February 2025 release notes

Aptem's first iteration of the Marking Aid and Feedback Assistant will be available to early adopter customers as part of the February release. We will gather feedback from early adopters and refine the functionality. We will ensure that tutors meet the specific needs of apprenticeship delivery, enhancing quality without compromising the flexibility across different assignments and standards. 

This iteration includes the ability to configure Learning Plan Components to be linked to Graide assignments, enabling learners to submit their exercises. Tutors can then mark these exercises via the Marking Aid and Feedback Assistant, benefiting from in-line comments and AI suggestions.

For more information, see: Marking Aid Overview. 

We have added functionality to the Transcripts and Meeting Notes review section allowing users to upload, download, and delete transcript documents. This enhancement benefits customers using the Communications Connector with Teams. This will reduce administrative effort for the tutor, and increase the accuracy of what is recorded, to drive efficiency for our customers.

Upload transcript documents

When a tutor is using a ‘Transcripts and Meeting Notes’ review section and they want to upload and download transcript documents they can now upload up to 10 files of the following types: .txt, .vtt, .doc, .docx, .odt, .pdf, .srt. The maximum file size per document is 10MB. If a file exceeds this limit, a warning message will be shown.

Files are saved upon saving the review section. The section will automatically be marked as "Complete" upon saving the section. Users can type in the "Meeting notes" box AND upload transcripts. The section is not mandatory, and can be marked as Complete without any action being taken. Learners and employers are able to download the files if the review section is visible to them and upload new files if they have editing permissions for the section.

For more information, see: Utilising the Transcripts and Meeting Notes section in Reviews.

Aptem's data retention product setting simplifies compliance with data privacy regulations and industry standards for government-funded training. Customers who do not utilise this feature can choose to manually request PII removal.

Customers can define their retention periods, enabling compliance with regulatory requirements and reduce administrative overhead. This self-service capability empowers organisations to manage PII effectively while eliminating the need for repeated manual requests and external support.

For more information, see: Data Retention - Product Setting.

Final Funding Date as a reportable field in User Generic Reports

With the introduction of the Data Retention functionality, we feel it is important that customers can make an informed decision when enabling the feature. We have therefore added the new 'Final Funding Date' as a reportable field in User Generic Reports. Now admins can run reports on this field to determine who is in scope for anonymisation when a given retention period is set.

We have added functionality that enables learners to indicate their pronouns. This will make sure that they experience an inclusive learning environment.

Added pronouns to the learner view of the Learner profile

In Console, learners can now add their pronouns to their profile by going to Settings and updating their pronouns in their profile.

This will ensure that learners can inform others including their tutor how they would like to be addressed. We have also added this functionality to the tutor so they can support the learner in updating their pronouns. 

Added pronouns to the Tutor view of the Learner profile

As a Tutor, if a learner has added pronouns to their profile, I can now view these pronouns directly on the Learner profile dashboard card.

Pronouns will only be displayed if learners have provided this information. In cases where no pronouns are entered by the learner, this field will remain hidden to avoid displaying empty information.

Added pronouns to the Onboarding Wizard

We have added a new field to the ILR onboarding step to capture the learner's pronouns. The field is called 'What pronouns do you use? and is positioned under 'Legal Sex'.

This will allow learner's to communicate how they would like to be addressed. This will include their tutor but also other admins working in the system. We understand that not all learners will want to give pronouns so this field is not mandatory. Further the field is free text so as to accommodate the wide variety of pronouns that learners may use. The learner's pronouns will now be displayed in the ILR compliance template/document too.

 Added pronouns to OData

Pronouns have been added to the Users table as UserPersonalDetails_Pronouns. We have updated this in the OData dictionary.

Modified Gender and add pronouns to UGR

To aid clarity for admins reporting on learner's personal characteristics we have renamed Gender to Legal Sex in the User Generic Reports. Alongside this we have added the new Pronouns field so admins can report on this data too. 

• When a Tutor tries to download a file which has been uploaded to the Transcripts and Meeting Notes Review section, Aptem will scan to ensure the document is secure. In the event that the document is deemed as unsecure, we will prevent download of this file and display an error message.
  
