This feature is currently available to a limited number of early-access customers.
We’ll share further updates once we’re ready to widen availability.
Moving a programme to the activity log involves two separate pieces of work: enabling the programme itself, and moving the time your learners have already logged. This article explains what each one involves, who does it, and what to expect afterwards.
- Who this is for: administrators responsible for tenant configuration and for the timing of the change across your programmes. Managing activity log tenant settings requires the Allow managing activity log tenant settings permission, which the Manage tenant settings role holds by default.
On this page
- Two things happen
- Before you enable a programme
- What changes for an enabled programme
- What happens to time already logged
- Programmes you have not enabled yet
- Managing entries after the move
- Your reporting
Two things happen
Enabling a programme and moving your historical time are two separate actions. Enabling a programme does not move the historical time on its own. The two happen separately, and in a particular order:
First, Aptem moves your existing logged time to the activity log, so your data is already there once you opt in. Then Aptem's dashboards and reports switch to reading from the activity log. After that, you can enable individual programmes for the activity log at your own pace.
Enabling a programme does not trigger the move, and the move does not run overnight or on a schedule.
Before you enable a programme
Enabling the activity log for a programme is designed as a one-way change. Once a programme is enabled, it does not return to the previous evidence-based way of recording time, so plan the order rather than switching everything on at once.
Before you start:
- Agree who at your organisation makes the change, and in what order the programmes go.
- Amend your reporting to the new OData feed. This is easier to do before the change than after.
- Give your tutors and learners notice, so they know where their time lives and what to expect. There are articles for both, linked at the bottom.
- Start with a straightforward programme rather than your most complex one.
What changes for an enabled programme
Once a programme is enabled, the activity log becomes the only place time is recorded for it. The hours fields are removed from the evidence submission journey for that programme, so the same hours cannot be entered in two places.
Time captured automatically, for example when a learner completes eLearning content or when placement hours are verified, arrives in the activity log as a draft for the learner to complete. Aptem cannot know whether the time was worked during working hours or in the learner's own time, and only the learner can answer that. Draft time does not count towards off-the-job hours until the learner completes it and a tutor accepts it.
Evidence itself is unaffected. Learners still submit evidence, and tutors still assess it. Only the recording of time moves.
What happens to time already logged
When the move runs for your tenant, your learners' existing logged time is copied into the activity log.
Nothing is deleted. Your evidence records are left exactly as they are and remain visible on learners' learning plans. The move copies the time across rather than relocating it, and it never writes to your existing records.
The status your existing entries will have
Assessment decisions are preserved. An entry does not come back for review because it moved.
| Where the time stood before | Status in the activity log |
|---|---|
| Waiting to be marked | Submitted |
| Accepted | Accepted |
| Referred back to the learner | Rejected |
Where the outcome was a referral, the assessor's most recent comment is carried across as the rejection reason, so the learner can still see what was asked of them. Long comments are shortened to 500 characters.
Resubmitted and draft are never produced by the move. An entry can only reach those statuses through the activity log itself.
How to tell a carried-across entry from one logged directly
Carried-across entries keep a description built from the record the time was originally logged against:
- "Evidence note:" followed by the text of the note, where the time was recorded against a note. Where the note contained only an image or formatting, the description is "Evidence note:" on its own.
- "Hours uploaded against evidence:" followed by the file name, where the time was recorded against an uploaded file or an external assignment.
Formatting and images are stripped out, and a long note is shortened to 1,000 characters.
Entries that were already activity log entries keep whatever description their author gave them, with no prefix.
What does not carry across
Not every historical record can be moved in the first pass. Time is moved where the record is complete: it has hours recorded, it is attached to a learning plan component, the kind of hours is recorded, and there is a record of when the activity took place.
Records that fail any of those, and records belonging to learners whose data has been anonymised, are counted and set aside rather than moved. They stay where they are and are being handled separately.
The most common case is time attached to a learning plan component that has since been deleted. There is nothing for that time to attach to in the activity log.
Programmes you have not enabled yet
Programmes carry on as they are. Time is recorded against evidence exactly as before, and it is also copied forward into the activity log as it is saved, so both places stay in step.
This is what allows you to enable programmes one at a time without breaking anything. Your reporting sees a complete picture throughout, whether or not a given programme has been enabled.
Time captured automatically on a programme that has not been enabled reaches the activity log labelled as coming from evidence, rather than as eLearning or placement time.
Managing entries after the move
Carried-across time behaves like any other activity log entry. Tutors review, accept and reject it in the activity log rather than through evidence. An entry that was already accepted stays accepted and does not need reviewing again, and one that was awaiting marking appears in the review queue.
The original evidence is untouched and still visible on the learner's learning plan.
Your reporting
If you build your own reports from OData, the activity log has its own feed and it is not a drop-in replacement for the feeds you use today. Several columns have no equivalent, and one field name means something different in each feed.
The feeds you use today are deprecated but still live and will keep returning data, so nothing breaks the day you enable a programme. You will need to move your reporting before the deprecated feeds are eventually withdrawn, and we will let you know the timeline for this.