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 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.

  • Applicant workflows can now be set via the importer using APP_WORKFLOW.

Workflows

  • Organisation and Opportunity workflows can now be set to be the default for all new instances of the entity.

  • Available status transitions are now shown in alphabetical order. The same as on the Transitions configuration page.

User Defined Forms

  • The UDF description is now shown on the index page.

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 the “Closes” field.

Automations

  • Email Review Communication Automations now have the option to CC in the Reviewer and Review Mentor.

Licences

  • The following Licences have been renamed within the system to better represent the features they govern:

Old Licence Name

New Licence Name

Old Licence Name

New Licence Name

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.

18th February

Target Scans

  • When adding answers to a target scan, it is now possible to view the full description of each scope item by clicking on the Information icon next to the title of the scope.

Web Forms

  • 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.

Tags

  • Changes to tags on records are now included in the change logs.

Reports

  • Change logs now include changes to tags. This includes adding new tags and removing existing tags in Configuration, and also adding and removing tags from Learners, Applicants, Organisations, Officers, Activities, Courses, Qualification Plans, Opportunities, Vacancies and Vacancy Applications. Changes can be seen under View Full Change Logs where the action exists, or in the various Data Changes reports. The Tags list in Lists and Types Configuration now allows searching by ID to find the name of the tag which has been changed.

14th February

Learners

  • Learner Validation was generating unexpected LearnDelFamType_114 errors for valid aims. Now fixed.

10th February

Learners

  • Learner Validation has been updated to conform to the ESFA 2023 ILR validation rules specification.

  • Added the ability to bulk transition Workflow Statuses and Opportunities. Both of these options were already available for Applicants.

  • When ending a Skills Bootcamp learner via the End Learner process, the Achievement date entered was not being set against the programme aim. Now fixed.

  • It is now possible to delete an individual learning outcome or assessment criteria from a learner record.

Officers

  • Creating and editing officers would allow the role to be skipped. This is not valid, so the role is now a required field.

Reports

  • A new report template has been added: “Applicant Course Session Report”.

  • Running reports which have become “stuck” and are no longer running can now be cancelled using the View All Running Reports button on the Available Reports tab within Reports.

  • The Funding Late Notified template would error when outputting custom relationships as an optional field. Now fixed.

  • The Officer report template would sometimes error when outputting custom relationships as an optional field. Now fixed.

  • The Users Report now has an optional output for User Phone Number.

Appointments

  • Filters on calendars with more than one option selected would not work correctly. Now fixed.

Month End

  • The status labels within the funding calculator and funding reconciler have been updated to be consistent with the rest of PICS.

  • Planned funding based on Planned Starts within Funding Forecasting was not respecting mid-year rate changes in the LARS. Now fixed.

Delivery Configuration

  • Contract Items for Skills Bootcamps has a new contract type of “DPS Competition 2”.

Users and Access

  • Two new permissions have been added to allow light users to edit notes for Learners and Applicants.

Workflows

  • It is now possible to give status transition Post Actions a sequence number. Post actions will run in sequence from the lowest number to the highest.

  • There was an incorrect officer label on the Applicant Compare Field dropdown. Now fixed.

WebForms

  • Added the ability to default file attachments for WebForms. Defaulted files can come from the form owner or the entity the form was created from.

  • Converting to File WebForms could sometimes leave UDF questions locked when they were not meant to be. Now Fixed.

Automations

  • Applicant automations now have an additional filter for Expected End Date.

  • SMS messages can now be scheduled to deliver later in the day for each automation.

Smart Assessor Integration

  • When enrolling a learner you can now select which Smart Assessor Episode to add the qualifications to.

Dashboards

  • The Create An Apprenticeship Accountability Dashboard Now action is now available for any customer with the Accountability Framework licence, regardless of whether they have set up a saved Accountability Framework report.

29th January 2024

Learners

  • The Apprenticeship Service Bulk Upload export was incorrectly exporting “No” in the IsDurationReducedByRPL column when RecognisePriorLearning is “No”. Now fixed.

25th January 2024

Learners

  • The Apprenticeship Service Bulk Upload export was incorrectly generating the column header “TotalTrainingHours” instead of “TrainingTotalHours”. Now fixed.

23rd January 2024

Learners

  • Incorrect validation meant that when creating or editing a learner's ILR with an “AS RPL Identified” value of “Recognised prior learning has been identified”, it was not possible to save the learner unless the “AS Duration Reduced By” value was 1 or greater. Now fixed.

Applicants

  • Incorrect validation meant that when editing applicants with an “AS RPL Identified” value of “Recognised prior learning has been identified”, it was not possible to save the applicant unless the “AS Duration Reduced By” value was 1 or greater. Now fixed.

Reports

  • All optional fields from a User Defined Form that has Visibility Group based restrictions would be incorrectly hidden from eligible users. Now fixed.

20th January 2024

Learners

  • Learner notes will now include any files linked to applicants of other episodes if both the Other Episodes and Applicant filters are selected.

  • The Apprenticeship Service Cohort Export has been updated to conform to version 7 of the upload specification.

  • Learner Validation Configuration now has a new option, 'Exclude Aims where status is “Withhold from ILR Export”' which will exclude component aims with an ILR Export Status of “Withhold from Export” from the validation process.

Applicants

  • Previous Surname is now available in Applicants as well as in learners.

  • Using delivery models and target scans required some learner permissions to be fully functional. Applicant only permissions are now supported.

  • Education Health Care plan is now available within Applicant Programmes. This has also been added to Signup Forms and WebForms, and “APP_EHC” has also been added as a new header to the Applicant bulk import.

Calendar

  • Workspace and entity specific calendar views will now show the organiser of the appointment on hover.

Opportunities

  • USD is now available as a currency option for opportunities.

Reports

  • 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.

Smart Assessor Integration

  • Users of PICS Skill Scans from Smart Assessor can now configure what to default the Skills Scan Type for new Smart Assessor learners from the Smart Assessor Integration Settings.

Sign Up Forms

  • New Fields added to Applicant Sign Up Forms:

    • ILR Sex

    • Has Driving Licence

    • Has Own Transport

27th December 2023

Month End

  • Apprenticeship Funding Calculations have been updated with the new rates for English and maths aims.

17th December 2023

Reports

  • New report templates that have been added will now be indicated with a “New” label next to them. Searching the templates for the word “new” will include any new reports in the results.

8th December 2023

Learners

  • The Learner Qualifications list would set the Standard Filter when searching. A new option for the standard filter of Any has been added to prevent this.

  • Learning Delivery Monitoring (LDM) Codes have been update to match the latest specification

  • Changing to a non-ILR programme would result in an error if the learner has generic payment records. Now fixed.

  • Learner Validation has been updated to conform to the ESFA 2023 ILR validation rules specification.

Reports

  • Site Code is now available as an analysis column in interactive reports and widgets on the Learners, Applicants, Courses, and User Sites reports.

  • An Organisation Activity File Attachment report has been added to the report templates.

  • An Officer Activity File Attachment report has been added to the report templates.

  • Fixed an issue where User Defined Form single and multi select codes would not output if selected as an optional field.

Logging

  • Learner and Applicant files will now create log records when created, edited, or deleted.

Target Scans

  • Target scans that don’t have any required user roles assigned could be automatically marked as All Answered. We now ignore target scans without roles when auto updating the status.

Signup Forms

  • If a custom theme with a dark background was used on a sign up form, the password capture could be difficult to see. The password capture now handles this better.

Generic

  • Looking up the value of a provision of type ACE 360 Emp Sector could fail. Now fixed.

Automations

  • Appointment Reminders can now include the Learner or Applicants Main Officer name, email and mobile as a merge field in the message

Workflows

  • Added the ability to give statuses and sub-statuses a colour which will be displayed through out the application. This will help to visually differentiate statuses.

  • Added the ability re-run failed post transition actions without having to move the entity backwards and then forwards again in the workflow.

  • It is now possible to display UDF answers when sending emails or SMS via the Send Notification post transition action. UDF questions must have a Unique Field Name to be available. Simply start by typing {{UDF.

WebForms

  • 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.

Integrations

  • Added the overall learner status field when viewing Cognassist assessment results.

22nd November 2023

API

  • Added an “All” option to the learning status filter. The “In Learning“ status will still be the default but this should allow form much easier searching when using date filters that fall outside of the Learner’s start/end dates.

  • The Learning Status filter options were not displaying correctly in the Swagger documentation. Now fixed.

9th November 2023

Integrations

  • Fixed a date format error that was appearing when creating a record in Cognassist.

  • Fixed an issue where assessment details was not updating from Cognassist.

6th November 2023

API

  • Sites can now be used to restrict which Learners, Applicants, Officers and Organisations an API user can see and interact with.

  • Added an end point to Lists and Types that shows what Sites are available to the current user account.

WebForms

  • There was a bug that rarely caused repeated field information to not display in complete form downloads. Now Fixed.

  • The LLDD multi select field was only showing the first 10 options on newly created form templates. Now Fixed.

3rd November 2023

Learners

  • DAM and LDM code lists have been updated with the latest changes in the ILR specification.

  • The Apprenticeship Achievement Date is no longer populated for non-apprentices when ending a learner’s episode.

  • The Recent Learners tile on the home page now shows an accurate count of learners added in the last 14 days.

Integrations

  • 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.

25th October 2023

Webforms

  • Some dropdown fields were showing [Unknown] as the value when nothing had been selected. Now fixed.

  • Old UDF dropdowns created prior to codes being enforced were not working and always showing [Unknown]. Now fixed.

Target Scope

  • It is now possible to compare the latest scan results of two different roles from the Learner Target Scope page.

24th October 2023

Webforms

  • Forms containing certain UDF or imported FCA dropdown fields were not showing the dropdown options. Now fixed.

23rd October 2023

Webforms

  • Learner and Applicant forms containing any filled “Aims Wanted“ fields were failing to open for fill and sign. Now fixed.

  • Learner File and Change Request forms containing a filled EPA Organisation field were failing to open for fill and sign. Now fixed.

21st October 2023

Applicants

  • The Applicants List has a new filter option: “Has Related Learner”.

Learners

  • Learner Validation has been updated to conform to the ESFA 2023 ILR validation rules specification.

  • It is now no longer possible to set Programme Aims to be withheld from export.

  • When reinstating a learner after a Break in Learning, any reinstated aims will now set Original Start Date to the Original Start date from the planned-break aim, if set, or the Start date if not. This is to ensure the Original Start date is set correctly when a learner has multiple breaks in learning.

  • It is now possible to set the Achievement Rates Overall Year Override to Excluded. This will exclude the aim from the overall achievements rate report entirely with the reason “Manually Excluded in PICS“.

  • Learner Qualification List now has a filter for Apprenticeship Standard.

Forms

  • Fixed an issue when using the Return To Entity setting would redirect to a location the user did not have access to.

Courses

  • Uploading additional files to a course session could result in a bad request error. Now fixed.

  • URLs for signup forms to auto enrol applicants onto a course can now be generated from the Course summary screen.

Month End

  • The FM25 Funding Calculator has been updated with the latest published National Rates.

  • The T Level Funding Calculator was incorrectly funding Band 6 and above learners as Band 5 if the total planned hours for the learner was set lower than the band’s expected minimum hours. Now fixed.

  • Skills Bootcamp funding has been updated for 2023.

  • The Earnings Adjustment Statement data collection has been updated for 2023.

  • The Projected Funding by Learner, Projected Funding by Learning Delivery, and Projected Funding by Individual Items reports now have an output option of “Funding Line”. This will display the Funding Line as calculated by the Projected Funding calculations.

  • The QAR reconciler has been improved and shows clearer differences when an aim is excluded from the ESFA QAR report but not PICS, or vice versa. If the aim is excluded from both reports but the reason is different, this is not highlighted as a data difference unless other fields are also different.

Lists and Types Configuration

  • Fixed an issue relating to a unicode DLL not loading which would cause an error when maintaining templates.

Delivery Configuration

  • Contract Items for Skills Bootcamps now allow setting the contract type to either “Wave 3”, or “DPS Competition 1”

Reports

  • The “Total Programme Funding” output option within the Projected Funding By Learner and Projected Funding By Learning Delivery reports would sometimes cause the report to take a long time to complete or generate an error. Now fixed.

  • The Postcode Local Authority lookups have been updated.

  • The Site filter within the Learner Contact Report was not being respected. Now fixed.

Integrations

  • It is now possible to use UKPRN instead of Organisation ID to authenticate with the LRS Web Service.

  • Configuring Cognassist now has a setting to provide the base URL so that you can open Learners and Applicants in Cognassist from PICS.

  • Smart Assessor integration now supports the Registration Date and Number fields during a refresh.

  • Customers using Smart Coach can now configure the Smart Assessor integration to set the PICS Risk based upon the Smart Coach Risk.

Dashboards

  • It is now possible to clone widgets within a dashboard. Widget options have been moved to a menu and a Clone Widget option has been added.

User Defined Forms

  • ID label in URLs will now work in Edit mode as well as View mode.

Workflows

  • Cloning a workflow will now clone the default status and sub status from that source workflow.

Generic

  • 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.

18th October 2023

PICS API

  • Added end points for Appointment and Task maintenance.

  • Added the ability to fetch Learner, Applicant, Officer and Organisation Photos via the API.

11th October 2023

PICS API

  • Added Site and Qualification Plan Code to the Learner Search, Details and Edit.

  • Added Provider End Code to the Learner Search and Details.

3rd October 2023

PICS API

  • Applicants and Learners now show their “Created On” and “Modified On” dates.

  • Applicants “Expected End” was showing the wrong value. Now fixed.

  • Added the ability to set Applicant Employer, Recruitment Agency and Opportunity ID via create and update.

  • Added a whole load of missing fields to the Organisations Create, Edit, Search and Details.

2nd October 2023

QAR Reconciler

  • QAR Reconciler was not using correct report date provided. Now fixed.

21st September 2023

Workflows

  • When configuring workflow validation and actions, we now offer a drop down of static values when appropriate.

Courses

  • When creating new course enrolments, we were not correctly filtering out learners/applicants with existing enrolments. Now fixed.

19th September 2023

Courses

  • It is now possible to generate a URL for an applicant signup form from with a course instance summary using the Actions menu.

Generic

  • All required edit fields on regular forms will now have a required field indicator on the label.

18th September 2023

Web Forms

  • Attempting to upload file attachments when signing a web form as a guest user would fail with an error “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”. Now fixed.

Integrations

  • We now have an integration with Cognassist. When enabled you can create Learners and Applicants in Cognassist, invite them to complete an assessment and view their assessment results all from within PICS.

15th September 2023

Learners

  • An optional field for “Learning Expected End” has been added to the Learner List.

  • Full support for a “Preferred First Name” fields has been added to web forms, imports, data capture, reports and API.

  • A new Database Admin Action has been added to the Learners > Additional Sections > Qualifications list that allows you to change a Qualification Reference for one or more Learners.

  • Programme Aim Planned Hours for T Level Learners are now correctly captured in the Learner Create process.

  • There is a new optional tab on the learner delivery plan page for Files.

  • Milestones and notifications for Employability customers now have dedicated sections within the main navigation bar.

  • The list of DAM codes has been updated with the latest validity data in the ILR specification.

Applicants

  • Change logs for ULN and LRN and some other ILR fields were not being show in Recent Activity > Show Full Change Logs.

  • Full support for a “Preferred First Name” fields has been added to sign up forms, web forms, imports, data capture, reports and API.

Reports

  • Reports for outputting details of files attached to Appointments, Tasks and Communications for Learners and Applicants have been added.

  • The Claim History Summary report was not fully populating some ILR Learner fields. Now fixed.

  • The Vacancy Application report was showing records for deleted Applicants. Now fixed.

Month End

  • 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.

Appointments

  • Reminder emails now have additional fields to merge, including description, and learner employer.

Generic

  • Phone numbers now support clicking on to use your chosen web based telephone system, such as Skype.

  • When adding a SOC provision to a record, you can now filter based on SOC level.

  • Access to specific File Types can now be restricted at user an user group level.

27th August 2023

Learners

  • T Level Learners were incorrectly receiving validation errors for not having Planned Learning Hours or Planned EEP Hours. Now fixed.

Funding

  • Funding Forecasting was not forecasting funding for T Level learners. Now fixed.

  • The FM25 Funding Calculations were not calculating funding for T Level learners if a learner had previously been on another Study Programme. Now fixed.

  • The FM35 AEB Funding Calculations now include Devolved Authority Disadvantage Uplifts to match the funding generated by the FIS.

18th August 2023

Month End

  • The option to reconcile 2023 funding reports has been made available within Funding Reconciliations.

Applicants

  • Deleting the Recruited By Officer would not work. Now fixed.

Integrations

  • The OneFile integration now detects day light saving dates being returned from OneFile and adjusts them correctly.

17th August 2023

Month End

  • ILR files are no longer rejected by FIS or SLD if the HE Special Fee Indicator and Net Tuition Fee fields are both entered against any aim. This error was due to a mistake in the ESFA ILR schema.

  • The Funding Band Maximum was not being found for some Apprenticeship Standards. This resulted in process warnings within the Funding Calculator and Funding Forecasting for these Standards. Now fixed.

  • The Funding Calculator was incorrectly calculating an achievement element for aims with a Category of “Adult Education Budget - Work Placement”. Now fixed.

14th August 2023

Reports

  • The Projected Funding By Learner, and Projected Funding By Learning Delivery reports were not including the Total column header when there is no funding shown in the reports. This was causing Dashboard Widgets based on these reports to display an error. Now fixed.

  • Including Functional Skills Assessment details in learner and applicant reports could cause an error. Now fixed.

13th August 2023

Notes

  • Adding a note to a record could result in an error. Now fixed.

