VETtrak 19.2.0 Release Notes - 10/09/2019

Version 19.2.0 is a major update from 19.1.x and includes database updates. Ensure you have a backup of your database before updating. If at all unsure please contact VETtrak Customer Support on 1800 838 872 or email support@vettrak.io.

The most significant changes are:

• Password security improvements.
• Self-service award reports.

Changes in 19.2.1 update (17/10/2019)

This minor update to 19.2 contains some Password Management improvements and bug fixes.

1. Password Management improvements. The following improvements have been made to the Password Management functionality in response to customer feedback.
   1. Distribute password reset using enrolment merge templates. When bulk-resetting passwords for client enrolments in Data Insights, you now select an enrolment or occurrence enrolment context email or SMS merge template to distribute the password (depending on the type of enrolments selected). This allows you to include enrolment information as well as the login details in the one email or SMS.
   2. Reset Password for individual clients and enrolments. You can now more quickly reset and distribute a new password for a client, or the client that has an enrolment, by right-clicking the Personal node in the Client Manager, or right-clicking a client enrolment node anywhere, and using "Reset password". Doing this for an enrolment allows you to use an enrolment or occurrence enrolment context email or SMS merge template to distribute the new password as per the above.
   3. Reset Password trigger action. A new "Reset password" action is available in Triggers and Actions for client enrolments. This allows you to reset and distribute a new password as part of a client enrolment trigger.
   4. Bulk Password Reset error. An error that occurred when opening the Reset Password bulk action when your Security Settings are set to email or SMS new passwords by default has been fixed.
2. VIC Payment History Importer. The VIC Payment History Importer has been changed to work with the new file format produced by SVTS.
3. CRICOS CoE and Student Details Importer. The CRICOS CoE and Student Details Importer has been changed to work with the new file format produced by PRISMS.
4. WA Enrolment Export contract date. The WA Enrolment Export wizard will now show a warning if the end date of the unit in a contract enrolment is after the end date of the contract.
5. Bulk Task Activity and Unit Tasks reports. The Task Activity and Unit Tasks reports are now available to be run for client enrolments in the Bulk Run Report wizette (accessible from Data Insights, the Run Reports trigger action, or by right-clicking an enrolment and selecting "Run Reports").
6. Data Insights security. Data Insights will no longer allow read-only users to move queries via drag-and-drop, and will no longer allow add/edit/delete access to be granted to a query folder for read-only roles.
7. Generate AVETMISS error/warning filter. The error/warning filter button in the Generate AVETMISS wizards is now labelled "Filter" to make it more obvious.
8. Default end date. An issue causing the default end date for occurrences created this month (October) to be the 30th instead of the 31st has been fixed.
9. Create SA contract. An error that occurred when trying to create a contract from the Create menu when the state is set to South Australia has been fixed.
10. Self-Service Award Report improvements. Some small improvements have been made to the new Self-Service Reports Manager, including reducing flickering when switching between reports and improving the performance when selecting report elements.
11. Run triggers on change enrolment confirmation status. You can now have Triggers and Actions on client enrolments that trigger on the change of the enrolment confirmation status.
12. Matching empty values in importers. An issue finding records when matching empty values in related tables in the new importers has been fixed.
13. Import address. An issue in the new Client Importer that prevented new address records being created when importing addresses for existing clients (e.g.. if the Personal Wizard was not saved) that did not already have address records has been fixed.
14. Update date of status change. The Enrolment/Occurrence and Contract wizards will now automatically update the Date of Status Change to today when the status is changed, but you can then change it if needed.
15. Employer contact in Employer Manager. The Employer Details panel in the Employer Manager now makes it clearer that the Mobile and Email fields are for the employer's primary contact.
16. Opening files. When opening files in various places, the operating system will now determine the operation to perform on the file.
17. Remove AVETMISS 7 from dashboard navigation. The AVETMISS 7 generation options have been removed from the Navigation panel on the dashboard, as they are rarely used. You can still perform old AVETMISS 7 generations from the AVETMISS menu if needed.