• When admins are using the Withdrawal or Change of Programme process automation trackers on learners who are on a break in learning, have a programme status of 'On a Break', the actual off-the-job hours will be available. This will now allow them to withdraw learners who will not be returning from their break without the need to manually add the actual off the job hours in the ILR. All other existing logic and functionality remain unchanged.
• Administrators can now access the learner's manager's email address and phone number within the Learner Dashboard > Employer section. 
• MIS managers using the Funding dashboard can now differentiate between the subscription status of learners in the measures/tables by using the Subscription status filter. This filter has been added to all pages in the Funding dashboard. Learners that have a subscription status of Cancelled or Expired can now be displayed within the dashboard.
  
• The Zendesk Help Centre links have been updated to ensure compatibility with recent updates within our public help centre and to improve navigation to Aptem product documentation.
  The following changes have been made to the Help Centre links:
  • Learner: https://support.aptem.co.uk/hc/en-gb/sections/21682289269650-Learners
  • Employer: https://support.aptem.co.uk/hc/en-gb/sections/21682252777106-Employers
  • Jobseeker: https://support.aptem.co.uk/hc/en-gb/sections/21682289269650-Learners
  • Admin: https://support.aptem.co.uk/hc/en-gb/sections/21682293564946-Administrators

The Print ILR option has been removed as it created an out-of-date and non-compliant report that caused significant confusion for administrators.

UserGroups OData feed

A new UserGroups OData feed has been added so that administrators can see relevant data for all of the groups they have access to. This removes the limitation of only seeing the data for just one group

Added admin permissions to OData reporting

When an admin with a Supervisor role is using the Users OData feed and they want to view the roles assigned to Admin users, they can now access the UserRoles_Roles property. This feature will allow reports on admin roles to be created. This will allow admins to verify that the appropriate roles are assigned across all admins. Before this was available admins had to go into each admin's profile and view their roles. This will therefore reduce the administrative burden.

Actual OTJ Field added to Zprog in OData

We have added Actual Hours to the ILR Aims table in OData, as ActualHours. This will enable MI managers to report on this field and verify this value meets the necessary volume of off-the-job hours. This will therefore allow them to identify all apprentices whose hours are non-compliant and take action to remedy this. This will remove the risk of funds being claimed for non-compliant apprentices. 

When an administrator wants to set or alter the programme status of a cohort of learners, they can now do this on bulk using the CSV bulk upload. The programme status column is non-mandatory, case-sensitive and cannot be left blank if present in the CSV file. If you attempt to upload a learner with a status that is not available, you will see the following warning "Programme status is not available for the chosen programme".

• When a learner uses Digital Learning components within their learning plan to complete learning and provide responses in the form of both text and images, they now see all the responses to be properly surfaced in the PDF evidence attached to the component upon completing this learning. There has been no change to the maximum image size logic, a restriction is still in place. We are accepting images up to 1MB. If file size is higher, there will be a validation message preventing it from being uploaded. Note that this is a forward fix, meaning that newly generated PDFs will be presented correctly. Any existing PDFs with this issue will need to be regenerated. 
• Previously, prior attainment was only returned in the ILR batch file if it matched the earliest learning aim start date exactly. Now prior attainment matching on or before the earliest learning aim start date will be retrieved for ILR batch export.
• When an MIS Manager is using the Funding dashboard and they want to monitor learners who are not generating any funding (non-funded), they can use the Category user filter on the Funding Data page that includes options for non-funded learners. This filter will update all the measures, KPIs and data tables on that page. The filter is set to all funding categories by default.

We are working towards our next iteration of the Aptem Enhance Marking Aid and Feedback Assistant features. We will be gathering feedback from our early adopter customers to work towards an iteration that will extend existing functionality allowing us to wider the use of the feature for beta trial customers. 

We will be upgrading the Transcripts and Meeting Notes review section to add additional functionality to automatically retrieve transcripts from Teams (for customers who use the Communications Connector with Teams). This will reduce administration effort for the tutor and increase the accuracy of what is recorded to drive efficiency for our customers.

We are developing compliance template versioning which allows customers to add valid from and to dates into compliance templates. This will remove the need for customers to build new programmes as compliance documents are updated. 

As part of our ongoing enhancements, our OData API will align data access with your existing group permissions. Your API token will reflect your group hierarchy, ensuring data access aligns to assigned groups. To avoid unnecessary access issues, please verify your admin accounts have the necessary group permissions to maintain access. This update is part of our continued work to ensure more granular control over your data, aligning to defined groups. These changes will impact our Power BI reports as they use the same OData Tables.