12th August 2023

Month End

  • ILR Exporter

    • ILR Exports conforming to the 2023 ESFA ILR Specification can now be produced. 2021 ILR files can no longer be created, but existing files can be downloaded.

    • ILR Export email notifications for 2023 exports now contain any export warnings.

  • Funding Forecasting

    • It is now possible to Add and Delete periods from an existing Funding Profile.

    • It is now possible to maintain Planned Starts Profiles, including the editing Planned Starts profiled against a Qualification Plan for each Planned Starts Profile.

    • The process to select a Qualification Plan to profile Planned Starts against has been improved.

    • From the Overall tab, a new action has been added against each period of the profile: “Qualification Plan Planned Starts Breakdown”. This displays a list of Qualification Plans which have profiled Planned Starts that contribute towards the Planned values in the profile for that period, which can then be loaded into the Planning tab.

    • A new Export action has been added: “Actual Totals Reporting”. This allows the running of Projected Funding Reports found within the Report section’s Templates list, with the report options pre-filtered to generate reports showing data contributing towards the “Actual” columns in the profile.

    • When saving Planned Starts, and then switching to the Overall tab of a profile, the newly entered Planned Starts would not be shown unless the profile was reloaded. Now fixed.

  • QAR Reconciler

    • The QAR report options are now defaulted correctly when using 2022 QAR extract files.

  • Funding Calculations

    • Funding Calculations have been made available for 2023

WebForms

  • New fields added to Learner and Applicant forms

    • Expected Days on Programme

    • Expected Weeks on Programme

    • Expected Days of Learning

    • Expected Weeks of Learning

  • User Defined Fields on Learner File, Applicant File, Organisation File and Learner Change Request forms can now update the User Defined Field on the Learner, Applicant or Organisation. To use this new functionality, you will need to enable it in the general form settings.

  • Certain forms were failing to auto complete the employer’s email address when set to do so. Now fixed.

  • Officer details were not auto filling when selecting an Officer on Applicant forms. Now fixed.

Learners

  • Data capture for learners now allows entry of 2023 ILR data:

    • All historic data entry fields for 2021 have been replaced with 2022 fields.

    • Planned Learning and EEP Hours fields for 2024 are now available.

    • HHS and ASL aim FAM types are no longer available for aims starting on/after 1st August 2023.

    • ACL and AFL FAM types have been added for aims which are in learning on/after 1st August 2023. These fields are also available in qualification plans.

    • Employment status and FFI fields are now visible when creating new Community Learning (FM10) learners.

    • Aim HE 1st/2nd/3rd LDCS fields are now only available in the 2022 fields section.

    • LDM and DAM code lists have been updated.

    • It is now possible to use different values for Learner NLM FAM fields for 2022 and 2023. Existing data in the 2022 field has been copied forward to 2023, but for new entries this field will need to be entered for both years.

  • Learner Validation has been updated to conform to the ESFA 2023 ILR validation rules specification. However we have not removed references to Funding Model 70 (ESF) as these rules can still be used to validate existing data within PICS.

  • The way that Functional Skills Assessment result are stored has been changed to allow for more subjects and more assessment results for each subject.

  • It is now possible to configure the default Workflow for new Learners.

  • Creating a Learner with a qualification with criteria linked would error. Now fixed.

  • Importing Aim Prior Learning and Other Funding Adjustments did not work. Now fixed.

  • When changing a Learner’s Programme from an Apprenticeship to a non-Apprenticeship TNP records are removed.

  • When ending an episode, courses that start in the future will be marked as Cancelled before Start, rather than Withdrawn.

  • Delivery Plan components can now be configured to be Default and Reusable. This will create a single instance on the learner when applying the delivery plan, but allow additional instances to be added later, if required.

  • Learner file lists now have a filter option to include files from appointments, calls, emails, and tasks.

Applicants

  • Fixed the email link to applicant files when generating an applicant offer document.

Officers

  • 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

Tasks

  • A summary view has been added for tasks to allow notes and attachments to be added to the Task.

Courses

  • 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.

Delivery Configuration

  • The Workflow list now show which workflow is the default for new Applicants and Learners.

  • It is now possible to configure the default Workflow for new Learners.

Lists and Types Configuration

  • Task Templates can now have the due date defaulted

Forms Configuration

  • Added a new Location for Activity Create. This allow user defined forms to be captured when creating an Appointment, Call, Email, SMS or Task.

  • Added User Defined Form visibility restrictions for Appointment Type and Class.

  • Learner Forms can be configured to show the latest Target Scan results for the applicant during the signature process.

Reports

  • Learners

    • The calculation of Expected Off the Job Hours to Date differed slightly from the Learner display when a Break-in-Learning had occurred. The reports version is now the same as the Learner display.

    • Learner reports containing ILR data have now been updated to use the 2023 version of annual fields, unless the report field explicitly shows a different year.

  • Employability Learners

    • Filtering by Purchase Order Number and Date has been added.

    • The JobCentre output field is now full organisation output not just the name

  • Vacancies

    • Output of the Officer Main Organisation has been added.

  • Appointments

    • Workflow and Workflow Main Status outputs have been added.

    • Created and Modified date filters have been added.

  • Communications

    • Workflow and Workflow Main Status outputs have been added.

    • Created and Modified date filters have been added.

  • Tasks

    • Workflow and Workflow Main Status outputs have been added.

    • Created and Modified date filters have been added.

  • QAR Report

  • Reports with a Current Age filter could fail to update when saved interactive reports mode. Now Fixed.

Dashboards

  • Visibility restriction by Team was not working. Now fixed.

Integrations

  • 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.

25th June 2023

Calendar Views

  • Not all views included the correct colour coding on events to indicate a positive or negative outcome. e.g. Attendance status on course sessions for a learner.

Learner ILR

  • The recently added DAM codes for ILR year 2023/2024 are now available in learner data capture: 064 - 069.

14th June 2023

Tasks

  • It was not possible to edit tasks assigned to the current user in the main task list unless the filter was set to Created By Or Assigned To Me. Now fixed.

WebForm Signatures

  • WebForms created as part of status transition post actions would be created, but signature request emails would not automatically be sent out. Now fixed.

13th June 2023

DropBox

  • The DropBox feature did not come back online after the nightly maintenance window. This loophole has now been corrected.

Funding Forecaster

  • Performing an export for the [Blank] Planned Starts Profile would throw an error. Now fixed.

12th June 2023

Calendar

  • There was a bug in the calendar view that would prevent additional officer calendars from being removed and added back in. Now fixed.

9th June 2023

PICS an Advanced Product

  • PICS branding has been modified to correctly reflect our new position within the Advanced family of products.

Learners

  • It is now possible to record ILR Employment Status Monitoring “Other Employment Type” (OET) codes against a qualification plan. These will be automatically added to the ILR Employment Status records for any new learners created using that qualification plan.

  • A PICS Contract can now be entered against a qualification plan. If this is entered, the contract value will be applied to any new learners created using that qualification plan.

  • The create process for a new learning episode no longer fails if a photo was attached to the previous episode, but the file record had been deleted.

  • If the delivery target for a learner was changed, existing skill scan answers would not display correctly. Now fixed.

  • It is now possible to apply a tag to a learner when they first complete a target scan. Each target can be configured to use a specific tag.

  • Learners can now perform an on demand target scan if they do not have an scheduled scans in the next 2 weeks.

  • Files tab now has the option to show files from other episodes.

  • Notes tab now has the option to show notes from applicant and other episodes.

  • Creating a private learner no longer has empty drop downs for the following fields: LLDDs, Primary LLDD and Disability Self Assessed.

Reports

  • General

    • A database maintenance window is being introduced from 23:30 to 03:00 each night to avoid reports from failing and interrupting database maintenance task. More details can be found in this blog post.

    • Interactive bar charts showing a small number of results (fewer than 10) will no longer show counts as decimal numbers, or duplicate values.

    • Reports and dashboards can now be shared with specific users and teams. If the sharing type is Shared but no users or teams are selected, the report or dashboard is shared with all users.

    • The width of the chart labels has been increased to allow for longer labels to display fully.

  • Learners

    • A report of Initial Assessment result associated with Learners has been added.
      A report of Tasks associated with Learners has been added.

    • A report of Provisions associated with Learners has been added.

    • Output of Related Organisations and Officers has been added. The new fields appear in the Optional Fields list before the User Defined Fields.

    • More output fields have been added to the Status History report including Main & Sub-Status Description & filtering to Latest Status Only.

    • On the Review Summary report it is now possible to specify how the “Next Review” is chosen. The current behaviour of “First Future Non-attended Review” or the “First Non-attended Review”.

    • Learner Assessments report now has a Data Sort Order option including a variety of Due & Done Dates, Title and For Reference. The default option is Due Date.

    • An age range filter has been added to the Learners, ILR Learners, ILR Aims and Applicants reports.

  • Applicants

    • A report of Initial Assessment result associated with Applicants has been added.

    • A report of Tasks associated with Applicants has been added.

    • A report of Provisions associated with Applicants has been added.

    • Output of Related Organisations and Officers has been added. The new fields appear in the Optional Fields list before the User Defined Fields.

    • More output fields have been added to the Status History report including Main & Sub-Status Description & filtering to Latest Status Only.

  • Projected Funding

    • The Projected Funding By Learners Report has 2 fields called “Learner Funding Age Band“ one of these has been removed. This may alter the output of your saved reports.

  • Organisations

    • A report of Tasks associated with Organisations has been added.

    • A report of Provisions associated with Organisations has been added.

    • A report of Agreements associated with Organisations has been added.

    • Output of Related Organisations and Officers has been added. The new fields appear in the Optional Fields list before the User Defined Fields.

    • More output fields have been added to the Status History report including Main & Sub-Status Description & filtering to Latest Status Only.

    • Reports with “Has Current Learners” filters now have 2 more filters “Has Current Learners with ILR Employments” and “Has Learners with Current Placements”.

  • Officers

    • A report of Provisions associated with Officers has been added.

    • Output of Related Organisatons and Officers has been added. The new fields appear in the Optional Fields list before the User Defined Fields.

  • Vacancies

    • A report of Provisions associated with Vacancies has been added.

  • Tasks

    • A Task report has been added.

  • Opportunities

    • More output fields have been added to the Status History report including Main & Sub-Status Description.

  • Forms

    • Optional Output fields for Status Reasons have been added to reasons for Rejection, Reassignment and Deletion.

  • Courses

    • The Course Data Changes report now shows results when the table name filter is set.

  • Anonymous Surveys Report

    • A new report has been added to look at the answers for anonymous surveys.

Integrations

  • Smart Assessor

    • There is a new configuration setting to prevent sending the Smart Assessor welcome emails to Learners created via PICS.

    • Updating Smart Assessor from PICS could cause the “Use Specified Expected Off The Job Hours” to lose its value. Now fixed.

    • Updating Smart Assessor from PICS and vice versa now updates the Learner phone numbers.

  • LXP

    • It is now possible to integrate PICS with Advanced Learning Experience Platform (LXP). When the integration is enabled, any Knowledge, Skills and Behaviours for a new Apprenticeship Standard delivery target will be automatically imported into PICS if the Standard is published in LXP.

WebForms

  • Added an automation to allow WebForm signature reminders to be sent out automatically at the start of each day.

  • It is now possible to select a filetype to output a redacted version of a WebForm file. Fields marked as as sensitive will not be displayed in the redacted version.

Workflows

  • Added the ability to automate workflow status transitions to run at the start of the day on a given schedule. Automated transitions will run all validations and actions.

Sign Up Forms

  • It is now possible to control the required Google Recaptcha Score for each sign up form. We recommend a score of 0.5 or above to help prevent potential spam applications. However, if you are confident that real users are receiving lower scores, you can experiment with lowering the required score.

Signatures

  • If a user has found themselves with signatures requested against records that have been deleted, they will now be able to delete the signature request themselves to clean up the request list.

Officers

  • 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.

Configuration

  • It is now possible to set a Skills Bootcamp Contract Rate by adding a new Contract Item against a Contract.

  • File Types: It is now possible to hide files from Learner and Contact logins by File Type in the File Type configuration section.

  • SMS reminders for reviews has been removed. If you had been using this feature, you can now configure the same functionality using the automations feature.

  • A unit can now be created directly from the Qualification summary page, rather than needing to create the unit first, and then link it.

  • Appointment, Enrolment and Review Email Automations now include the ability to send an ICS Calendar Attachment.

Anonymous Surveys

  • It is now possible to create surveys to be completed by anonymous users. For these surveys, a dedicated URL will be generated that you can send out to your target audience. All answers recorded will be anonymous from a point of view of being linked to other PICS Records.

  • Anonymous Answers can be viewed in the survey summary screen.

  • The new Anonymous Survey Report can be used in conjunction with Saved Interactive Reports to provide visual dashboard summaries of answers.

Month End

  • Skills Bootcamp calculations have been added to the Funding Calculator and Projected Funding.

  • It is now possible to reconcile Skills Bootcamp funding.

  • The Data Match reconciler was not always identifying the correct PICS Episode for a learner. Now fixed.

  • The App Monthly Payments reconciler’s option to perform Levy adjustments was setting the incorrect Claim Type of “N” for newly created Claim Items. Now Fixed.

  • Funding Forecasting

    • The Export now splits the Actual funding column into multiple columns identifying different Actuals funding types.

    • A new option “Include Optional Aims When Calculating Planned Starts Funding” has been added to the Setting screen to determine if optional Qualification Plan Qualifications are included in the forecasting calculations.

    • The “Planned In Learning” column was ambiguous as to its meaning, and has been removed from the profile tables. The Details view now shows Planned In Learning for a given period, along with the total Expected In Learning representing the Planned In Learning plus the Actual In Learning figures.

    • The Export now includes columns for Planned In Learning and Expected In Learning.

    • When forecasting funding for Qualification Plans the Source Of Funding is now only compulsory for AEB programmes and FM25 Traineeship programmes.

  • The ILR Exporter will no longer write Prior Attainment records dated after the latest aim start date being exported in that ILR file. This is to prevent PriorAttain_09 errors when future year ILR aims are added before the 2022 year end.

Generic

  • Our HTML editors have been extended to allow hyper links to be included in the text.

16th May

Reports

  • Applicant and learner status history reports could both include applicants and learner. Now fixed.

ILR Exporter

  • ILR Exporter has had some performance improvements to reduce stress on the application during busy submission periods.

10th May

Reports

  • Performance improvements to specific scenarios in Course Session Attendance, Applicant & Learner Enrolments, Qualification & Achievement, Forms Status History, Form Status and Course reports.

3rd May

Reports

  • Officer reports have been optimised when including user defined fields in the output

  • Organisation reports have been optimised when including user defined fields in the output

  • Opportunity reports have been optimised when including user defined fields in the output

  • Vacancy reports have been optimised when including user defined fields in the output

  • Vacancy Application reports have been optimised when including user defined fields in the output

2nd May

Integrations

  • Smart Assessor sync is now limited to learners who are still in learning, or ended in the last month. Previously learners who ended in the last 6 months had been included.

  • OneFile sync is now limited to learners who are still in learning, or ended in the last month. Previously learners who ended in the last 6 months had been included.

  • bksb sync is now limited to learners who are still in learning, or ended in the last month. Previously learners who ended in the last 3 months had been included.

Email

  • Pasting images when logging an email would be lost. Now fixed.

  • Subjects containing unicode characters would cause an error when using dropbox email. Now fixed.

Reports

  • Applicant communications report has been optimised

29th April

Reports

  • The Course Session Attendance Summary report now includes the totals row when exported to spreadsheet.

20th April

Learners

  • Duplicate checking for Learner Reference Number or ULN was not ignoring Applicants like it should have. Now fixed.

Email

  • In the more common emails sent from PICS, such as reports and requests for signatures, we now add a bit of extra detail to the subject, such as the date the report was run or the name of the form. This should help reduce spam filtering in larger organisations.

19th April 2023

Applicants

  • Fixed a bug where generating an applicant offer document would result in a 404.

Automations

  • Email appointment communication automations now has the ability to also CC Officer Attendees.

18th April 2023

Applicants

  • Searching for an applicant’s ULN using the LRS integration no longer results in a “Invalid data sent to LRS” error.

15th April 2023

Learners

  • The multi learner Change Request list can now be filtered by Sites.

  • Prior Qualification list now displays the Qualification Reference and Title.

  • The Learner Validation Audit rule “Work experience aims must not overlap” for Traineeships was incorrectly using the aim’s Planned End Date to determine an overlap with subsequent aims instead of the aim’s Actual End Date. Now fixed.

  • ILR Employment records shown in Learner Summary Placements are now ordered by start date before removing duplicates.

  • Contract is now available on the Update All bulk editing tool.

  • Importing just a Primary LLDDs did not work. Now fixed.

  • Importing Disability and LLDDs for non ILR Learners did not work. Now fixed.

  • PICS ILR validation now conforms to version 6 of the ESFA validation rules specification.

  • A new automation feature for communications has been added, this can also be used to set up reviews, appointments and course enrolment reminders.

  • Review signatures can only be requested if the review has been competed with a positive attendance outcome.

Applicants

Reports

  • 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.

User Management

  • It is now possible to view and edit Learner, Applicant, and Contact user records in the Users and Accounts section using the User Type filter.

  • When creating a user for a learner, applicant, or contact, more context is provided if the email address has been used already for another user.

  • If a user isn’t receiving emails from PICS, it is possible to check if their email address for a user has been suppressed from within their user account summary page.

  • Temporary user accounts created for Pellcomp support staff now be deleted after 2 days instead of 1, and will be extended further over weekends, to ensure the Pellcomp support staff have sufficient time to help you. They can be deleted sooner from within the user and accounts section.

Integrations

  • A custom logo, From name and message can now be added to all emails sent from PICSWeb. Settings can be accessed by database administrators in Configuration > Integrations > Email.

