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Updates relating to Reviews re-architecture

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Paige Exeter
  • Updated

Note: Although the article mentions zoom integration, the zoom integration was deprecated as of 31st March 2024.

Overview

We are implementing a series of improvements to Aptem’s Review functionality, to reduce your administrative burden and ensure Aptem helps you to remain compliant. These changes are based on customer feedback and to support the new funding rules that state a review must be carried out for apprentices every 12 weeks, to discuss progress against their training plan.

The Review changes in this article are applicable for all programmes - onboarding, delivery and sub-programmes.

You can access the following resources relating to this update:

 

Summary of the functional improvements and their benefits

Following the update, statuses across Learning Plan activities, Review instances and Review 'Tasks' will be aligned, to ensure you have a clear and consistent view of the Review status for each learner. Whenever a change is made to the Review status in any one of these three areas, the other areas will automatically be updated to reflect this change. This will make it easier for you to track when Reviews are due for each learner, and will remove the need for your teams to manually keep these statuses aligned.

The bulk of this work involved behind-the scenes technical re-architecture, and these updates set up the Reviews functionality to be scalable, and enable future features, like surfacing further data via OData.

The updates can viewed by the area they impact. You can scroll all the way down, or click to view changes in a particular area:

'Review' Learning Plan Activities

Review Instances

Tasks

Performance Dashboard

Public API

Functionality removed from Classic

Changes specific to Employ Restart programmes 

 

'Review' Learning Plan Activities

  1. In the Console interface, a new 'Schedule Review now’ area has been introduced in the 'Create/Edit' Review activity form, which is available from both the Learning Plan and Reviews grid. Note that this is in addition to the current ability to schedule Reviews via the Scheduling Assistant. All Scheduling Assistant functionality remains as it was.
    mceclip2.png
  2. If there is a Review activity with no 'complete by date' entered, and you also haven’t used the new 'Schedule Review now' option (see image above), a 'Task' will not be created. The 'Create task' checkbox has been removed and you can no longer manually create a 'Task'. The ability to schedule in this way is only available in Console. Any Reviews created in Classic will need to be edited or scheduled in Console after creation.
  3. In the Classic interface, the ‘Use Zoom’ checkbox is no longer selectable from within Programme builder and from the Create/Edit Review activity in the Learning Plan overview.
  4. The 'Start Review' and 'Complete Activity'/'Continue Activity' buttons are now available for 'Not Scheduled' Reviews under activity details in both Classic and Console views. If you have a 'Not Scheduled' Review, and you click 'Start', it gets scheduled immediately at the date and time that you started it. And the status is updated to 'In Progress'.
  5. The Learning Plan side panel now has the option to schedule a Review. When you click the 'Schedule Review' button, the Scheduling Assistant screen is displayed.
    MicrosoftTeams-image__1__-_Copy.png 
  6. In the Classic interface, the ‘Create a review’ ribbon button is no longer available to Tutors on the right-hand side of the Learning Plan overview.
  7. In the Console interface, removing a Review activity when the Review has already started will delete all associated records - Please note that this includes any Review 'Tasks' and Review document(s). Deleting these records means that they will be completely removed from the database and users will not be able to get this data back.
  8. Learning Plan activities of type 'Review' in the 'Not Started' status are available via the OData Learning Plan feed.
  9. Both the OData feeds for activities and Reviews remains as per existing functionality.

 

Review Instances

Review statuses

  1. Two new Review statuses - 'Scheduled' and 'Not Scheduled' have been introduced. Note that these statuses apply to the Review Instance, and not to the Learning Plan activities. So, on the Learning Plan, the ‘Not Started’ status will still be displayed where applicable.
  2. The ‘Not Started’ Review status has been removed.
  3. 'Not Scheduled' is now the default status, and if no date/ time is added, the Review will remain in the 'Not Scheduled' state. To schedule a Review, you must add a date and time. For more information about Review statuses, see: Review Statuses and Status logic.
  4. Reviews are now classified as 'Planned' or 'Finished'.
    reviews.gif
  5. The 'Planned' Reviews grid looks like this:
    mceclip1.png
    The following statuses are classified as ‘Planned’:
    • Not Scheduled
    • Scheduled
    • In progress
  6. The 'Finished' Reviews grid looks like this:
    mceclip0.pngThe following statuses are classified as ‘Finished’:
    • Awaiting Signature (This was previously considered as a 'Planned' status)
    • Completed
    • Not Completed
    • Archived
  7. Note that Reviews with a status of 'Awaiting Signatures' will have an associated Learning Plan activity with the status of 'In Progress', regardless of the completion mode ('Tutor decides' or 'All evidence accepted').

Classic

  1. When you start a Review from the Learner Profile 'Review' section in Classic, you will be advised to use the enhanced functionality in Console. The Reviews functionality in Classic can still be used, but the new UI and scheduling ability is only available via Console.