Password security improvements

The way VETtrak manages user account passwords has been overhauled to bring VETtrak in line with modern best practices and improve compliance with ISO27001 security standards. Passwords are now stored using a one-way hash, making it impossible to get a user's password back out once it has been saved in the database. New features include:

1. Security settings wizard. Users with access to Security can use the File menu -> Security Settings option to configure a range of new security-related settings. For details of how this works, refer to this article. The functionality includes:
   1. Password policy settings, including minimum number of and types of characters required in passwords, the option to force users with passwords that don't meet your policy settings to change their password on next login, and the ability to expire passwords after a configured length of time with an optional alert message when a user's password will soon expire.
   2. Option to use email addresses as usernames for new clients.
   3. Default options for distributing passwords to new clients, which can be via email template, SMS template, or by triggering a new web portal password reset process.
   4. Option to allow VETtrak desktop users to use a new forgot password account recovery process.
   5. Options for password reset requests, including the email account to send password reset emails from, and configure the expiry time for unactioned password reset requests.
2. Client wizard security access page. A new Security Access page has been added to the Client and Fast Client (Employer Contact) wizards. This allows you to easily assign the client access to your web portals, force the client to change their password on next login, set a new password for the client and optionally distribute it to them via email or SMS template at the end of the wizard, or trigger the web portal password reset process for the client so they can set their own password using a web portal. The username and disable login fields have also been moved to this page. This page can only be accessed by users with access to Security, or if the client does not have access to any applications other than the Student or Progress Portal. The Primary Email and Primary Mobile Number fields have been added to the first page of the Client wizard, so they can be used to distribute the password to a new client.
3. Bulk reset passwords in Data Insights. A new Reset Passwords bulk action has been added to Data Insights when querying clients or client enrolments. This allows you to force password change on next login, set and distribute new passwords via email or SMS template, or trigger the web portal password reset process for many clients in bulk that match whatever criteria you require. Note that the Password field is no longer available in Data Insights, as it is impossible to retrieve a client's existing password. Also note that, for the same reason, the only time passwords can be sent to clients in an email or SMS template is when you are setting a new one (individually or in bulk) - you cannot use an email or SMS merge template that contains the {Password} merge field at any other time.
4. Forgot password. If the ability to self-service desktop password resets is turned on in Security Settings (which requires valid email settings to be configured in VETtrak), a new "Forgot my password" link will appear on the VETtrak Login screen. Clicking this opens a new Forgot Password wizard and starts a process to allow the desktop user to recover their account. For details of how this works, refer to this article; below is a summary:
   1. The user enters the email address on their staff member record. This must match the primary email address of a single staff member with access to the application. If no match is found, the same check is also made on the secondary email address. If a match is found, VETtrak generates a password reset code and emails it to that address.
   2. The user copies the password reset code from the email they receive and pastes it into VETtrak. The user has 5 attempts to enter the correct code.
   3. If the code is correct, VETtrak shows their username and allows the user to set a new password on their account. VETtrak will send another email to confirm that the password has been reset. The user then returns to the Login screen where they can log in with their username and new password.
5. If the setting is turned on, when a user logs into VETtrak and they don't have an email address entered in their staff member record, VETtrak will show a pop-up alert to prompt the user to enter their email, because they will require this if they need to reset their forgotten password in future.
6. Failed logins. VETtrak now logs all failed login attempts. A new tab has been added to the dashboard that shows any failed login attempts on your account since the last time you logged in.
7. Remember username. The Global Preferences Default Username and Default Password have been removed. For locally-installed customers, a new "Remember my username" tickbox has been added to the Login screen to remember the last-used username. This option is not available for hosted customers at this stage due to the way hosted logins currently work.
8. Change default password. If you are still using the default username and password to log into VETtrak, you will be forced to change the password the first time you log into VETtrak after updating to 19.2.
9. Employer username and password. Employers no longer have a username or password. This was only ever used in the API - if you have a custom VETtrak integration that uses employer logins in the API, this integration will need to be changed to work with VETtrak 19.2.
10. Catapult LMS. The option to use the VETtrak client's password when creating students or trainers in Catapult has been removed because VETtrak cannot determine what the client's password is.
11. Web portals. Many security-related features have been added to all the VETtrak Web Portals, including the ability for portal users to set their own password, an improved forgot password reset process, the requirement for students to confirm their new email address when updating it, and support for all the new security-related features in the desktop product. For details of the security-related changes in the web portals, refer to this article.

Self-service award reports

The new Self-Service Reports Manager in the Report menu allows you to customise your own award reports based on standard templates. Following is a brief run-down of how it works; for more details, refer to this article.