  • Dropbox Email now supports forwarding emails as attachments that have been sent to users from applicants or learners.

  • Data change logs writing during scheduled data exchanges now use a specific username for each integration, rather than the username of the user who enabled it.

  • bksb

    • The Result value could have resulted in a value < 0 due to a calculation error. Now fixed.

    • A link to view the learner or applicant in bksb has been added.

  • Smart Assessor

    • It is now possible to withhold Sex, Ethnicity and Disability when exchanging data with Smart Assessor. This can be configured in Configuration > Integrations > Smart Assessor.

    • A link to view the learner in Smart Assessor has been added

Month End

  • Funding Calculator - It is now possible for users with the DB Admin user permission to select a period to draft or final if periods have not been finalled for a number of months.

  • Funding Forecasting - It is now possible to export the data shown in the Overall tab and the Planning tab.

  • Funding Forecasting - A toggle has been added to the Summary page to enable viewing the financial data in a cumulative, profile start to date, mode.

  • Funding Forecasting - It is now possible to view Periods as a calendar year and month date view. The default view can be set via a new Settings option in the Actions list on the Funding Forecasting profile list page.

  • Funding Forecasting - The speed at which profiles load have been increased. Controls are now disabled during the loading and saving of profiles to prevent data corruption.

  • Funding Forecasting - A bug was identified which would cause the Overall tab’s Planned funding amounts to be calculated based on Planned Starts for Qualification Plans that do not generate funding. Now fixed.

  • A new subcontractor rate type of “Learning Support Funding (LSF) rate” has been added for apprenticeship programmes.

General

  • File lists now make use of the Preview option if configured.

  • Mosaic Theme now has dedicated icons to match.

15th March 2023

Reports

  • Surveys

    • Surveys reports would error if there was a multi select answer with no answer recorded. Now fixed.

  • Vacancies

    • Vacancy Application reports could include details of Applicants/Learner not in the Users Sites list in Strict Sites mode. Now fixed.

2nd March 2023

  • WebForms: Fixed a bug that could cause some forms to get stuck in an unfillable/completed state when they had been saved for continuing later during remote signing.

26th February 2023

  • bksb Integration: Diagnostic Assessments results completed in bksb could override Initial Assessment results in PICS. These are now correctly ignored.

10th February 2023

Learners

  • PICS ILR validation now conforms to version 5 of the ESFA validation rules specification. Changes to Learning Start Date Postcode rules (LSDPostcode_01 and LSDPostcode_04) have not been implemented as the ESFA are currently reviewing these rules as the changes are not relevant to FM35 Traineeships.

  • Programme aim DAM FAM fields have been added to qualification plans. These should be used for ILR programmes which use Programme Type 33: Combined Authorities. These are used when creating new learners, and the values from the plan main aim are no longer copied to the programme aim.

  • Creating a learner from an applicant will now also link the learner to the applicants opportunity without requiring opportunity qualification plan provisions configured.

  • Functional Skills results can now be recorded in a more detailed Level.Sublevel format i.e. “Level 1.2”

  • Bulk Editing of Start and Due dates has been added to Learner Unit, Learning Outcome and Critera lists.

  • Tabs on the Summary, Employability and Learning Plan screens can now be hidden for all PICS users. Additional optional tabs have been added to the Portfolio screen.

  • Restarted apprentices on funding model 35 and Trailblazer apprentices on funding model 81 can now be entered. The configuration setting “Allow new episodes for FM35 Framework Apprenticeship and Trailblazer programmes” must be enabled to allow this.

  • When using Change Programme, the new group description on step 2 now shows the correct description instead if the previous description assigned to the learner.

  • The Learner list “Has Course Enrolment” filter now has a “No current or future” option.

  • Learner Contact Hour display was not sorting the data before displaying the requested number of records. This is now fixed.

  • The Learner Files list now has sorting options and filtering by File Expiry.

Applicants

  • Functional Skills results can now be recorded in a more detailed Level.Sublevel format i.e. “Level 1.2”

  • Ward code can now be edited.

  • The Applicant list “Has Course Enrolment” filter now has a “No current or future” option.

Officers

  • Saved searches has been enabled on the Officer list.

  • Filtering on Main Organisation has been added to the Officer list.

  • Filtering on Superior has been added to the main list.

  • Filtering on “Relationships to Current Learners” has been added to the Officer list.

Courses

  • 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.

Reports

  • General

    • Report output fields which are shown when a different field is selected are now included in the available analysis fields in interactive reports. Examples include the Course Attendance Summary fields or form signature fields.

    • Reports no longer fail to run when writing very large string values with more than 32767 characters to a spreadsheet.

  • Dashboards

    • Dashboards can now be cloned. This will create a copy of the dashboard and all widgets including the widget settings, although it will not copy the underlying reports for widgets set up using “Use a saved report for this widget”.

    • Interactive charts showing percentage fields now have the range of 0 to 100% and the values display as percentages. Percentage values in tables and raw data views are now formatted as percentages to two decimal places.

    • Currency values in interactive reports are now displayed correctly with a £ sign and to two decimal places.

    • The error The REPORT_DATA_FILEGUID field is required no longer appears when deleting a report with an output type of Interactive for Dashboard.

    • Exporting widget data to a spreadsheet no longer fails if a large number of filters is used for the widget.

  • Learners

    • Learner Payment reports now include more fields from the associated Delivery Qualification.

    • The Aim Provider Monitoring fields for programme aims in the Projected Funding reports are now populated correctly in line with the values entered in the ILR.

    • The Attendance Summary on the Learner and Learner Enrolments reports can now be calculated to a specified date range.

    • TNPs are now shown for Apprenticeship Trailblazers.

    • A “Last Status Change By” field has been added to Learner reports.

  • Applicants

    • A “Last Status Change By” field has been added to Applicant reports.

  • Organisations

    • Organisation Payment reports now include more fields from the associated Delivery Qualification.

    • A “Last Status Change By” field has been added to Organisation reports.

    • Output of Site Codes has been added.

  • Courses

    • Course Attendance Summary calculations can now be filtered to include only Learners or Applicants.

    • Course Enrolment & Session Attendance Reports can now be filtered to include only Learners or Applicants.

    • Session Attendance Report can now be filtered to only output when no attendance has been recorded.

    • Reports can be filtered to Course Organiser and Leader.

  • Vacancy

    • Learner and Applicant ID fields have been added to Vacancy Application Reports.

  • Surveys

    • Measures have been added to prevent the Survey Response reports from erroring with a 1500 (Failed to load Unicode support DLL) error.

  • Data Changes

    • The Data Changes reports can now be filtered to multiple field names by adding multiple fields to the Field Name filter, separated by a space.

Webforms

  • Clone and retiring any Webform would error if any Create Form Workflow actions had been created but had a status of Incomplete. Now fixed.

User Defined Forms

  • The validation for checking if all single and multi select answers had a code set would give an error. Now fixed.

Integrations

  • Functional Skills results synced from bksb are now in the full Level.Sublevel format. Results held in bksb were previous being truncated - i.e. “Level 1.2” would appear in PICS as “Level 1“ - the full detail is now retained.

13th December 2022

  • Create new learner: If the qualification plan had zero qualifications an error would occur. Now fixed.

12th December 2022

  • Onefile: Fetching pathways could cause an error if multiple centres existed for an organisation. Now fixed.

  • All licences now have a 7 day grace period to allow for any administrative delays with renewals.

  • Learner logins when the portfolio visible sections had not previously been set up could cause an error. Now fixed.

10th December 2022

General

  • Important: Enforced Two Factor Authentication for all users can now be enabled in Users & Access.

  • There is a new option in Profile > Preferences to remember which sub tab was selected when moving between records.

  • SmartAssessor Integration, Dashboards, and Surveys, have all completed their beta release period and are generally available to be licenced.

Learners

  • A new Document Generation type of “Learner Delivery Plan” has been added to allow generation of “Action Plan” documents based on the new “Learner Delivery Plan” report. Help and guidance will be linked here.

  • The Planned Hours tab of the ILR now has a clearer display of hours and includes more information on which learning episodes are used to calculate planned hours for the LRN.

  • If entered, planned learning and EEP Hours for previous year are now displayed on the Planned Hours tab of the ILR.

  • Entering planned learning and EEP hours for a learning episode now instantly shows the total learner hours.

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

  • Some missing T Level validation rules have been added: ProgType_18, ProgType_19, ProgType_20, AimType_08, AimType_09.

  • A new Other ESFA Adult (non funded) programme has been added. This can be used to enter learners on programmes with Funding Model 99 aims, such as Multiply.

  • "Number of Overdue Reviews" and “Number Overdue Components" KPIs have been renamed “Learners with …”

  • Aims with Funding Model 99 (non funded) can now be added to Community Learning ILR learners.

  • Number of signatures are now shown on reviews and evidence lists.

Month End

  • The ILR exporter no longer sends RUI codes 5 and 6 if there are no aims starting before 1st August 2022.

  • Planned learning and EEP hours are no longer exported for T Level learners.

  • Programme aim planned hours are now exported for T Level learners.

  • The Apprenticeship Co-Investment Contributions Funding Reconciler would throw an error if there are blank lines at the end of the report. Now fixed.

  • The FM36 Funding Calculation was incorrectly using the earliest start date of all of an apprenticeship programme’s aims to determine the apprentice’s age when it should have only looked at programme aims. Now fixed.

  • The FM36 Funding Calculation was calculating Over Cap payments incorrectly where there are more than one Price Episode within a programme. Now fixed.

  • The Funding Calculator was still generating a process warning for employers with ID “999999999”. This process warning has been removed for 2022 calculations onwards.

Opportunities

  • It is now possible to link existing Applicants and Learners to an Opportunity using the “Link People” item on the Action menu in the Opportunity Summary.

Courses

  • 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.

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.

Reports

  • Applicants

    • An Enrolments report has been added.

  • Learners

    • A new “Learner Delivery Plan“ report has been added to allow Document Generation of “Action Plan” documents. Help and guidance will be linked here.

    • The QAR now has an additional table option of Achievement Rate (Latest Year) which only shows the latest year included in the report.

    • Output of “More Site Hierarchy” has been added.

    • Learner Data Changes report was not respecting the Officer Tags filter. Now fixed.

    • QAR Reports now has output of LARS Basic Skills Type.

    • Expected & Elapsed Days of Learning were returning incorrect values for Apprentices. Now fixed.

    • Output for “Expected Weeks on Programme” and “Expected Week of Learning” have been added.

    • Projected Funding reports have output of Level and Partner UKPRN where appropriate.

  • Vacancies

    • Output of Vacancy Tags has been added.

    • Output of Vacancy Application Tags has been added.

  • Users

    • Filtering by Create, Modified and Last login dates has been added.

    • Filtering by User Group has been added.

Integrations

  • Importing qualifications from the LRS PLR no longer fail if the subject title contains an unusual character.

  • Onefile: Archived qualifications where not meant to be included in base data syncing. Now fixed.

WebForms

  • Checkboxes for contact methods should now be more reliable.

  • Added Main Aim Level and Next of Kin fields to Learner Change Request and Learner File forms.

  • The Qualification Plan control should now be saving the current state correctly regardless of dates or Aim types.

  • Learner form Officer contact details should now be populating correctly.

  • Added the ability to download a copy of the template used to create a WebForm design. This should help when the original has been lost.

  • When Strict Site Mode is enabled, form designs can no longer be saved if no sites are selected.

  • If Strict Site Mode is enabled and the logged in user account has site restrictions, the user’s sites are automatically defaulted on any new form designs.

User Defined Forms

  • Single and multi select questions will no longer allow quotation marks (“), asterisks (*), duplicates in the code section.

  • Single and multi select questions will no longer allow empty codes.

  • Single and multi select questions will no longer allow quotation marks (“) in the description section.

30th October 2022

  • Smart Assessor Status details could sometimes show inaccurate details if an error occurred checking the settings were correct. Now fixed.

  • Automated emails sent to multiple users could fail if a duplicate was found. Now fixed.

  • WebForms: Optional aim Title fields were showing the aim References instead. Now fixed.

  • WebForms: Some calculated dates could be inaccurate if a qualification plan was not included in the form. Now fixed.

24th October 2022

  • Delivery Targets of type “Other” are now available for non-apprenticeship programmes that have a programme aim.

  • ILR Destination and Progression reports would fail to run. Now Fixed.

  • QAR report would fail if a qualification didn’t have an SSA code set. Now fixed.

  • Creating a learner could cause an error if no contracts existed in PICS. Now fixed.

  • Trying to create a learner from an applicant could fail with an error regarding “PROG_EXPEND”. Now fixed.

22nd October 2022

General

  • The Tiles on the default home page have been rearranged to show actionable Tiles first.

  • Document Generation can now set the File Type for the document produced and specify if the document is to be protected from editing. These options can be set in Configuration > Lists & Types > Document Templates for each template.

Learners

  • Important: All references to consortia have been removed from learners, funding and ILR exports. This feature has now been replaced by PICS Contracts.

  • The default setting for the “Adjust Future Date” option in Reviews can now be set to off in Configurations > Lists & Types > Reviews.

  • Learner List now has a filter for Course Enrolments with options Current, No Current, Future Starting and No Future Starting.

  • Create Learner now uses the LRN prefix from the Contract if one is specified.

  • Create Learner now imports FFI_1 and FFI_ALL correctly.

  • Create Learner will use the DAM codes from the qualification plan main aim when creating a learner on a Combines Authorities programme (ILR programme type 33).

  • Create Learner will no long require a Length of Unemployment to be specified for Funding Model 25 Learners whose Employment Status is “11: Unemployed and looking for work”.

  • Main Tag has been added as an optional display on Learner Lists.

  • Editing ILR aims with a Programme Type of 00 no longer changes the Aim Type from 4 to 3.

  • 2021 aim fields are now visible if the Export in 2021 flag is set to Always, regardless of the aim’s start date.

  • Changes to validation rules:

    • The validation rules have been updated to align with the ESFA Validation Rules specification version 3.

    • Validation rule LearnDelFAMType_06 is no longer triggered where aims started before the start date of a FAM code in the ILR specification. This matches the ESFA validation rule specification.

    • Rule R133 has been removed

    • Validation rules which relate to the “age at the start of the current teaching year” are no longer triggered if the learner does not have any open aims. These are: DateOfBirth_04, DateOfBirth_07, DateOfBirth_20 and DateOfBirth_25.

  • The “Change Funding Organisation/Group” has been renamed to “Change Programme” to align it with the Create Learner and Filtering options.

  • Creating a Learner from an Applicant will copy forward the Applicant photo.

  • Creating a Learner from an Applicant will copy forward or move the Applicant files to the Learner if configured to do so in Configuration > Sections > Learner > New Learner.

  • ILR fields RUI and PMC have been removed from Learner Create forms.

  • Aim and Qualification lists Status field now shows Overdue when not ended and past the expected end.

  • The notes field for Dependants records has now been added.

  • Email and Phone number are now shown on the list of related Officers.

  • The Learner List now has optional fields for Provider End Code and Provider Destination.

  • Ending an Episode will allow the user to delete future dated reviews.

  • Withhold from ILR export status flags are only show for ILR Learners.

  • The Learner Caseload screen can now have saved and default filters.

  • An additional Apprenticeship Service Status option of “AS System Issues“ has been added.

  • Programme Aim Provider Monitoring fields (A-D) can now be entered against qualification plans.

  • The LRS Personal Learning Record (PLR) can now be printed.

  • Review UDFs now show in the notes section rather than the details section of the summary view.

  • Learners uploading evidence could result in a “Bad Request” error which would prevent them from selecting the evidence links. Now fixed.

  • Course documents selected to be available for “All Learners” wouldn’t show for all learners. Now fixed.

Applicants

  • 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.

Courses

  • 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.

Officers

  • If a contact is linked to a login account with a blank email address, updating the email address for the contact will now automatically populate the login address.

  • Officer pick lists are now searched by email address, as well as names.

Opportunities

  • 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.

WebForms

  • Qualification Plans

    • Qualification Plan calculations no longer rely on fields existing on the form.

    • Some redisplayed aim fields were not working. Now fixed.

    • By default, optional aims will now be marked as Wanted - Optional and will not be included in the Qualification Plan date calculations. Selecting wanted - yes will rerun the calculations with the optional aim included.

    • Added fields for ILR AppStandard Code, ILR AppStandard Title and ILR AppStandard Level. These will auto fill if possible when and Qualification Plan is selected.

    • Added fields for Qualification Plan Apprenticeship Prices. These will auto fill if possible when and Qualification Plan is selected.

    • Newly created forms should have all their Qualification Plan details filled in on the answers tab.

  • Change Request forms

    • Added a lot more Learner fields. Should now (mostly) have the same fields that were available in the Learner File Forms.

    • UDF questions on these forms should now populate correctly.

  • Learner

    • ILR LSR field are now special selectors.

    • Added the ability to display Learner aims. Use the “Aims Row“ in the import fields list to display each row.

  • Organisation File

    • Organisation Head Office detail fields are now available.

  • General

    • It is now possible to select Tags in the form design to be added to a Learner or Applicant on completion of a Learner or Applicant Form.

    • Locked checkbox fields should no longer cause forms to crash is certain situations.

    • Non mandatory signatures will now be treated as mandatory once requested. This will prevent an issue where a requested non mandatory signature could cause a form to get perpetually stuck in the remote signing process.

    • Employer Main Contact fields should now auto populate correctly when an Employer is selected.

    • Added the ability to set the text, background and border colours of the remote fill fields on the Guest Fill&Sign. The settings can be found under Guest Themes.

    • It is now possible to display contact details for officers/contacts linked to Learners and Applicants via a custom relationship in WebForms. These fields will appear in the usual field list under the name of the custom relationship.