 

Console

  1. It is now possible to reschedule an 'In progress' Review - one that has already been started. To do this, administrators with the 'Advanced Delivery Management (Edit)' and / or 'Supervisor' permissions can edit the Review from the Reviews grid 'Planned' tab, or use the Scheduling Assistant on the Reviews grid, or the new scheduling user interface (UI). A reason for rescheduling can also be entered.
    mceclip3.png
  2. Legacy Review behaviour - For Reviews that have been started from the Classic interface, and have no associated Learning Plan activity, the ‘Edit Review’ option will not be displayed, even if the administrator has the 'Advanced Delivery Management (Edit)' and / or 'Supervisor' permissions. These Reviews can still be progressed, but if they need to be edited, we recommend creating a new Review so that it can be properly linked to a Learning Plan activity.
  3. Reviews that have a status of ‘Not Completed’ and ‘Archived’ are not displayed to Employers, regardless of the permissions they have.
  4. The Planned Date in the Reviews OData feed reflects the Planned/Scheduled Date showing on the Reviews grid. Previously, this field would be empty in cases where there wasn't a linked Learning Plan activity. Due to the strengthened link, an activity will always be associated to a Review and therefore data will always be available via this field.
  5. Where enabled for use, the 'Join Zoom’ button is no longer displayed against the Review Instance in the Reviews grid – it is now only available when you open the Review up to view/edit the sections within the form. The 'Join Zoom’ button has been renamed to ‘Start Meeting’ when displayed for Tutors. Learners and Employers will continue to see the 'Join Zoom' button.

 

Tasks

We have made some changes to the behaviour of 'Tasks' in both Classic and Console.

  1. The 'Review Meeting' task type has been removed from the Tasks token in the Account Programme. This means that you can no longer create a Review meeting task manually.
    • If the Review type is visible for both the Learners and Tutor, Review meeting tasks will be automatically created for both the Learner and the Tutor when the Review is ‘Scheduled’. Scheduling occurs only when a date and time is added against the Review Instance or the Learning Plan activity of type Review.
    • If the visibility settings are set for the Review Type to only be visible to the Tutor, the Review meeting task will be created only for the Tutor when the Review Instance or Learning Plan Review activity is scheduled.
  2. You can no longer cancel/delete a Review meeting task from the UI. The ‘Remove’ button has been removed. These actions need to be performed on the linked Learning Plan activity or Review Instance.
  3. When a Review Instance or Learning Plan activity of type Review is re-scheduled, the associated task is updated.
  4. If the Review Instance or Learning Plan activity of type 'Review' is cancelled, the task will be removed from all calendars. However, if a cancellation reason has been entered, the database will store it, and it may be surfaced in future via OData.
  5. The ‘Repeat’ control has been removed from the form in Classic.
  6. Review meeting tasks will be automatically completed when the associated Learning Plan activity of type 'Review' reaches one of the ‘finished’ statuses - ‘Completed’ or ‘Awaiting Signatures’. Note that you will not be able to manually update these tasks.
  7. For Reviews in a planned status (those with a status of Not Scheduled, Scheduled, or In Progress), only the following task fields are now editable:
    • Due Date
    • Start Time
    • End Time
    • All Day
  8. Finished Reviews with the status of 'Awaiting Signature', 'Completed', and 'Archived' Review tasks are now read-only.
  9. When a Review type is deleted from the programme template, the Review status is set to 'Archived'. 
    • If the Review has been started, the task is cancelled. 
    • If the Review has not been started yet, the task is permanently deleted.
  10. The ‘Create Task for' checkbox has been removed from the edit/create Learning Plan activity form and the Review form.

For more information, see: Review Meeting Tasks.

 

Performance Dashboard

Overdue / metrics

Learning Plan 'Review' activities, Review Instances and Review meeting tasks will no longer be counted in the 'overdue' section of the dashboard, or in Learning Plan metrics once they reach the following statuses:

  • Awaiting Signatures
  • Completed
  • Not Completed
  • Archived

These Reviews will still count towards the metrics calculated under the Requires Attention cards/drilldowns.

 

Learner Dashboard

Reviews card

  1. If a Review task is scheduled for all day, ‘All day’ is displayed instead of the ‘00:00 – 00:00’ time value. If no task has been scheduled yet, no time value is displayed.
  2. If a Review has an ‘Awaiting Signature’ status, it will not be counted as an 'Upcoming Review', because ‘Awaiting Signature’ is now classified as a 'Finished' Review status.

 

Public API

The following changes have been made to the Public API:

  1. AddTask: You can no longer create a task of the ‘Review Meeting’ type.
  2. UpdateTask: You can no longer change the task type from any other type to a ‘Review meeting’ type.
  3. UpdateTask: You can no longer update a task of the ‘Review Meeting’ type.

 

Functionality removed from Classic

Due to all the changes in functionality, and our constant effort to migrate functionality over to Console, we have had to remove the following aspects from Classic:

  • 'Use Zoom' checkbox - there is no scheduling functionality within Classic, therefore the task which uses Zoom will not be created until the Review is scheduled which needs to occur within Console.
  • The 'Repeat' task functionality (never, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly) in Review meeting tasks has been removed.
  • You can no longer create a standalone Review Instance using the 'Create Review’ ribbon. The Learning Plan activity of type Review automatically creates this.

 

Changes specific to Employ Restart programmes 

  1. For Employ Restart delivery programmes, and where the activity completion mode is set to ‘Tutor decides’, a new Review status of ‘Not Completed’ is introduced. This status will be used for Reviews where Learning Plan activities are marked as ‘Not Completed’. Previously, such reviews had ‘Archived’ status. When a Review instance is marked as ‘Not Completed’, the Learning Plan activity will also be updated to have the same matching status.
  2. In cases where the Review has been marked as ‘Not Completed’ (available for Employ Restart programmes only), it will no longer be possible to edit a 'Not Completed' Review activity, even if the tutor has the Edit/Delete finished components permission.
  3. For Aptem Employ Restart delivery programmes with an activity completion mode of 'Tutor decides', you cannot mark a Review as ‘Not Completed’ where the associated Learning Plan activity has a ‘Completed’ status.
  4. Employ Restart programmes only - When a Learning Plan Review activity or the Review instance is marked as 'Not Completed', the associated Review tasks are removed, and we do not store a record of them.

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