1. In the Self-Service Reports Manager, browse the available report templates by expanding an award category and selecting a report template to preview it.
2. Press the "Add self-service report" button, or right-click the template and select "Add self-service report", to create a new report based on the selected template.
3. Each template contains picture and text block elements that you can customise. Select a picture or text block to customise by selecting it in the tree in the middle, or clicking it in the preview. The selected element will be indicated in the preview with a red border if "Highlight selected report element" is ticked.
   1. For a picture element, you can choose whether it is visible, you can load your own image file into it, and you can customise its size and position.
   2. For a text block element, you can choose whether it is visible, customise its font, size, colour, style and alignment, and for a text block that doesn't come from the database, you can change its text.
4. After making changes to an element, press the "Apply changes" button to update the preview with your changes. Changes are also automatically applied if you select a different report element. Use the "Reset to default values" button to remove your customisations from the selected report element and revert it back to its initial settings from the template.
5. You can change the font of all the text blocks in the template at once by selecting the "Text" root node in the tree.
6. When you are happy with your changes, enter a name for the report at the top of the screen, and press the Save button to save your report. Your report will appear in the Report Tree on the left underneath the template. You can edit an existing report by selecting it in the tree.
7. To map your report so it can be used, the easiest way is to right-click it in the Report Tree and "Add award report mapping". Select a specific award type to map this report to. Your award report is then available everywhere where mapped award reports are available - for example, when right-clicking an award of that type and going to "Show award", "Email award" or "Run reports", right-clicking the Enrolments node for an occurrence in the Programme Manager and going to "Show awards", or when running award reports in bulk from Data Insights.
8. You can also manage your self-service award report mappings in the Report Mapping wizard, accessed by going to the Report menu -> Report Mappings, and pressing Next. Each award report entry is mapped to either an .fr3 file (for reports provided by the VETtrak Report Writing team), or one of your self-service award reports.

AVETMISS/claiming changes

National

1. Completion statement awards. Changes have been made to the Award wizard to comply with NCVER's clarification of the rules regarding the reporting of statement awards in the NAT130 file. A new "Completion statement" tickbox has been added to the Award wizard:
   1. Tick this when recording a statement award if it is a full completion of the qualification.
   2. Untick this when recording a statement award if the statement is for a partial completion of the qualification.
   3. It is unticked and disabled (ie. it cannot be a full completion) if no qualification is selected or the award type is "other".
   4. It is ticked and disabled (ie. it must be a full completion) if the award type is a certificate.
2. The available reportability options for the award depend on whether this is ticked:
   1. If this is not ticked, the award cannot be reported.
   2. If this is ticked, and the qualification is a nationally-recognised qualification, course or skill set, the award can be reported to state or national.
   3. If this is ticked, and the qualification is not nationally-recognised, the award cannot be nationally-reported but can still be state-reported.
3. When upgrading the database, this will be ticked for all existing certificate awards, and for all existing statement awards that are for nationally-recognised skill sets. Unfortunately VETtrak cannot reliably determine whether your other existing statement awards are full completions or not, so assumes that they are not. All your existing statement awards that are reportable will continue to be reported until you edit the award - at that point, you will need to tick "Completion statement" if you wish to continue to report the award.
4. Overlapping NAT120 entries. AVS is introducing validation for overlapping NAT120 entries. To support this, Generate AVETMISS will now show a warning if the same client has overlapping activity dates for the same unit (except for Credit Transfer, RPL or Not Yet Started results).
5. Miscellaneous prior education. The Client Personal wizard now allows "Miscellaneous Education" and other prior education types to be ticked at the same time.

Victoria

1. VIC Payment History Importer. The VIC Payment History Importer wizard now allows you to import spreadsheets containing payments from multiple invoices. Each individual payment's Claim ID (for imports made since updating to 19.2) is now recorded so VETtrak can identify and update payments that have already been imported, meaning that payments from the same invoice can be split across multiple spreadsheet files, and you no longer need to rollback before re-importing payments you've already imported since 19.2.
2. Update VIC program enrolment status. The Change Occurrence Enrolments Wizard now allows you to bulk-update the VIC program enrolment status for selected enrolments in a VIC occurrence. To access this wizard, right-click the Enrolments node in an occurrence in the Programme Manager and select "Change status of enrolments".
3. VIC program enrolment warning. A side-bar alert on the VIC state page in the Enrolment wizard will now warn you if there are any units in the VIC enrolment you are editing that have a different VIC program commencement date or qualification to the enrolment (as this means those units are in a different VIC program enrolment, which may not have been intended).
4. Download VIC VSNs uploaded by other systems. An issue that would cause the VIC VSN Download wizard to not be able to download VIC VSNs for students that were uploaded by other Student Management Systems has been fixed.

New South Wales

1. NSW Provider Calculator Importer errors. The NSW Provider Calculator Importer will now indicate if it could not import some rows from the spreadsheet due to invalid number formats.