    • Adding a single select UDF without any answers to a form should no longer cause an error on trying to open the form.

    • Completing a form that went through a “Clone to New“ was incorrectly setting the status of the original form after the import. This should now be fixed.

Workflows

  • Surveys can now be sent out using a post action. Note that the same user restrictions apply for surveys sent out this way.

  • Workflow Validations and Actions are now available for Opportunity status transitions.

  • The Send Form post action should now get less confused after a selected form design is Cloned and Retired.

  • It is now possible to use {{ }} bookmarks in the the Send Notification - Email subject. To use these bookmarks, simply copy them from the message input.

Sign Up Forms

  • Performance improvements have been made when saving Applicant Sign Ups containing many User Defined Forms.

  • Sign up forms can now be marked as dormant to prevent them being used.

  • Using a signup form in a iFrame will now support custom logos

Surveys

  • New option to just add a survey record to a Learner/Applicant/Officer. And then once added, a system user can manually add the answers on the other persons behalf.

  • When survey reminders are sent, we now record the number of reminders that have been sent and display this count in the list view.

User Defined Forms

  • Fields can now be marked dormant to hide them from data capture and reporting.

  • It is now possible to configure forms for Tasks

  • Help tooltips are not supported on header and group questions

Reports

  • General

    • Failed reports can be deleted from the Available Reports list.

    • Qualification Plan filters now allow multiple selections and include is in selection, is not in selection, is blank and is not blank filtering modes.

    • Contract filters now allow multiple selections and include is in selection, is not in selection, is blank and is not blank filtering modes.

    • A new report Output Type is available: Interactive for Dashboard. This will allow the report output to be used in a dashboard widget.

    • Outputs of Last Workflow Status now have a field outputting just the date.

    • Interactive report tables now show a Total row for Count and Sum analysis methods.

    • A “Report has failed to run” email will no longer be sent if the report was run successfully, but the first attempt at sending a success email failed.

  • Learners

    • A Learner Officers report has been added that includes all Officers directly linked to a Learner including those linked by Relationships.

    • A Learners Organisations report has been added that includes Organisations linked to the Learner by Placements and Relationships.

    • A Learner ILR Employment Statuses report has been added.

    • A Learner Session report has been added. This included Attendance details.

    • A Learner Review Signatures report has been added.

    • A Learners without Review report has been added, allowing reporting of Learners who don’t have a review in the defined dated range. Revew Type and Attendance status can also be used to filter the data.

    • A Learner Components report has been added, allowing reporting of Portfolio Components.

    • A Learner Target Scan report has been added, allowing reporting of Portfolio Target Scans.

    • An Episode Status Filter has been added to Learner reports. Options include In Learning, Leavers, and Yet To Start.

    • A filter by related Officer Tags has been added.

    • ILR Aims report includes GLH from the Delivery Qualification.

    • ILR Aims report includes output of the qualification's SSA.

    • ILR Aims report can now be filtered to aims that have been exported or not in the current and/or previous year.

    • ILR Learner report can now be filtered to Learner with aims that have been exported or not in the current and/or previous year.

    • Learner Qualification report includes output of the qualification's SSA.

    • Assessment report can now be filtered by what the Assessment is of Learner, Qualification, Unit etc.

    • Learner report includes output of the result of most recent validation.

    • ILR Learners report includes output of the Episode Planned Learning/EEP Hours.

    • The Traineeship QAR report no longer fails to run with a TraineeshipFM35WorkExperienceAims error.

    • The QAR report now includes the Learner Reference Number field by default.

    • Apprenticeship Level and Title are now available as optional fields in the QAR report.

    • Output of Expected Months on Programme and Expected Months of Learning has been added.

    • Enrolment Report is now sorted by Name and Enrolment dates.

    • Qualification Report now outputs the same Statuses as displayed in the Learner Delivery Plan list of Qualifications.

    • Output of TNP Totals has been added.

    • Output of Apprenticeship Standard Government Cap has been added.

    • Reviews reports can be filtered to exclude Reviews due after a Learner has left.

    • Funding Age Band has been added to ILR Learner and ILR Aim reports. The calculation takes into account Funding Model, EEF and Programme Start dates as appropriate.

    • The Timeliness report would fail to run if invalid dates were historically recorded against a learner. Now fixed.

    • Learner Payment reports can now be filtered for blank dates, including Expected, Paid, Authorised, Invoice and Claimed.

    • Data Change Reports now has an “Exclude Extra Keys” filter.

    • Learning Start, Learning Expected End and Learning End fields are now taken from latest Main ILR Aim when there is no programme aim, otherwise taken from the Episode.

  • Applicants

    • A Learner Officers report has been added that includes all Officers directly linked to a Learner including those linked by Relationships.

    • A Learner Organisations report has been added that includes all Organisations directly linked to a Learner including those linked by Relationships.

    • Filtering by System Status allow output of Deleted and Archived record.

    • Age Bands output has been added.

  • Officers

    • Appointment reports can now be filtered to include Appointments the Officer is the Organiser for.

    • Appointment report now can output what roles the officer plays in the appointment.

    • Filtering to a specific Officer or Superior has been added to all Officer reports.

  • Courses

    • Output of number of Enrolments.

    • Attendance summary by Course has been added.

    • Output of Course Notes has been added.

    • Output of the number of session linked to a Course has been added.

    • Output of the Course Site has been added.

  • Opportunities

    • Output of the Quantity for Qualification Plans

    • Output of the linked Organisation’s Sites has been added.

  • Vacancies

    • Output of Qualification codes and title has been added.

    • Output of Qualification Plan codes and title has been added.

    • Output of the linked Organisation’s Sites has been added.

  • Forms

    • The Field and Value filters now support space separated values - allowing search where the value is X or Y etc.

  • Users

    • A User Officers Restrictions report has been added.

    • The User Sites report has been relabelled User Site Restrictions.

    • Output if 2FA is enabled.

  • Projected Funding

    • The Projected Funding By Learning Delivery report now has an option to show LSF as a separate row.

Month End

  • Funding Calculator

    • There was a bug which prevented funding periods from being updated once the funding calculations had completed when the Last Year had been set against a Funding Organisation. Now fixed.

    • The FM35 funding calculation was incorrectly applying funding caps to apprenticeship component aims. Now fixed.

    • The FM35 funding calculation was incorrectly paying achievement payments for apprenticeship knowledge and competency aims that had ended but not achieved. Now fixed.

    • The FM36 funding calculation was not calculating balancing payments when there is a change of negotiated prices (TNPs) during the End Point Assessment period. Now fixed.

    • The FM36 funding calculation was not applying the “Funding Spent at Previous Provider” value correctly to programmes with more than one Price Episode. Now fixed.

    • The Process Warning “Aim [reference] is not valid in the LARS for this funding year” was incorrectly being triggered for FM36 Apprenticeships and ESF programmes. Now fixed.

    • Where subcontractor rates have been configured to split FM36 programme rates by training and assessment, this was always returning a 50% split. Now fixed.

    • The Funding Details report generated by the funding calculator has two new sheets: Occupancy and Out Of Funding.

  • Funding Reconciliation

    • Learner Tags were missing from some of the reports generated by the reconciliation process. Now fixed.

    • It is now possible to upload .XLSX files to the reconciler. Care should be taken that only original, unedited files are used in the reconciliation process.

  • Earnings Adjustment Statement

    • EAS Data collection and export is now available for the 2022/23 ILR Year.

  • ESF Contracting

    • Deliverables now show the Deliverable Code as part of the description to help identify each deliverable.

Integrations

  • A button is now available in the LRS configuration screen to test that connections to the LRS web service are configured correctly.

  • The bksb integration now populates the new Assessment Date field for Applicants and converts the bksb AbilityMeasurement value into a percentage that is stored in the Result field.

  • When creating an Apprenticeship Learner in Smart Assessor the ILR Planned Hours (Off the Job) value is included and sets the Smart Assessor “Expected off the Job hours“ and “Use specified Off the Job hours“ fields.

  • When syncing progress from Smart Assessor the “Off the Job Hours Required“ and “Actual Hours To Date“ from the Time Log are cached in the Learner record. These value are shown on the Learner > Delivery Plan > Contact and Learning Hours, and in the End ILR Episode & Aims and End Learning Aim screens.

  • Smart Assessor will now send a welcome email when first creating a learner from within PICS.

1st October 2022

  • Any changes to aims with a 2020 end date will now cause the Export in 2021 flag to be set to Always instead of the 2022 flag.

31st August 2022

  • The 2021 Planned Learning and EEP Hours fields can now be edited if a value is present, regardless of the learning episode start date.

19th August 2022

  • The Funding Calculator would sometimes incorrectly generate a process error for FM36 Apprentices stating “Price Episode starting dd/mm/yyyy for aim ZPROG0001 starting dd/mm/yyyy: Unable to find funding Funding Band” when the funding band does exist. Now fixed.

  • When editing a Qualification Plan linked to an Opportunity a “500 Internal Server Error” was returned. Now fixed.

  • WebForm checkbox ticks were being left aligned on the field instead of centre aligned on the downloaded document. Now fixed.

  • Creating a survey would have an empty list in the Survey For dropdown. Now fixed.

17th August 2022

  • Signup forms for applicants can now support a Vacancy ID in the URL to automatically assign the new application to the vacancy.

  • Review actions that do not yet have a Done date can now be edited even if the review has signatures assigned to it.

  • The setting to Trust contact hours logged by the learner in eAssessor is now also available and supported in PICS.

  • Funding reconciler now allows viewing of reports from past years rather than just the one previous year.

  • Reporting on UDF answers derived from a “multiple select” question would sometimes have a trailing comma on the answer being reported. Now fixed.

16th August 2022

Learners

  • An “item with the same key has already been added” error no longer occurs when editing ILR aim data.

  • A “Nullable object must have a value“ error no longer occurs after editing ILR Learner RPL information.

  • The Apprenticeship Service bulk export now exports RecognisePriorLearning as Yes/No to conform with the upload specification and prevent the error Enter whether prior learning is recognised as ‘true’ or ‘false’.

  • Filtering the learner list by Status now allows all learners on a status to be shown, regardless of sub-status, without the need to select every sub-status. This change also applies to applicant and organisation lists.

WebForms

  • The validation for text input fields was misbehaving and occasionally flagging fields as invalid even when they were valid. Now fixed.

  • Extra blank pages are no longer added to forms.

15th August 2022

Applicants

  • Data capture, WebForm fields, imports and reporting has been added for the new Recognised Prior Learning fields required in the Apprenticeship Service Bulk Upload.

  • When downloading a ULN using LRS Web Services, an error no longer appears when the ULN is already assigned to another applicant.

  • Applicants 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.

  • Applicant users can now be created for customers with the Surveys Beta Licence.

Learners

  • 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.

Month End

  • The ILR Exporter is now capable of exporting ILR files which conform to the 2022 ESFA ILR Specification.

  • The ILR exporter no longer sends any aims which start in a future year.

  • It is no longer possible to create 2020 ILR files.

  • Funding calculations have been updated and are now available for the 2022-23 ILR year.

  • FM81 Funding Calculations were calculating reimbursement values incorrectly. Now fixed.

  • The Funding Calculations were assigning loan payment derived claims to the wrong aim when there were more that one loan funded episode in year. Now fixed.

  • Funding Reconciliations have been enabled for the 2022-23 ILR year.

  • The QAR Reconciler would fail to match on some aims where the SW Supplier ID in PICS is different to that in the QAR. Now fixed.

Reports

Spreadsheet Output for reports that includes multiple details records for the main entity - for example the Learner Reviews Report can now be output with an Output Type of “Spreadsheet - Across”. This will present the detail records in repeating column sets across the spreadsheet.

General

  • Searching optional fields will now correctly respect the hierarchy of fields.

Learner Reports

  • The Learner Change Request report can now be filtered by Change Type.

  • The Learner ILR Aims report would sometimes throw an error if the “Elapsed Days on Aim” output was selected and the report contained non-ILR learners. Now fixed.

  • Learner reports containing ILR data have now been updated to use the 2022 version of annual fields, unless the report field explicitly shows a different year.

  • Payment Reports can have output and now be filterign on Claimed date.

  • Employment Status is output for Commerical Learners.

  • Latest LSF and Has any LSF outputs added.

QAR Report

  • The QAR reports (including the QAR reconciler) now conform to the calculations defined in the 2021 ESFA QAR technical specifications.

  • A new report type is now available: ESF Funded Learning. This report is based on the Education and Training QAR specification, but includes all aims with Funding Model 70.

Form Reports

  • The Form report is now able to be used in Dashboard widgets.

  • The Form History report is now able to be used in Dashboard widgets.

Opportunities Reports

  • Output of just the Qualification Plan code is now available.

User Defined Forms

  • It is now possible to configure visibility restrictions for User Defined Forms

  • User Defined Forms now have a summary page

Surveys

  • 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.

Courses

  • It is now possible to copy sessions forward every X weeks, rather than every week.

Sign Up Forms

  • Any contact records created as part of Applicant or Employer sign up forms, will now also be linked to the same site as the applicant/employer if a site is defined on the form.

  • The employer and course details panels can no be positioned as part of the form editing process so they can appear at the required location within the form completion process.

  • Sign Up forms can now be used in iFrames in your own website.

Users and Access

  • A new menu item under Users and Access configuration is available called Visibility Groups, these are used to restrict User Defined Forms to a group of users.

Workflows

  • UDF answers can now be validated on performing a status transition.

  • The send notification post action now has the option of sending the notification via SMS if you have the integration enabled.

  • Officer relationships can now be set as a post action for Learners and Applicants.

  • Post actions are now logged and will display a success or failure message on the entity's Recent Activity tab.

WebForms

  • The Has Licence and Sex fields on Applicant forms should now be working as expected.

  • Learner Change Request forms are now able to be set to auto approve on remote signature completion.

  • The rejection process for WebForms can now be shorted by rejecting the form directly back to remote signatories.

  • There is now an option to validate a WebForm on save. This should help with missing mandatory answers for forms that are signed locally. In addition to this new feature is the ability to force all saves to be validated.

  • The WebForm URL field now supports “mailto“ links.

  • Defaulted Employer Representative email addresses should now be filled in as expected.

  • The Prior Qualification fields on WebForms have had a bit of a re-work. Title, Level and Grade are now shown as drop downs and we have added an APL Type dropdown too.

  • The permissions to create Learner File and Change Request WebForms are now working as intended.

Integrations

  • OneFile: There is a new option to disable the automatic nightly refresh of data between PICS and OneFile.

  • SMS: It is now possible to send SMS messages to multiple records at once from the main list views of Learners, Applicants, Officers, and Organisations.

  • BKSB: There is a new option to decide if user credentials are automatically sent to the new user when creating an account in BKSB.

  • BKSB: New options added to allow records to be tagged when a result for each subject is completed.

  • Smart Assessor: New option to push changes to qualification assessors in PICS up to Smart Assessor.

  • Smart Assessor: Now supports a learner status of Early Leaver when updating the qualification status from PICS.

18th June 2022

  • Qualification Progress values were not being updated when editing achievements data. Now fixed.

10th June 2022

Learners

Applicants

  • 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.

Courses Session

  • The “Quick Session Dates” filter now includes “This week”, “Next week”, “Last Week” - where this week is from the Monday on or before the current day to the Sunday on or after the current day.

  • The Day of a Session is now include in the Export To Excel.

Month End

  • The Funding Calculation was producing a Process Error for Devolved AEB level 4 aims when DAM ‘023’ was recorded. Now fixed.

  • The Funding Calculation’s Funding Details report would not show learner Tags if the learner finished more than two years ago. Now fixed.

  • The ESF Contracting list of items now displays the “Learning Delivery” associated with each item where applicable.

  • The Apps Monthly Payment Reconciler’s option to “Perform Levy Adjustments” was incorrectly making adjustments where the Apps Monthly Payment report showed a clawback against co-investment payments for Levy funded apprentices. Now fixed.

  • Editing an ESF Supplementary Item generated by the funding calculator within ESF Contracting would disassociate the linked Learning Delivery from the item. This would result in the funding calculation process resetting any changes made to the item. Now fixed.

  • The Funding Calculator’s Funding Details report’s “Funding Details” sheet has been renamed to “Current Period Funding Details” to better describe the details included on the sheet.

  • The FM81 Apprenticeship Trailblazer calculation was incorrectly calculating 90 and 365 day incentive payments from the start date of each aim after a restart. Now fixed.

ILR Exporter

  • DAM FAMs are now ordered numerically when exported.

Forms

  • A tool to Reinstate delete forms has been added. This can be accessed from the Form Summary screen.

Signup Forms

  • Signup forms for a specific opportunity or course enrolment now show confirmation details of what opportunity or course the form is referencing during the signup process.

Tasks

  • It is now possible to configure task types.

WebForms

  • The emails sent out for WebForm signature request/reminder and form completion can now be customised in PICS.

  • Added a column for Aim Subcontractor to the qualification plan control.

  • Bug Fix: Help text was not showing for single select.

  • Bug Fix: URLs will now correctly show in guest Fill & Sign.

  • Bug Fix: Defaulted email addresses from Officer relationships for Organisation File Forms will now work correctly.

Workflows

  • Adding Learners and Organisations onto a workflow with a default status will now create a status history record.

  • Beta: The Applicant send notification post transition action now has a lot more bookmarks available.

Integrations

  • 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.

General

  • Notification on Successful run of a report can now be set to None, and defaults to Email as before.

  • Related Organisation output details now include the ID, Name, Contact Details (Phones & Email) for the Main Officer and Main Contact.

  • Related Organisation output details - the Ward, Region and Local Authority columns have been grouped as a new option Geolocation.

Learner Reports

  • A new report template, “Learner Claim History Summary Report” has been added. This will produce a periodised summary of actual funding for each learner.

  • The Projected Funding By Learner, Projected Funding By Learning Delivery, and Projected Funding Individual Items reports now have an “Included FM36 employer programme payments” option. This replaces the “Show employer earned payments instead of PMR based claims”, and includes an option to “Exclude all employer payments”.

  • The Projected Funding By Learner, Projected Funding By Learning Delivery, and Projected Funding Individual Items reports now have the option to exclude projected overdue payments.

  • Learner based reports now have the option to display a full attendance summary against each learner.

  • Filtering by related Organisation has been added to all the Learner Reports: These include custom Learner / Organisation relationships and the built in links such as ILR Employer, Work Placement, Delivery Locations, Schools, and Colleges. The built in links also allow filtering by the Head Office of the link.

  • Filtering by related Officer has been added to all the Learner Reports: These include custom Learner / Officer relationships and the built in links such as Main Adviser, Training Adviser, and Mentor. The built in links also allow filtering by the Superior of the link.

  • Learner ILR Aims & Learner Qualification Reports can now be filtered by Level.

  • Learner ILR Aims Report - the LDM, DAM and Provider Monitoring fields have been grouped as one optional field, but remain outputted as separate columns.

  • Learner ILR Aims Report now has an Aim Status output similar to the one shown in the Learner ILR Aims lists.

  • Learner ILR Aims Report now has an output for the Subcontractor UKPRN Name.

  • Learner Placements Report now includes optional output of the Organisation Main Officer and Main Contact.

  • Learner Assessments Report now include optional output of Location Organisation, Location Notes, Cross Reference, Action Point Notes, Follow Up Due and Done dates.

  • The Learner Data Changes report can now be filtered by Extra Key.

  • The Learners report now includes a Programme Achievement output field which shows the achievement date of the latest ILR programme aim,

  • The Learner Timeliness Report now includes a Periods Late output field which displays the number of ILR periods (census days) which have passed between an entered date and the date it was entered into PICS.

  • The Learner Timeliness Report now includes optional fields which shows the current aim data for changes linked to learning aims. These include key aim dates and completion/outcome fields.

  • Learner and ILR Aim Reports - filters and optional output fields have been added to support “Current LSF” rather than the existing “Any LSF”.

  • Learner Change Requests reports can now be filtered by the Status of the Change Request.

  • Learner Contact Hours report now includes filtering and output for Recorded By User Type.

  • A field has been added for the Main Status (without the sub-status) for dashboarding.

Applicant Reports

  • A new report template Applicant Status History has been added.

  • Filtering by related Organisation has been added to all the Applicant Reports: These include custom Applicant / Organisation relationships and the built in links such as Employer, Recruitment Agency, Delivery Location, School, and College. The built in links also allow filtering by the Head Office of the link.

  • Filtering by related Officer has been added to all the Applicant Reports: These include custom Applicant / Officer relationships and the built in links such as Main Adviser, Mentor, and Recruited By. The built in links also allow filtering by the Superior of the link.

  • A field has been added for the Main Status (without the sub-status) for dashboarding.

  • An output field for Days on Status has been added.

Organisation Reports

  • A new report template Organisation Status History has been added.

  • A new report template Organisation Officers has been added.

  • Filtering by related Organisation has been added to all the Organisation Reports: These include custom Organisation / Organisation relationships and the built in links such as Head Office. The built in links also allow filtering by the Head Office of the link.

  • Filtering by related Officer has been added to all the Organisation Reports: These include custom Organisation / Officer relationships and the built in links such as Main Officer, and Main Contact. The built in links also allow filtering by the Superior of the link.

  • A field has been added for the Main Status (without the sub-status) for dashboarding.

Opportunity Reports

  • A new report template Opportunity Status History has been added.

  • A field has been added for the Main Status (without the sub-status) for dashboarding.

Course Reports

  • The Day of a Session is now available as an optional field in the Course Sessions report.

  • The Course Data Changes report is now available.

  • GLH is now included in the Attendance Summary data.

  • % Attended is now included in the Attendance Summary data, this is Present + Late / Sessions.

  • Session Attendance Reporting now has optional fields for the Attendee’s Provider Assigned ID, Main Officer and Employer/Placement.

Vacancy Reports

  • More RAA related fields are now available as an optional fields.

Form Reports

  • Output of the Signature capture date has been added for each signature

  • A new report template, “Form Fields Report” has been added which shows the fields and their responses against each form.

User Reports

  • 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.

QAR Report

  • A new report type is now available: Community Learning. This report is based on the Education and Training QAR specification, but includes all aims with Funding Model 10.

  • Additional output fields have been added to the QAR report:

    • Aim Title

    • Aim Level

    • Maths or English

    • Delivery Qualification Assessor

    • Delivery Qualification IQA

    • Delivery Qualification EQA

    • HNS

    • HNS Code

  • The Minimum Standard Qualification Type field no longer incorrectly classifies aims as ESOL.

Interactive Reports

  • All interactive reports can now be analysed by multiple columns in table view.

  • When analysing by date fields in interactive reports, it is now possible to apply a grouping to the date so they are not output as individual dates. Possible groupings are: As-Is, Calendar Month or Year, ILR Period or Year, ISO Week.

  • Dates (included those which have been grouped) are now shown in chronological order.

  • User Defined Form fields can now be used to analyse interactive reports.

  • When viewing a saved interactive report, there is now a button to show the report options used when generating the report data.

  • When exporting a table view or data list to Excel, the report options are now included as a hidden tab.

  • Export table and Show all records buttons are now available on all interactive report types and dashboard widgets.

  • Interactive table and chart views now display a title.

  • When editing a dashboard widget with a Target Column, the menu no longer reverts to the first target column in the list.

Miscellaneous Report Changes

  • The Event Data Changes report is now available, which includes changes to Appointments, Tasks, Communications and Calendar entries.

  • The Miscellaneous Data Changes report is now available, which includes changes to Qualification Plans, Form Instances, Surveys, User Defined Forms, Contracts, and various other records not included in other data change reports.

11th May 2022

  • Report output of UDF Single & Multiple Items from a list may have output only the code. Now fixed.

  • WebForm notification emails sent as part of a Status Workflow did not have fully formed URLs. Now fixed.

  • Adding Evidence to a Learner could result in a Bad Request error. Now fixed.

7th May 2022

General

  • When filtering lists by Status or Workflow Status, using the “None Of” option would sometimes exclude too many items.

Learners

  • Review Ratings fields have been brought over from desktop.

  • Document Generation is now available for Units, Contact Hours and Enrolments.

  • Workflow Status is now an optional column on the Learner List

  • Next of Kin details are now available on the Additional tab when creating a new Learner.

  • Bug Fix: Change Apprenticeship Standard Code was not limited to the Standards of the same level as the Learner is currently.

  • Learner Qualification list can now be filtered by Contract.

  • Learner Placement list can now be filtered to Is Current.

Applicants

  • Site is now an optional column of the Applicant List.

  • Postcode is now an optional column of the Applicant List.

  • Government Cap for Apprenticeship Standard is now show on the Financial Details.

Courses

  • Session list can now be filtered by Site.

WebForms

  • Bug Fix: Picklists for DLA, EDF and SEN are now available.

  • All “File” WebForms not longer require “Applicant/Learner Send to Form Capture” and can now be created by any user with the “FCA Client User” or “Forms Management - Create Forms” permissions.

  • Bug Fix: When using the Create WebForm button to create an empty instance of a WebForm the link in the email will no longer be broken.

  • Bug Fix: WebForms can no longer be submitted multiple times by having the same form open in multiple tabs/windows.

Reports

  • Optional Field searching now works better with expandable fields, such as officers and organisations.

  • Enrolment reports can now be filtered by the Course Start and End dates.

  • Claim History report performance has been improved.

  • Opportunities report now has output of Qualification Plans and linked Learner and Applicant counts.

  • Applicant Report now has output of ILR Prior Attainment.

  • Bug Fix: Communications reports were incorrectly reporting the Type.

  • Learner Qualification report can now be filtered by Registration Number.

  • Learner Qualification report can now be filtered to include Deleted and Archived Learners.

  • Learner ILR Aims report can now be filtered to include Deleted and Archived Learners.

  • Learner ILR Aims report now has output of Delivery Qualification Status.

  • Learner Units report can be now be filtered by Unit Reference and Linked Qualification.

  • Form History report can now be filtered by the History Status.

  • Added Notes reports for Learners, Applicants, Officers and Organisations.

  • The Projected Funding reports now includes learner ILR output fields.

  • Added Status History report for Learners

  • Learner report now has an optional output for Workflow

  • The Projected Funding By Learner, and Projected Funding By Learning Delivery reports now have an output option of “Total Overdue”, which is the sum of funding which has been projected into the next unfinalled period because they are overdue.

  • The Projected Funding Individual Items report now has an output option of “Overdue Projected Item” to identify funding items that have been projected into the next unfinalled period because they are overdue.

  • The “Projected End Period” output in the Projected Funding reports was showing the next unfinalled period at the time the report was run. It now shows what the next unfinalled period was at the time the projected funding was calculated.

  • The data change reports for learners, applicants, organisations and officers can now be filtered by old and new values.

  • A new System Logs Report is now available.

Month End

  • The Funding Calculator’s Funding Details report’s Summary sheet now separates out PMR totals from the FM36 totals as an additional row.

  • The QAR Reconciler no longer shows a “Value cannot be null” error when reconciling an Education & Training report.

  • The Projected Funding Calculator now produces a downloadable report against each year that summarises the funding calculated and highlights any process warnings encountered.

25th April 2022

  • Bug Fix: Forms that are set to auto approve are completed in guest mode and for certain types of forms, this was causing an error that could result in form duplicates. Duplicates are no longer created.

  • QAR Report: New optional fields have been added for SSA Codes and Tiers. These use the SSA code relevant to the report type - for Apprenticeship Programmes this is the Standard/Framework+Pathway SSA code, for other reports it is the aim SSA from the LARS database.

20th April 2022

  • Attempting to run the learner validation report would show an error about the hostname not being set. Now fixed.

17th April 2022

  • Bug Fix: Deleting a widget could sometimes fail with an error of “Widget not found”. Editing a widget could result in an unexpected status behind the scenes that would prevent the delete. Editing widgets no longer does this, but some widgets may have already been broken. If you can not delete a widget, please contact our support team.

  • Bug Fix: Setting the course sessions list to your home page would fail to load when clicking the home page icon. Now Fixed.

  • Bug Fix: The AEB funding calculation was applying the Level 3 National Skills uplift incorrectly which was affecting the funding cap of applicable learners. Now fixed.

  • Bug Fix: The funding calculation was showing a process warning for devolved AEB learners who were studying a level 4 aim as not part of an apprenticeship, even when the aim was recorded with DAM code “023: MCA/GLA Delivery Exclusion” and was not calculating funding for these aims. Now fixed.

Reports

  • Improvement: The Projected Funding reports now have an option to show “Postcode Uplifts”.

  • The Interactive QAR Report no longer includes excluded leavers in the Achievers total if they are excluded from Achievement Rates.

  • The QAR now has additional optional fields to display the SSA code and title. These show the standard/framework SSA code for Apprenticeship Programme reports, and the aim SSA code for other report types. This is consistent with the data used by the ESFA.

  • The ILR Learners Report no longer shows Yes in the Has ILR Aims with LSF column when the LSF aims contain a null code entered in desktop PICS.

8th April 2022

Learners

  • Learner validation now includes an audit check for FM25 Condition Of Funding.

  • Reviews: A new attended option “By Video” has been added

  • It is no longer possible to record Planned Learning Hours multiple times when creating a learner and moving back from the Additional page to the Programme page.

  • When the ILR Export Status of a ILR learner is changed, the learner-level Planned Learning and EEP Hours values are recalculated.

  • The Planned Learning and EEP Hours values are no longer removed when the hours are edited on a Withheld learner.

  • Learner change logs for payment records (table pcTrnPay) now include an extra key showing the Expected Date, Actual Date and unique ID for the payment record to assist in identifying which record has been changed.

  • Entering payment records (including automatically generated loan payments) no longer result in a “Maximum key has been reached” error.

  • Deleting a learner placement that was a custom relationship type would result in a “Placement not found” error. Now fixed.

  • The Status field is now displayed in the Learner Assessments list.

  • The Grade and Cross Reference fields are now displayed in the Learner Assessments list if there is data to display.

  • Learner Validation now includes Audit warnings for conditions reported in the OfS HE data credibility quality report.

  • Evidence: It is now possible to clear the IQA and EQA date on an evidence file for users who have the Database Administrator permission.

  • Qualifications: It is now possible to clear the IQA and EQA date on a qualification for users who have the Database Administrator permission.

Month End

  • Funding Calculations:

    • The funding calculator was excluding learners that have validation errors. They are now included.

    • FM36 Apprentices eligible for “National Skills Fund: Level 3 Adult Offer” were being assigned the wrong disadvantage uplift. Now fixed.

    • Balancing payments were not being paid for some Apprenticeship Standards on completion of their End Point Assessment. Now fixed.

    • The FM36 funding calculation was sometimes calculating framework uplifts incorrectly where residual TNPs had been added. Now fixed.

    • The FM36 funding calculation was withholding employer incentives for apprentices aged under 19 when they were recorded as a care leaver. Now fixed.

    • The projected funding calculation for FM36 apprentices was setting the effective date of overdue unpaid PMR derived claims to the PMR record’s expected date. This was resulting in the items not appearing in the Projected Funding reports. The effective date is now projected to be in the next unfinalled period.

  • Funding Reconciliation:

    • The “Price Episode Actual End Date” column has been added to the report generated by the Apprenticeship Data Match reconciler.

  • Additional filtering options have been added to ESF Contracting.

  • The QAR Reconciler is now available. This allows an ESFA QAR data extract to be uploaded and a report is produced showing any differences between the ESFA data and the PICS QAR data. A new QAR Reconciler permission has been created to restrict its use - this will need to be assigned by a database administrator before it will become visible.

Courses

  • Session GLH will now be defaulted based on the start and end time when creating a session

  • Added GLH to the export to excel function for the course sessions list

  • Total Sessions GLH has been added to the course summary page for Fixed Start Date Courses, this will sum up all the Sessions GLH for that course to compare with the Course Total GLH

Reports

  • Reports will now be aborted if they take more than 90 minutes to run. It was previously 120 minutes but this has been reduced in line with other report optimisations.

  • Customers with many UDF fields may have experienced an error with the ILR Aim Report. Changes have been made to avoid this in future.

  • Data Change reports are now available for Learners, Applicants, Officers and Organisations. These allow reporting on changes made to these records.

  • QAR Reports

    • The Interactive (Beta) option is no longer available for QARs. Instead, saved reports using Interactive output mode should be used.

    • The Interactive QAR now uses the terms Leaver, Achiever and Completed instead of referring to aims. This is to standardise with the terms used by the ESFA on the QAR reporting dashboard.

    • An Export Table option is now available in the Interactive QAR. This will export the current table view to a spreadsheet.

    • QAR Charts now show a title describing the report. These will also be included when exporting the chart to an image.

    • QAR charts and tables now use the multi-year format for years e.g. “2020 to 2021” instead of “2020”.

    • Learning Delivery Monitoring (LDM FAM) and Aim Provider Monitoring outputs are now available.

    • More fields are included by default when creating a new QAR report. This is to ensure that all information is available which details how the year and achievement data for a learner has been calculated.

    • Timely achievement rates no longer include learners who are still in learning and have not past their expected end date by more than 90 days on the date the report is run.

    • The QAR report can now be filtered by multiple contracts instead of just one.

  • Interactive reports which include calculations on decimal numbers now round the values to two decimal places.

  • The Qualification Plan and Qualification Plan Elements reports now include the following optional outputs:

    • Plan Training Negotiated Price

    • Plan Training Employer Contribution

    • Plan Training Employer Contribution Spread

    • Plan Assessment Negotiated Price

    • Plan Assessment Employer Contribution

    • Plan Assessment Employer Contribution Spread

    • Element Awarding Body (Elements report only)

    • Element Awarding Body Reference (Elements report only)

    • Element Level (Elements report only)

  • The Learner Claim History report would throw an error if there were any incomplete ESF records in the data for the report. These records are now not included.

  • Output of just “Non-ILR Aims” in the ILR Aims report was incorrectly identifying aims as “Non-ILR”, this has been corrected.

  • The HE fields have been removed from the ILR Aims Report and added to a new “Learner Higher Education Aims Report”.

  • BETA Feature: A beta version of Dashboards is now available for customers who have the eDashboard licence.

Forms

  • The following form lists can now be edited in Lists and Types: Reason for Rejection, Reason for Deletion and Reason for Reassigning.

WebForms

  • 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.

4th March 2022

Navigation

  • A new icon is now available on several of the main screens to allow each user to make that screen their home page in PICS.

Learners

  • 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.

Learner ILR Aims

  • The Planned and Actual duration of the Aim is show in a tool tip on the relevant date field in the list, and is available in the Export to Excel

  • The Actual or Planned duration of the Aim is show in the Aim summary details.

  • LDM FAM code 382 (Adult Level 3 Offer for Low Wage Learner) is now available for use.

Learner Payments

  • The filters for Reference and Purchase Order have been made easier to use in Any Of / Start with mode.

Reports

  • 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.

Document Generation

  • There was an issue with fields in documents not doing a case insensitive search. Now fixed.

WebForms

  • Attachments now properly lock when the user they are assigned to has signed the form. This is indicated by a padlock symbol in front of the attachment name.

  • Attachments now show when they have failed validation. This is indicated by an “X” symbol in front of the attachment name.

  • Users with the DB Admin and Form Builder permissions can create test forms - these forms will auto fill with test data and are intended to help testing the placement of fields on the output signed document.

  • Added the ability to set the minimum and maximum length of answers for text and long text fields.

  • After a form is submitted, the system takes a bit of time to generate the signed document. While this is happening, the form’s status will now indicate that this is happening. You will need to wait until it has finished generating the document before the form can be approved.

  • Check boxes for users that have already signed the form will no longer be reset when the form is saved again.

  • Added a new section for all users that have FCA. This section will show all WebForms that you have been assigned as a signatory on. You will be able to navigate directly to these forms once they are ready to sign.

  • Added a new workspace tile that shows how many WebForms are ready for your signature. Click on the tile to view these forms.

Month End

  • Funding Calculator

    • The Funding Details report’s Process Warnings sheet now shows where a learner’s episode has ILR validation warnings or errors.

  • Projected Funding Calculations

    • Where an apprentice is in EPA, the calculation would forecast completion only in the next unfinalled period. It now forecasts completion on the expected end date if this is in the future.

  • ESF Contracting

    • It is now possible to bulk update the Payment Claimed, Payment Received, Subcontractor Claimed and Subcontractor Paid fields.

    • The ability to copy a single Supplementary Data Item, and the ability to copy forward multiple Supplementary Data Items has been added.

Integrations

  • OneFile: New configuration settings are available to update Learner, Officer, and Organisation demographic data in either OneFile or PICS during the nightly update.

  • OneFile: New configuration setting available to push changes of learner employer up to OneFile.

  • OneFile: New Configuration setting available to push changes to learner main officer up to OneFile.

  • Smart Assessor: New configuration settings are available to update Learner, Officer, and Organisation demographic data in either OneFile or PICS during the nightly update.

  • Smart Assessor: New configuration setting available to push changes of learner employer up to OneFile.

  • OneFile: Errors during a manual or nightly refresh will now generate a sync log for the learner.

  • Smart Assessor: Errors during a manual or nightly refresh will now generate a sync log for the learner.

  • EDS: The ESFA are deactivating the EDS Web Service on 1st April. After this date the PICS EDS Integration will no longer function and searches will not be available.

User Management

  • If permissions are stripped from a user due to licence restrictions, eg a Light Touch User, we will now show which permissions have been stripped in the user summary screen.

9th February 2022

  • OneFile Integration: Enrolling a learner into OneFile could result in an error related to creating their officer user depending on how your data and OneFile data matched up. We have made some improvements to handle a wider range of scenarios to reduce the chances of this error.

  • Create Learner Process: The check for potential duplicates when entering the basic learner details has been updated to check against Date of Birth too. Plus, it should all be faster too.

  • Evidence Files: It was possible for an evidence file to be locked with no way of unlocking it depending on your licences. It is now possible to unlock an evidence file by resetting it’s assessment status regardless of licences.

7th February 2022

  • Attendance Report: New optional output field for Attendance Guided Learning Hours

  • User list: New option in Update All to set the User Group.

  • Reports: Report to Show filter was not correctly filtering to “Mine and Shared” on first load. Now fixed.

  • Learner Reports: Break in Learning filter was broken for Exclude On Break In Learning. Now fixed.

  • Learner Report: System Status filter has been added.

  • Learner Qualification Report: Qualification Awarding Body is now available as an optional field.

  • Learner Qualification Report: OneFile ID and Smart Assessor ID are now available as optional fields.

  • User permissions: Vacancies can now be used by Light Touch SaaS users.

  • Forms: Create button was incorrectly checking for both Form Create & Form Capture Users rather than checking for either. Now fixed.

  • Forms: Approving a Learner or Applicant form was not attaching a copy of the form to the Learner or Applicant in certain instances. Now fixed.

  • Organisations and Officers: Archive All is now available from the main list.

4th February 2022

Learners

  • “Classic” New Learner has been removed.

  • A list of Reviews for multiple Learner (similar to Learner Payments) has been added to Learners > Additional Sections.

  • More values have been added to Apprenticeship Service status to make managing records easier.

  • It is now possible to select multiple records and add the same Note to them all.

  • The End Episode and Aims tool now offers the ability to Delete future PMRs.

  • The Apprenticeship Service upload tool no longer requires you to filter by AS Cohort.

  • Core and Main Aims are now identified in Qualification & Aim lists.

  • It is now possible to select multiple Payment records and set the Expected date to either a specific date, or move the existing date back or forward a number of days.

  • A display of ILR Planned Off the Job Hours to Date has been added to the Contact and Learning Hours screen. This uses the expected and elapsed days of learning taken from the Programme Aims.

  • It is now possible to update the LRS Other Verification Text to blank after changing the Verification Type from Other to another value. Previously this action would result in a WSEC0001 error from the LRS.

  • The learner validation now includes rules LearnDelFAMType_79, 80 and 81. These validate that FFI code 1 (Fully Funded aims) has been used correctly.

  • The Learner validation no longer shows an error when the Start Type is set to Restart.

  • City and Guilds fields against Learner (Enrolment Number), Learner Qualifications (Registration Status) and Units (Grade and Status) have been added. These are only available to customers using the City and Guilds interface and must be requested from Pellcomp.

  • Dated Changes can now be created and deleted.

  • Change Requests

    • An email notification is sent to any user who is assigned to authorise a change request.

    • Authorising Officer and Authorised Date are now shown on the list of change requests.

    • The change request list can now be filtered by authorised date.

  • Framework Tracking has been renamed Apprenticeship Tracking as it was visible on all apprentice learner records.

Applicants

  • More values have been added to Apprenticeship Service status to make managing records easier.

  • It is now possible to select multiple records and add the same Note to them all.

  • Most Recent Status Change has been added as an optional field and sort order on the Applicant list.

Courses

  • It is now possible to set the Session flag in the Attendance editing form.

  • It is now possible to select multiple Course records and set the status.

  • It is now possible to create Off-the-job Training hours Contact records from a Session’s Attendance.

Officers

  • 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.

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

Opportunities

  • It is now possible to select multiple records to Delete or Reinstate.

Integrations

  • OneFile: A log of the most recent learner refresh can be viewed from the learner delivery plan summary.

  • OneFile: Improvements to support multi centre support for officers and organisations.

  • OneFile: DB Admin users can manually edit the OneFile ID of a qualification in PICS.

  • Smart Assessor: A log of the most recent learner refresh can be viewed from the learner delivery plan summary.

  • Smart Assessor: When enrolling a learner, we will automatically create any missing officer or employer records in Smart Assessor if they have not already been connected in PICS.

  • Smart Assessor: DB Admin users can manually edit the Smart Assessor ID of a qualification in PICS.

  • Postcode data is now automatically downloaded after a new postcode has been entered into PICS. This includes Region, Local Authority and Ward. There is also a new Postcode Data section under Integrations where it is possible to download postcode data for all postcodes currently in the database. These fields have also been added to various reports.

  • Recruit An Apprentice has been updated to work with the new API, any existing keys will no longer work see the following blog post for more details PICS has joined Advanced

  • SMS: We are releasing a new SMS integration for PICS using Twilio.

Reports

  • Reports spreadsheets now have filters on the title row.

  • Optional Fields may now have symbol to explain more about the data shown in the field

  • Superior Code and Name has been added to Officer outputs.

  • Reports can now be Re-run if they are not the result of a scheduled report.

  • “Database Administrator” users can now access all saved reports.

  • Report now have “Full Name” and “Surname, First Names” fields.

  • New Reports

    • have been added for Qualification Plans and Qualification Plan Elements.

    • reports on Communications (Call, Email, SMS) has been added for Learners, Applicants, Organisations and Officers.

    • have been added for Officer Tasks.

  • Learner Reports

    • filtering by Provider Destination & End Codes has been added.

    • filtering by Has ever had a Break-in-Learning has been added.

    • output of Learner Title has been added.

    • output of Programme Aim Planned Hours has been added.

    • output of Site Parent has been added.

    • output of User who Entered the Leaner has been added.

    • output of Beyond Expected End flag has been added.

    • output of Expected Days of Learning and Elapsed Days of Learning have been added. These are derived from the episode dates if there are no ILR Programme Aims.

    • output of Learning Actual End has been added. This is derived from the episode dates if there are no ILR Programme Aims.

    • output of Learning Start Date has been added. This is derived from the episode dates if there are no ILR Programme Aims.

    • output of ILR Programme Planned Hours Progress has been added. This is logged Actual OTJ Hours / ILR Programme Planned Hours.

    • output of ILR Programme Planned Hours To Date has been added. ILR Programme Planned Hours * (Elapsed Days of Learning / Expected Days of Learning).

    • output of ILR Completion, Outcome and Withdrawal Reason ahs been added.

    • output of PICS Portfolio Type has been added.

    • output of Current LSF status has been added.

    • output of Has ever had a Break-in-Learning has been added.

  • ILR Learner Aim Report

    • can now be filtered by “originally starting between” and “ending or expected to end between”.

    • can now be filtered by Only Main Aim and First/Latest version of Aims.

    • filtering by Provider Destination & End Codes has been added.

  • Learner Qualification Report

    • can now be filtered by “ending or expected to end between”.

    • can now be filtered by Only Main Aim.

    • filtering by Provider Destination & End Codes has been added.

  • Session Attendance Report

    • outputs of LRN and ULN for Attendees have been added

    • output of Main Tag for Attendees has been added

  • Organisation Report

    • can now be filtered by System Status.

  • Officer Report

    • can now be filtered by DBS Date and Last Modified.

  • Vacancy Report

    • can now be filtered by Created, Opens, Closes and Expected Start dates.

  • Projected Funding Reports

    • these would throw an error when UDF (User Defined Form) values are selected as optional outputs. Now fixed.

  • Forms Reports

    • output of Form Owner Signature has been added.

  • User Reports

    • can now be filtered by Permission.

    • output of SaaS User Type added.

Month End

  • The FM36 funding reports now only show funding up to the period being reported - not the complete year.

  • ILR Exports

    • The exports list now shows the user who created the export. This field will only be populated for exports created after this version of PICS has been released.

    • The exports list now shows ILR years on individual tabs and files created in 2017-19 are available for download.

    • There is now a “No Site” option sites filter when creating a new export - this is visible if the user does not have site restrictions preventing them accessing learners with no site code.

  • The Projected Funding calculation was not limiting the number of years into the future calculations were run for which would result in a very long runtime if a learner had an incorrect start date far into the future. Now fixed.

  • The ESF Contract Managager is now available within PICS.

  • The ESF FM70 Funding Calculation process was causing the Funding Calculator Finalling process to take a long time for some users. Now fixed.

Form Manager

  • It is now possible to customise more fields on the Forms list.

  • A field for Head Office User has been added to the Forms list.

  • Form owners will now be able to see all their own forms regardless of Site. Note that FCA Users will still not be able to see forms after they have been submitted.

WebForms

  • 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

Configuration

  • 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.

12th December 2021

  • WebForms: Fixed a bug that prevented checkbox answers from being saved.

8th December 2021

Learners

  • Framework Tracking information has been moved to the Delivery Plan section.

  • The new New Learner process “Create (beta)” has been promoted and now appears just as “Create” with the old methods now labelled “classic” - these are expected to be removed in early 2022.

  • Delivery Target and Model for a new Learner can now be defaulted from the Qualification Plan.

  • Qualification Reference has been added to the Learner Payments record edit screen.

  • Break-in-Learning support has been added to Commercial Programme learners

  • Filters for the 5 main officer roles have been added to the Learner and Learner Qualifications lists.

  • Filters for the main Placement types have been added to the Learner and Learner Qualifications lists.

  • LRS Privacy Notice Seen has been added to the New Learner “Learner Details” form.

  • LDMs have been added to the New Learner “Programme Details” form.

  • Additional fields have been added to the Learner Payments import.

  • Apprenticeship Costs are now shown for Apprenticeship Trailblazer learners.

  • A qualification can no longer be deleted if it is the learner’s main aim. The main aim must be changed to a different aim before deletion.

  • Suitable Source of Funding values are now defaulted on new FM35 learners if their postcode is in a devolved area.

  • The learner validation will now warn if an aim’s Learning Start Date Postcode does not correspond to the correct SOF for devolved aims.

  • Learner Payment records can now have Cost Centres set.

  • Qualification Aims can be added to the Learner with any default values and dates applied.

  • The learner validation now includes audit messages to highlight possible errors. These are also available in the learner validation report.

  • DAM code 062 is now available for aim starting on or after 1st August 2020.

  • When creating a new Learner if the default SOF is 105 or 107 it will not be applied to non-funded aims.

  • Learner Payment records can now have their Paid date set to the Expected date in the bulk edit.

  • Fixed a bug where Learner Change Requests wouldn’t show without applying an additional filters for site restricted users.

Applicants

  • A field has been added for recording Delivery Location for Applicants. This is available for use in WebForms, Reports, Sign up forms and Imports.

  • The organisations tab now allows adding Employer, School, College, Recruitment Agency and Delivery Location.

  • The officers tab now allows adding Main Officer, Mentor and Recruited by.

Courses

  • Notes have been added to Attendance recording.

Officers

  • 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.

Vacancies

  • Recruit an Apprentice vacancies and their upload status are now indicated on the Vacancies List.

Integrations

  • A new integration with bksb has been added to PICS.

  • OneFile integration will now search for existing officers and organisations before trying to create a OneFile record, if the Other System ID is not set in PICS.

  • Smart Assessor integration added to PICS. This a Beta version so is not automatically available - please contact us if you wish to use it.

Reports

  • The Claim History report would fail if optional fields containing information from the latest Programme Aim were selected. This is now fixed.

  • A report for Learner Contact and Learning Hours has been added.

  • A report for Learner Units has been added.

  • A report for Learner Evidence has been added.

  • A report for Course Session Attendance has been added. This offers output of both recorded Attendance and Expected Attendance.

  • A report for Opportunity Provisions has been added.

  • A report for Learner Enrolments has been added this includes per Enrolment and pre Learner Attendance analysis.

  • An Age Band at Start field has been added to Learner Reports: The following bands are used 0-15, 16-18, 19-24, 25+.

  • A “Learning Expected End” Date field has been added to Learner Reports. This is taken from the latest programme end if there is one. Otherwise it is the same as the Episode Expected End.

  • Learner Export status filtering has been added to the Learner Reviews Report.

  • Filters have been added to the Learner ILR Aims report to show there "Aim not Ended but Delivery Aim is Ended" and "Aim End Different To Delivery Aim End".

  • ILR Aim Report now includes filters for “Export in Current Year” and fields for Export in Current and Prior years.

  • A Learner Self Assessed Disability filter has been added to appropriate Learner reports.

  • ESF Contract Actual records are now included in the Learner Claims History report.

  • Opportunity Report now includes Date of Latest Status Change and Status Change Notes.

  • Learner Report includes Delivery Target and Delivery Model descriptions.

  • Learner and Officer reports include PICS Username & Last Login fields.

  • Officer Report now includes fields for Current Learner Caseloads.

  • The QAR Report no longer excludes aims which are at End Point Assessment if they ended before 1st August 2019.

  • Deleting saved reports which were sent to multiple users no longer results in an error.

  • The Projected Funding By Learners report and Projected Funding By Learning Delivery report now have “Projected End Period” and “Projected End Status” columns to help identify learners/aims that are in learning beyond their planned end date.

  • The Forms and Form Status History reports now includes more information about each signatory including email address and status.

  • The Forms and Form Status History reports now include fields for data fields Site, Qualification Plan Code and Start Date.

  • Learner Reports now include Latest Placement, Delivery Location, School and College and their Start and End Dates.

  • Learner Reports now have a filter for “Leaver or Expected End” in the date range.

  • User Report now has Site filtering options.

  • Course Reports now include the Qualification Plan the course is linked too and any Qualification Plans the Enrolees are linked too.

  • Learner Reports now have a calculated Age Band field - 16-18, 19-24 & 25+.

  • The learner progress fields now output as percentages formatted to 2 decimal places.

  • Actual and Planned Contact Hours fields are now formatted to two decimal places.

  • A filter on “Has Files of Type” has been added to the Learner, Applicant, Organisation and Officer reports.

  • More output fields for Opportunities linked to Applicants and Learners have been added to Applicant and Learner reports.

  • Head Office Feedback, Site, Qualification Plan, Start Date and many signature related fields have been added to Forms reports.

Month End

  • The Month End Funding Calculator now includes the FM70 calculations for ESF ILR derived items.

  • The user interface has been improved to allow easier switching between financial years.

  • Earnings Adjustment Statement Funding Lines starting “16 to 18” and “19 to 24” have been updated to “16-18” and “19-24”.

  • The Projected Funding calculations were not projecting Apprenticeship Achievements if the Programme Aim ended in the previous ILR Year.

Forms Manager

  • The User permissions for Form Management have been split to include individual permissions for View, Edit, Reassign, Delete, Rejected and Approve.

  • User Site filtering is now respected.

  • There is now an option to include forms created from a previous version of a form template in the filtering options.

  • Signature images can now be viewed on the Signatures tab of the the Forms Summary.

WebForms

  • 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.

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

20th November 2021

  • New Learner (beta) was not creating Employer Placement records. This has been fixed and any missing records have been added.

  • New Learner (beta) now applies the Contract UKPRN to the new Learner where one has been specified.

25th October 2021

  • WebForms may not have presented the user with a picklist for Employer and some Officer fields. Now fixed.

  • Some form signature emails which bounced were showing as Delivered. Now fixed.

  • Saving an ILR Employment Status record could result in an error if either zero or multiple external officers were linked to the employer organisation. Now fixed.

  • PMR and Incentive Payment records were being created without Debit or Credit markers. Now fixed.

  • The beta version of the New Learner process would error if there were no Contracts defined. Now fixed.

22nd October 2021

Learners

  • A new New Learner process if now available - see Creating a New Learner in PICSWeb for more information.

  • A “A Prior Attainment record already exists” error no longer appears when entering a second episode for a learner where the start date is the same as the existing episode.

  • Learner list now has optional fields for Learner Reference Number & Employer.

  • Bulk Delete, Archive, and Reinstate are now available for Learners.

  • ILR DAM (Devolved Area Monitoring) fields can now be imported, and can be added to WebForms.

  • The display and editing of ILR Planned Learning and EEP Hours has been improved.

  • When adding or editing ILR Employment records, we now attempt to align the learner Placement records with the ILR records.

  • Changing the Learner Reference Number for a commercial learner no longer generates an error.

  • It is now possible to unlink a learning episode from a learner - this can be done from the Other Episodes tab of a different learning episode for the same learner.

  • Non-yeared learner FAMs now show in the FAM list on the Learner FAM tab.

  • PICS now uses the correct fields for Employment Status at Start/End for Commercial learners.

  • DAM FAM codes and descriptions have been updated from version 3 of the ESFA code list.

  • The validation will no longer show an error if there are no prior attainment records (rule PriorAttain_01) if all aims in that learning episode ended before 1st August 2021.

  • The LRS “Ability to Share” field has been renamed to “Privacy Notice Seen” to align with the LRS portal.

  • Bulk Edit and Delete is available for Reviews.

  • Qualifications linked to Commercial learners can now be deleted. This will not delete any units but will remove the qualification-unit links.

  • Qualifications can now be deleted for Commercial learners.

  • The “Export in 2020” field for aims is now visible if the learning episode started before 1st August 2021. Previously it was only visible if the aim started before that date.

  • Learner Qualifications Bulk Edit now includes Main Assessor, Main Internal Verifier, and Main External Verifier officers.

  • Learner Payment Invoiced, Claimed and Reconciled dates are now available to edit.

Applicants

  • Applicant list can now be filtered by ULN.

  • Applicant list now has optional fields for ULN, Provider Assigned ID, Mentor, Assess

  • Qualification Plan, Available to Start and Expected End Dates can now be bulk edited.

  • The LRS “Ability to Share” field has been renamed to “Privacy Notice Seen” to align with the LRS portal.

WebForms

  • 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.

Officers

  • Many fields in the Officer list are now optional.

  • An optional Roles field has been added to the Officer list.

Reports

  • Organisation information in Reports has been brought into line with how we show Officer information. This may effect some saved reports and/or document generation templates as we have has to change some field names.

  • ILR Learner Report now includes output of Next Year and Prior Year Learning and EEP Hours fields

  • ILR Learner Report now includes output of Has Aims with LSF.

  • ILR Learner Report now includes output of Latest TNPs.

  • New Report Template for Learner Review Summary. This report will be a row per learner showing last and next review fields, gap between last and next reviews, summary of total reviews attended/missed, and review history.

  • Appointment type has been added as a filter for appointment based report templates.

  • The interactive QAR report has been improved and now offers a summary table and several charts. Any existing saved interactive reports will need to be recreated to be compatible with the new format.

  • Apprenticeship Standard aims at EPA with Completion Status = 1 and Outcome = 8 are now excluded from the Apprenticeship Achievement Rates Overall report.

  • Organisations report now has filters for “Has Head Office”, “Has Branches“, and fields for “Branch Count“.

  • New: Learner Files Report. Produces a filtered report of learners and their associated files.

  • New: Applicant Files Report. Produces a filtered report of applicants and their associated files.

Month End

  • The ILR Exporter will no longer export prior attainment and aim FAM records which are exact duplicates of another for that learner or aim.

  • Earnings Adjustment Statement has been updated with Funding Lines and Adjustment Types for 2021.

  • Projected Funding now has it’s own page and now has a setting to run the Projected Funding automatically each evening.

  • The Funding Reconciler now has the option to store uploaded files for re-use when updating reconciliations.

  • The Funding Calculator now has the option for users with the Database Administrator permission to delete the most recently finalled period in each year.

General

  • Look up lists now show the Status of entries if they are not Live.

  • Emails sent from PICS now use a different email provider. Emails are still sent from noreply@PICS.picsmail.co.uk and no changes to customer email systems should be required.

  • It is now possible to configure and use custom relationship types between Officers, Organisations and Applicants.

  • It is now possible to add Contract Items against Contracts under the Delivery Configuration section.

13th September 2021

Changes to the DAM code list have been made in response to the ESFA’s updated code list. This includes reinstating many codes which were expired at the end of 2020.

30th August 2021

  • The ILR exporter will only send prior attainment records which are dated on or after the earliest aim start date of all aims in the ILR for that learner. If no records exist matching the earliest aim start date, the most recent record dated before that date will be sent. This is to prevent R131 errors.

25th August 2021

18th August 2021

  • Fix: The Applicant Importer was not creating applicant status records correctly resulting in newly imported applicants not appearing in Applicant Status reports. Now fixed.

  • Fix: The list of assessments for a single qualification did not load. Now fixed.

17th August 2021

  • Fix: Ending a Break-In-Learning for a learner with an LSF FAM would result in a “From date must be specified” error. Now fixed.

16th August 2021

  • Fix: Attempting to Approve a form based on an appointment could generate an error stating “Object reference not set to an instance of an object”. Now fixed.

  • Fix: The FIS reference data was missing all devolved postcode information, which meant the warning LSDPostcode_02 was being shown in PICS for any aim start date postcode in a devolved area, even when correct. We have now suspended this rule until we have valid reference data.

  • Improvement: Speed up the View Full Change Logs feature in Recent Activity tabs

  • Improvement: Speed up the QAR report could take a long time to run.

13th August 2021

  • New Feature: Support for the 2021/22 ILR Year including data entry, claims and exports is now available.

  • New Feature: The Learner & Applicant Lists now allow you to choose which fields to display. This means that the list will display fewer fields than before when you first open it. Take a look at the Learner List & Applicant List pages for instructions on how to select which fields you wish to see.

  • New Feature: The Forms Index page can now display custom form field values in up to three additional columns.

  • Improvement: The Claim History report now has “Item Subcontractor” fields.

  • Improvement: ILR Learner, and Projected Funding reports can now be filtered to Learners with Aims with Funding and Monitoring RES=1.

  • Improvement: Learner ILR Aims report can now be filtered to Aims with Funding and Monitoring RES=1.

  • Improvement: Applicant Update All now includes Recruited By and Recruitment Agency.

  • Improvement: The Forms Index page has a new "Modified Status" filter. Available options are All, Today, Last 7 Days (default), Last 30 Days.

  • Improvement: Configuration, Forms has been renamed to Forms and Themes to avoid confusion with each other.

  • Improvement: The WebForms Qualification plan and Aim controls should now be better at displaying previously saved values.

  • Improvement: Added a warning message on UDF configuration. This will show when any question has a Unique Field name, but there are missing entity display locations. This is to help make it clearer why certain questions are not available for Web and Sign Up forms.

  • Improvement: Field search on the WebForms Designer will no longer reset after a field is added to the form design.

8th August 2021

  • Fix: PMR records are now sent in the ILR export if the payment date is after the start date of a later programme aim in a different learning episode.

  • Improvement: Additional Forms on summary views are now broken up into separate tabs so that each form can be viewed and edited one at a time.

  • Improvement: A Levels funded by Advanced Learner Loans can now be entered into PICS.

  • Improvement: After receiving clarification from the ESFA, the Qualification & Achievement Rates report now excludes any learner currently awaiting the result of their Endpoint Assessment. This is any Apprenticeship Standard learner with an end date entered, a blank achievement date and a Completion Status of 2 (Completed).

24th July 2021

  • Fix: The “Apps Monthly Payment” Funding Reconciler was not including all learners in the Year To Date Differences and Year To Date Matches reports. Now fixed.

  • Improvement: The Qualification & Achievement Rates report dataset no longer includes ESF aims (funding model 70) as these are all excluded from the achievement rate totals.

  • Improvement: Clicking on the date icon next to date and date range inputs will now open the date selector.

  • Improvement: Selecting optional Officer fields in reports are now grouped together visually using a tree hierarchy.

  • Improvement: Contacts created from SignUp forms will now have the Contact Role automatically set.

  • Improvement: The Funding Calculator’s Process Warnings report now shows a “Withheld From Export” column when PICS is configured to display withheld learners in the funding calculation.

  • New Feature: It is now possible to delete a photo/avatar from Learners, Applicants, Officers, and Organisations

  • New Feature: In the Learner Summary Screen, there is a new menu item in actions called User Access Check which will allow you check if another user can access the learner.

21st July 2021

  • Fix: Some emails sent out today to complete signatures had an issue with the link. Retrying the link again will now work.

July 17th 2021

  • New Feature: eAssessor Learner Type, Delivery Target, and Delivery Model can be set while adding a new Learner in Step 3.

  • Improvement: Applicant Web Forms now has a new field “Current Status Notes“ for the new Import field “APP_CURSTATUS_NOTES“.

July 9th 2021

  • Fix: The ILR Exporter no longer generates a “Failed to compare two elements in the array” error when there are Destination and Progression records with a blank code.

  • Fix: Validation rule AFinDate_04 is no longer applied to Apprenticeship Standard learners.

  • Fix: It is now possible to assign a learner to a status workflow even if they already have some status value set.

  • Fix: The Apprentice Service CSV export now uses the start and expected end dates from the learning episode instead of the programme aim to include the EPA period.

  • Fix: The Organisation Provisions list no longer shows a “item with the same key has already been added” error when viewing organisations with SIC92 provision records.

  • Fix: The Qualification & Achievement Rates report will now calculate “Overdue Planned Break” correctly when the Learner Reference Number field is not included as an output in the report.

  • Fix: The AEB FM35 funding calculation was not applying funding adjustments when calculating the funding cap band. Now fixed.

  • Fix: Export Course Attendance report will no longer fail to run if an old attendance record exists when a more recent record is found.

  • Improvement: It is now possible to assign an opportunity to a status workflow.

  • Improvement: The Claim History report now has an option to exclude FM36 employer incentives.

  • Improvement: The AEB FM35 Funding calculation now includes National Skills Fund Level 3 Adult uplifts.

  • Improvement: Has Current Learners filter has been added to the Organisations Appointments Report.

  • Improvement: File Types can now be assigned to Learner and Applicant Webforms.

  • Improvement: The main file attached to a Learner Payment can be accessed from the Payment Summary.

July 3rd 2021

  • Improvement: After editing a learner, the delay before validation starts has been increased to 8 hours. This is to reduce the number of unnecessary validations occurring and improve overall performance on the PICS servers. Learners can still be validated on-demand by clicking the validation button under the learner’s name.

  • Improvement: The Applicant Import has been rewritten to improve performance when importing large numbers of Applicants.

  • Improvement: The ILR Actuals Funding and ILR Projected Funding “View Funding Details” screen now has an Export To Excel option added to the search filter’s More menu.

  • Improvement: Applicant Sign Up Forms now allow the Workflow to be specified as along with the Status.

  • Improvement: The Default Workflow for new Applicants can be specified in Configuration > Delivery > Workflows > Applicant Statuses along with the Default Status.

  • Improvement: If you collapse the side menu, it will remain collapsed for the rest of your session.

  • Improvement: Adding 19+ Traineeship learners now correctly sets the SOF and FFI fields on the Programme and Component aims.

  • Improvement: Adding a learner to a Contract with a Subcontractor UKPRN and not using a Qualification Plan now correctly uses the UKPRN .

  • Fix: The learner validation no longer rejects valid email addresses with single-character subdomains.

  • Fix: EDS Reference Numbers are no longer automatically populated for new organisation records if the postcode returned from the EDS web service does not match the postcode entered into PICS.

June 27th 2021

IMPORTANT: Please note that Learner Documents have been renamed to Learner Files to standardise the terminology across Learner, Applicant, Officers, Organisations etc.

  • New Feature: It is now possible to share your saved report templates so other users can run them directly.

  • Improvement: The Qualification & Achievement Rates Report now includes a new optional field: LARS Aim Type. This can be used in Interactive mode to analyse by aim type, or filter to specific types such as Functional Skills.

  • Improvement: Lookup Lists that used to limit results to 20 records will now load in additional records as you scroll down the list.

  • Fix: Imports were not correctly processing Employer fields where a EMPCODE, PRIOR_EMPSTAT_EMPCODE, or CHANGE_EMPSTAT_CODE field was not specified.

June 22nd 2021

  • Fix: The Learner import did not support LRS fields for Ability to Share, Verification Type and Preferred Name.

  • Fix: Planned Learning & EEP hours are now calculated correctly when adding a new episode for an existing learner starting in a previous ILR year.

  • Fix: Accounts view of the number of actual Full and Light SaaS users was incorrect.

  • Fix: Survey responses entered on the last day of the report range are now included in the survey response reports.

  • Improvement: Future year Planned Learning and EEP hours fields are no longer visible for learners who ended before the year starts.

  • Improvement: Full ILR years (e.g. “2020 to 2021” instead of “2020”) are shown when viewing and editing Planned Learning and EEP Hours.

  • Improvement: It is now possible to enter an employed (code 10) Employment Status record prior to start for an apprentice without supplying an Employer ID, SEM or LOE code, as long as there is also an employment status valid on the first day of learning.

June 18th 2021

  • New Feature: Learner Tags can now be added to qualification plans. These will automatically be added to any new learners who are assigned to that plan.

  • New Feature: The Funding Late Notified Report has been added as a report template within the Reports Workspace.

  • New Feature: Files attached to Learners, Organisations, Applicants, Officers and more can now have an Expiry date set. Additional filtering and reporting will be added in future releases.

  • Improvement: Expected End date filtering has been added to Learner reports.

  • Improvement: The description for Perform Levy Adjustments on the Apps Monthly Payment reconciliation Extra Options screen has been updated to be more explicit as to what financial data this option updates in PICS.

  • Improvement: When entering a new Learner you can now leave Employer Prior to Start blank as long as there is a Status Change on the start date with an Employer specified.

  • Improvement: ILR Aims Report now has Start, Expected End, Achievement and End date field from the Delivery Qualification to support cases where users are restricted to editing Delivery Qualification before details are transferred to the ILR.

  • Fix: OneFile sync could create new reviews in PICS instead of updating existing reviews. This is now fixed and any duplicated reviews have been removed.

  • Fix: The ACE360 interface is now available but the menu item to configure the integration is still hidden. In the meantime, the configuration can be accessed at https://yourcompanyhere.PICS.co.uk/app/Integrations/ACE360/Summary

  • Fix: When adding ESF Contract Numbers to a Contract, it is now possible to enter them using the standard ILR format of ESF-0000000.

  • Fix: The Claim History report and Projected Funding reports would allow selecting individual subcontractors when the Subcontracted Status option was not set to “Specified Subcontractor”. A warning is now shown, and the report will not run, if “Specified Subcontractor” is not selected when a subcontractor is selected.

  • Fix: When looking at Form Answers, officer lookup fields could display “Unknown” if the current user was linked to an officer. Now correctly shows the selected officer name.

  • Fix: Units specified in Qualification Plans are now added to new Learners.

  • Fix: WebForm Organisation and Officer drop downs will now correctly highlight when they fail validation.

June 11th 2021

  • New Feature: Apprentices can now be uploaded to ACE360 directly from PICS and their ACE360 status automatically downloaded.

  • New Feature: It is now possible to clone an existing review

  • New Feature: The delivery plan qualification progress has been replaced with a new progress breakdown tab that shows progress against various aspects of a learner’s programme.

  • Improvement: The learner list now has flags on the Expected End Date to indicate if it is overdue or soon (within 14 days).

  • Improvement: Editing aims which ended in closed ILR years will automatically cause the Export in 2020 field to be set to Always. This is to ensure that the ESFA receive the latest ILR data which will avoid QAR errors.

  • Improvement: Officer drop-down lists will now include the current user as the first item if they have the required role.

  • Improvement: A new filter has been added to the learner list: Workflow Status.

  • Improvement: Signup Forms now validate that the selections for Allowed Contact Methods make sense.

  • Improvement: Change Logs can now be filtered by Additional Key.

  • Improvement: “Employer Record Code” field on Applicant WebForms now populates other “Employer” fields as happens in Learner WebForms.

  • Improvement: The Projected Funding Calculator can now be run for the next ILR year.

  • Improvement: Learner ILR Aims Report now included Aim Certificate and Registration details.

  • Improvement: Functional Skills results have been added to the Learners report.

  • Improvement: OneFile sync now includes all enrolled learners instead of just those modified in the last 12 months.

  • Fix: Available transitions when changing a Learner, Applicant or Opportunity status would show more transitions than it should if the target status did not have a sub status.

  • Fix: Applicant picklists for Employment Status EII & BSI no longer show old values.

  • Fix: The drop-down list for Sent for Form Capture in Applicant Workflow settings is now populated.

  • Fix: Scheduled and Run Now reports are no longer sent to user accounts which are disabled, deleted or suspended.

  • Fix: Opportunities Report - Latest Activity calculation was only including Appointments.

  • Fix: WebForm Applicant Qualification Plans are now correctly populating the Aim rows.

  • Fix: WebForm Qualification Plan Aim end dates are now being filled in correctly.

  • Fix: WebForm file attachments should now correctly validate when there are more than two.

June 6th 2021

  • New Feature: Tools to allow Status change and Deletion of multiple Tags has been added in Configuration > Lists and Types > Tags.

  • Improvement: Import fields are no longer limited to 255 characters.

  • Improvement: User Group Code and Name are now available in the Users Report.

June 4th 2021

  • New Feature: It is now possible to enrol a Learner or Applicant onto a course from within their individual course enrolment list.

  • New Feature: An “Organisation File” WebForms has been added.

  • Improvement: A new Wizard style view has been introduced for adding a provision to a record.

  • Improvement: It is possible to edit the status of a Workflow to make an unused workflow Dormant to stop it from being used.

  • Fix: Hours from withheld learning episodes are no longer included when calculating the total Planned and EEP Hours for a learner.

  • Fix: The Funding Reconcilers were not showing learner details for learner’s known in PICS but had mismatching Software Supplier Aim IDs. Now fixed.

  • Fix: There were instances where reports generated by the Funding Calculator and Funding Reconcilers would throw an exception if a soft-labelled entity matched a fixed column header in the report. Now fixed.

  • Fix: Applicant Employment Monitoring fields in WebForms were not being populated with the expected options.

June 1st 2021

  • Fix: File Attachments and Picklist on Signup Forms are now working properly.

  • Improvement: ILR Learner and Aims reports can now be filtered by LSF or ACT FAMs

  • Fix: ILR Learner Report was displaying the wrong descriptions for Preferred Method Of Contact.

May 29th 2021

  • New Feature: OneFile integration is now available in PICS. If you have been using the Desktop OneFile interface, please read the following guide:

  • New Feature: Survey responses can be now viewed for Learners, Applicants, Officers and Organisations. This is available via the relevant summary screens or using the relevant Survey Response report.

  • New Feature: Configuration > Delivery > Qualifications now has an Update All that allows editing of Qualification Types and Status.

  • New Feature: A document template for ILR Learners with Aims has been added.

  • Improvement: Report filtering and output of Learner Current Workflow Status.

  • Improvement: Opportunities Report now includes fields for "Last Completed Activity Date" and "Days Since Last Completed Activity".

  • Improvement: The ILR Learner tab on the ILR Summary page now includes all fields required for the ILR learner record. Previously, some of these fields could only be found on the top-level learner summary.

  • Improvement: ILR Aim Report now has fields for “Expected Days on Aim”, “Elapsed Days on Aim“, “Funding Qualifying Period“, and “Qualified for Funding“.

  • Improvement: Learner Qualification and ILR Aims Reports can be filtered by Qualification Type.

  • Improvement: Applicant Update All now includes Main Officer, Mentor, and Site editing.

  • Improvement: The WebForms Qualification Plan fields now include a separate Aim Title field and will output to the downloaded document exactly as displayed.

  • Improvement: WebForm Qualification Plan aim fields will now not display dates if the aim is not wanted.

  • Improvement: WebForms will update the title of the form to Learner\Applicants name if there is one.

  • Fix: Overall and Timely Transfer is now being calculated correctly in the QAR report when a learner transfers to new learning aim at the same provider.

May 23rd 2021

  • New Feature: The ability to create an Apprenticeship Service Cohort Export file has been added.

  • New Feature: Reporting on ILR Destination & Progression has been added as a dedicated report and as summary fields on the ILR Learner Report.

  • New Feature: The ability to choose which Delivery Qualification is considered the “Main Qualification Aim” has been added. We have also standardised the name from “Main Aim” or “Main Qualification” to “Main Qualification Aim” - this may impact saved reports and learner documents.

  • Improvement: Episode Start, Expected End, and End dates on the Organisation Payments report.

  • Improvement: Organisation Reports now have single Head Office and Organisation filters.

  • Improvement: The Funding Calculator now includes learner-entered Earnings Adjustment Statement (EAS) records and generates funding items for these.

  • Improvement: The report generated by the Funding Calculator now includes a sheet for Year-To-Date FM25 funding items. This shows FM25 funding distributed over planned in-learning periods for the year.

  • Improvement: The Claim History Report and Projected Funding Reports now include an option to “Distribute FM25 Totals By Period”. This will display FM25 funding as evenly distributed over planned in-learning periods instead of a single payment.

  • Fix: The Advanced Learner Loan funding calculator was not including loan payments where they were paid in the year after the loan funded aim had ended. Now fixed.

  • Fix: The Apprenticeship Data Match reconciliation process would not complete if a learner from the Apprenticeship Data Match Report does not exist in PICS.

  • Fix: Learners recorded with an employment status with a temporary EDRS number were sometimes being excluded from the Projected Funding calculations. Now fixed.

May 17th 2021

  • Fix: User Defined fields are now being output on the Learner ILR Aims report.

  • Fix: Error EPAOrgID_01 no longer shows incorrectly when an aim’s standard code is less than 100.

May 16th 2021

  • New Feature: ILR Employment Status and Employment Monitoring fields are now available for Applicants.

  • New Feature: ILR Programme Aim Planned Hours field (Apprenticeship OTJ) is now available for Applicants.

  • New Feature: LRS Identity Verification field is now available for Applicants.

May 14th 2021

  • New Feature: A Settings page has been added to the Learner list Action button. This includes the option to “Withhold New Learners from ILR Export“.

  • New Feature: ILR Exports can now be filtered to learners with specific tags.

  • New Feature: eAssessor Learner Type and Login now available on the Learner Summary.

  • Improvement: Data Capture of English/Maths Grades is now included on New Learner Step 2 for ILR Funding Model 25 Learners.

  • Improvement: Data Capture of Contract Reference Number & HHS for is now included on New Learner Step 2 for ILR Funding Model 70 “ESF” Learners.

  • Improvement: Search filters on text fields that could be blank like ULN, Provider Assigned ID, Apprenticeship Service Cohort now have options for “Is Blank”, “Not blank”, “Any of” and “None of” specified value.

  • Improvement: Organisation Payment Report now includes optional fields for Learner Reference Number and Unique Learner Number.

  • Improvement: Most reports with date filters now include “All” options where the date filters are not applied.

  • Improvement: Organisations Reports now includes an optional field for Notes.

  • Improvement: Learner Reports now includes an optional field for Next of Kin details.

  • Improvement: The Apprenticeship Data Match reconciliation report now includes the Apprenticeship Contract Type (ACT)

  • Fix: Learner Reference Numbers that are generated with a predefined prefix are now numeric, there were being generated alpha-numeric

  • Fix: The aim subcontractor UKPRN from qualification plan aims is now being applied to aims on new learners.

  • Fix: For new learners entered via PICS, the aim list is now sorted with the main aim immediately below the programme aims.

  • Fix: The Projected Funding by Individual Items & Projected Funding By Learning Delivery reports were missing aim details. These are now back in the report.

  • Fix: The Funding Calculator was duplicating funding events for AEB learners where their programme is split over multiple PICS Episodes.

  • Fix: The FM36 Funding Calculator was using the incorrect date to determine the appropriate funding band in rare cases. This is now fixed.

  • Fix: The Start EPA and End Episode tools no longer require the Actual Off-the-Job Hours field to be completed when the learner has withdrawn or started before 1st August 2019.

  • Improvement: More data capture fields for qualification registration and certification have been added - these were available in PICS desktop but not PICS.

  • Fix: The Qualification Achievement Rates report (QAR) had two Age at Start optional fields and using both would cause an error. One of these fields has now been renamed Age at Start (QAR) and will show the age-relevant to the QAR report type being run.

  • Improvement: Updates to learner validation:

    • Clearer message to show if a Work Placement employer organisation doesn't have an EDS reference.

    • FundModel_07 now excludes programme aims which are Funding Model 99, Restarts or LDM FAM 353, 354 or 355. It previously would only exclude programme aims which were funding model 99 and a restart.

  • Improvement: New learner validation rules added:

    • FundModel_15: LDM FAM 378 must only be returned for aims with funding model 35.

    • OTJActHours_02: Actual Off-the-Job Hours must be returned for completed apprenticeship programme aims starting after 01/08/2019 (except restarts).

    • LearnDelFamType_96: LDM FAM 376 cannot be used with Traineeship aims.

    • LearnDelFamType_100: LDM FAM 378 cannot be used on aims starting before 01/04/2021.

    • LearnDelFamType_101: LDM FAM 378 can not be used with Traineeship aims.

    • LearnDelFamType_103: LDM FAM codes 378 and 376 cannot both be recorded on the same learning aim.

    • LearnDelFamType_97: DAM FAM code 002, Funding Model 35 and SOF FAM 105 cannot be used together on the same learning aim.

    • R127: Traineeship component aims with LDM FAM 377 must have a corresponding Traineeship programme aim with LDM FAM 377.

    • R128: Traineeship programme aims with LDM FAM 377 must have a corresponding Traineeship component aim with LDM FAM 377.

    • PlanLearnHours_02: If returned, planned learning hours should be greater than zero. This is a warning and applies to learning aims with funding model 25, 35, 81, 10 or 99, excluding T-Levels.

    • EPAOrgID_01: The EPA Organisation ID must be valid in the FIS for the Apprenticeship Standard and the Planned End Date of the apprenticeship.

May 7th 2021

  • New Feature: Change Funding Organisation and/or Group has been added to the Learner Summary Actions button.

  • New Feature: End Episode & Aims has been added to the Learner ILR Actions button.

  • Fix: The ILR learner validation no longer shows an error if an apprentice reaches the end of their End Point Assessment (programme aim Achievement Date is completed) but with a failed outcome (3: No Achievement).

  • New Feature: Reports can now be saved with an Output Type of Interactive. Interactive reports can be viewed without the need to re-run the entire report and can be quickly filtered to show only the required data.

  • Improvement: Saved reports can now be cloned by using the Clone Report menu item in the Saved Reports list.

  • Improvement: The Interactive Qualification & Achievement Rates Report now has report presets to show the Achievement Rate and Cohort Counts for the selected report analysis.

April 28th 2021

  • Fix: Importing Learners without an ILR Prior Attainment level value was causing an error.

  • Improvement: Session Attendance recording now respects the configuration setting for the number of back in to the past that sessions may be edited.

  • Improvement: Importing large numbers of Organisations could fail if the EDS Reference integration was enabled.

  • New Feature: Missing Qualification Unit, Learning Outcomes and Assessment Criteria can now be added in the Unit summary.

  • Improvement: Some checkboxes were not showing a border in High Contrast mode.

April 23rd 2021

  • New Feature: Support for PICS 20.01 Database Structure including new ILR fields and tables for 2021/22.

  • New Feature: Officer merge - can be found in Database Admin Actions.

  • New Feature: Organisation merge - can be found in Database Admin Actions.

  • New Feature: Start EPA in ILR Actions for Apprenticeship Standards Learners.

  • New Feature: Bulk Status Updates for Applicants and Opportunities.

  • New Feature: Clone field for configuring User Defined Forms.

  • Fix: Import of XLSX files with blank columns now works.

  • Fix: Import of CSV files including some characters including left/right apostrophes now doe not fail.

  • Fix: Claim History report now works for very large numbers of in learners and aims.

  • Improvement: LDM codes 378 & 379 are now available.

  • Fix: The funding calculator will now calculate funding for funding model 35 programmes if the learner had progressed to a programme on another funding model, where previously it would not.

April 17th 2021

  • New Feature: Reports on Learner & Applicant Prior Qualifications are now available.

  • New Feature: Added a URL Field type to the available fields on WebForm templates.

  • Improvement: Creating a Learner from an Applicant now includes all the Prior Qualification data including any attached certificates.

  • Improvement: when updating learner details on the LRS, the display shows which fields will be updated more clearly.

  • Improvement: The option to only include validated learners in ILR exports has been removed.

  • Improvement: Learner Change Requests which have been rejected can now be reopened with the option to update the change request notes and upload a new file attachment.

  • Improvement: EPA Organisation IDs entered against Apprenticeship Standard learners are now validated against the list of EPA in the FIS (rule EPAOrgID_01).

  • Improvement: Replacing the backing document on a WebForm with one that has less pages will now no longer leave fields in limbo on pages that don’t exist. These fields will be moved to the last page of the new document.

  • Improvement: Added workspace tiles for Form Capture Managers and Form Capture Users.

  • Improvement: When importing an FCA form into a WebForm, URL fields are now included.

  • Fix: When editing ILR Planned Hours or EEP hours, the calculated total hours for the learner no longer includes hours from deleted learning episodes.

  • Fix: In certain situations, importing an Applicant edit form was creating a new Applicant instead of editing the existing one. Now fixed.

  • Fix: On form templates, multiple field edits were not working due to a broken data binding. Now fixed.

  • Fix: Applicant Offer Agency Max value was not being populated correctly

  • Fix: Applicant Offer Agency Max value was not being output in reports and documents correctly

  • Improvement: The Apprenticeship Achievement date can now be edited on the Episode End screen.

April 10th 2021

  • Fix: Validation rule DateOfBirth_26 was incorrectly being triggered based on the learner’s age in year instead of the age of the learner’s age at the start of the aim.

  • Fix: The learner validation no longer shows errors when component aims had an incorrect Framework or Pathway code and the aim didn’t belong to an Apprenticeship framework.

  • Fix: Learning Delivery qualifications with a status of Prior Accreditation no longer cause errors when the achievement date is before the start date.

  • Fix: The Funding Calculation’s Year To Date report was including employer payment (PMR) values in the totals resulting in incorrect values in the report. These are no longer included.

  • Improvement: The ILR Exports and Funding Calculator lists now remind you to refresh the results after 1 minute to see any new exports or funding calculations you have run.

  • Fix: Importing Prior Qualifications from the LRS Personal Learning Record (PLR) where the level or grade had no alphanumeric characters (such as **) would result in an error. Now fixed.

  • Fix: Fixed an error that would occur when searching for learners if any learner in the filter did not have a Learner Reference Number.

  • Fix: New Private Training Learners can now be added without an Employer.

  • Fix: Sending Applicants to Webforms/FCA doesn’t require Forms Manager permission.

  • Improvement: Reports no longer calculate Qualification Progress if it is not already cached.

March 26th 2021

  • Improvement: The reports download list now reminds you to refresh the results after 1 minute to see any new reports you have run.

March 25th 2021

  • New Feature: WebForms is now generally available to customers with FCA licences

  • Improvement: Applicant Offer Report and Document Generation now includes outputs for the Qualification details

  • Fix: New FM10 Episodes no longer overwrite the Prior Attainment value of a previous episode

  • Improvement: Validation has been added to the Payment Edit screen to ensure that Paid items have Actual Amounts and Paid dates

  • Fix: Filtering Learner Change Requests by Raised By no longer shows no results.

  • Fix: The Add Qualification button is now visible if a Private Training learner has no existing qualifications.

  • Fix: Deleting reports from the Downloads page no longer shows an error on any report sent to other users or teams.

  • Fix: Save button on reports available for customers not licenced for Reports Scheduling

  • Fix: Reports Date range “End of ILR Year“ now works properly

  • Fix: Off the job hours for episode fields in the Learners report will now display the correct values

  • Improvement: Officer Superior picklist now reacts to the Officer’s role

  • Improvement: Applicant Imports now process Officer fields as per the specification

  • Improvement: Tags output in Funding Reports

  • Improvement: Mobile phone validation is now just a warning

  • Fix: Raised By filters in Change Request now work properly

March 21st 2021

  • Improvement: Editing Opportunity Qualification Plan values and quantities update the overall Estimated Revenue value

  • Fix: Licence checks when adding an Advanced Learning Loan have been corrected

  • Improvement: Distance filtering in Vacancy Matching now correctly sorts the data before returning the requested number of matches.

  • Improvement: Organisation EDS Reference numbers are looked up when saving new records

March 17th 2021

  • Improvement: Learner Report has Expected & Elapsed Days on Programme output

  • Improvement: Month End EAS filter by Adjustment Type

  • Improvement: When configured future starting Courses are allocated to the Learner when an Applicant is converted to a Learner

  • Improvement: Sessions visible to a user are filtered by the Course Site

  • Improvement: ULN Verification buttons are now more obviously buttons to click

  • Improvement: Prior Qualification Title, Level and Grade lists are sorted

  • Improvement: ILR Validation for R107/R018 has been added

  • Improvement: Mandatory Units are added to Learner when the aim is added

March 16th 2021

  • Fix: Projected Funding Calculation was missing the Year list

  • Improvement: ILR Learner Report now has fields for First Training and First Assessment TNPs

  • Improvement: Appointment calendars now have a Status filter

  • Improvement: Appointments created in PICS are now compatible with AdHoc Placement H&S and Insurance outputs

  • Improvement: UDF fields on Sign Up Forms now resize with the same behaviour way as other fields

  • Improvement: The Save button for scheduling reports is now on the Schedule tab and doesn’t close the Report options modal

  • Improvement: Organisation List now has an Additional Identifiers filter for EDRS, EPA, Accounting System and Additional ID fields

  • Improvement: Organisation and Officer Lists now have Contact Detail filters for Address, Postcode, Email address and Phone number filtering

  • Improvement: Applicants List now have a Recruitment Agency filter

March 13th 2021

  • New Feature: New Report and Document Template - ILR Learner

  • New Feature: Funding Reconciliation Tools

  • Improvement: In the PLR tool for learners and applicants, a Select All tick box has been added to make it easier to import everything.

March 2nd 2021

  • New Feature: In all list views where filters could be saved, it is now possible to set a default saved filter to load when returning to the list.

  • Improvement: Searchable dropdown lists for organisations and officers now show more details about the record to make it easier to identify the record you want to select.

February 19th 2021

  • New Feature: Database administrator users can now bulk delete and reinstate Officer records.

  • New Feature: It is possible to fast switch between ILR aims from the toolbar when looking at an ILR aims summary page.

  • New Feature: It is now possible to convert an ILR component aim into a non-ILR aim from the Learning Aims list.

February 10th 2021

  • New Feature: We have added data capture for Advanced Learner Loans details for relevant learners on the ILR summary page.

  • New Feature: It is now possible to create contact and organisation user accounts for eAssessor customers from within PICS.

January 26th 2021

  • New Feature: It is now possible to gather Prior Qualification details from applicants in Sign Up forms.

  • New Feature: On record summary screens for Learners, Applicants, Officers, and Organisations, there is a new Tasks tab showing tasks regarding the record being viewed.

  • New Feature: Several new reports regarding Projected Funding have been added to the report templates list.