Western Australia

1. Report employer as location. The WA Enrolment Export wizard will now honour the "Report employer as location in AVETMISS" setting in the Enrolment wizard. When this is ticked on an enrolment, the physical address suburb and postcode of the employer assigned to that enrolment will be reported as the location of the enrolment in the WA Enrolment Export wizard.

Client changes

1. Employer code. The employer nodes in the Client Manager will now also include the employer's code (the "User code") if the employer has one.
2. Show staff in Client Manager. You can now right-click the Personal node of a staff member in the Staff Manager to open that staff member in the Client Manager.
3. Sent email/SMS nodes. In the Client and Employer Managers, the "Sent email" tree node has been renamed to "Email sent to client", and the "Sent SMS" tree node has been renamed to "SMS sent to client".
4. DOB validation. When editing an existing client, the existing date of birth will only be re-validated if you change it. This prevents the "client age is more than 100" validation error from occurring when editing an existing client that has since turned more than 100 years old.
5. Merge client message. The confirmation message that appears when merging clients or employers has been changed to make it clearer that the records being merged into the master record will be deleted.
6. Client Importer description. An error that occurs when importing the client description field in the new Client Importer has been fixed.
7. Client Personal Wizard performance. Improved performance when opening the Client Personal wizard the first time for a client when "Set client personal AVETMISS fields to most commonly used values" is turned on in Compliance Preferences.
8. Capability Analysis performance. A new first page has been added to the Capability Analysis wizard allowing you to choose a data set and select which records (depending on the data set) to perform the capability analysis for. Doing this will allow you to analyse a subset of your data for faster performance.

Result changes

1. Extend unit end dates in contract. The Extend Unit Dates wizard will now cap the extended enrolment end date to the end date of the contract the enrolment is in, if the enrolment is in a contract.
2. Attendance auto-commence unit in contract. When auto-commencing units due to attendance, if the unit is in a contract enrolment, the calculated end date of the unit will be capped to the end date of the contract.
3. Occurrence result start date. In the Occurrence Results wizard, "Start date" will now only be ticked by default if none of the clients have a result for that unit, to avoid inadvertently overwriting existing start dates.

Occurrence changes

1. Occurrence code length. The maximum length of the occurrence code field has been increased from 20 to 30 characters.
2. Units for classes scheduled using calendar. A new Units tab has been added when scheduling classes using the calendar, allowing you to link the classes to units at the same time. This is particularly useful when used in conjunction with adding recurring classes. The Room drop-down in that screen will now list the rooms for the occurrence's state, not for the state selected at the top of the screen.

Staff changes

1. Required credentials for unit. When assigning which of a staff member's credentials support a deliverable unit in the Staff Manager, it is now possible to specify that a credential is required for that unit. If VETtrak is configured to show a warning or error when assigning the staff member to that unit in a training plan, then:
   • If multiple credentials are required for that unit, then all the required credentials must be current to avoid triggering the warning or error.
   • If none of the staff's credentials are flagged as required for that deliverable unit, then any one of them being current will avoid triggering the warning or error.
2. Duplicate credentials for staff member. An issue when a duplicate credential was created for a staff member, where its associated units were saved to the original credential, has been fixed.
3. Selected staff member in Staff Manager. An issue in the Staff Manager resulting in the selected staff member changing after an edit has been fixed.

Email/SMS changes

1. Sent SMS Register for occurrence, class or enrolment. New "Show sent SMS register" menu items have been added to show the SMS messages that were sent for all enrolments in an occurrence (when right-clicking the "Enrolments" node for an occurrence in the Programme Manager), an individual class (when right-clicking a class in an occurrence in the Programme Manager) or an individual enrolment (when right-clicking a client enrolment).
2. Future scheduled SMS register. A "Future scheduled" tab has been added to the Sent SMS Register wizard which allows viewing and bulk deleting of future scheduled SMS messages.
3. Email from address. An issue where the email from address was being changed when selecting a staff member signature, when a Force this from address preference setting has been set, has been fixed.

Report changes

1. Security reports. A new Reports node has been added to the Security Manager. This contains sensitive security-related standard reports like the User Entry Report that are only accessible by users with access to the Security Manager.
2. PDF image quality. In the PDF export settings in Global Preferences -> Report Preferences -> Setting tab, the "Print optimised" setting has been removed and replaced with an "Image DPI" setting. This allows more control over the quality of report images when exported to PDF. The default setting of 300 gives similar results as having the old "Print optimised" setting on, and represents a good balance of image quality, file size, and time and memory required to perform the PDF export, but it can be adjusted if required. 
3. PDF export fonts. An error that can occur when exporting a report to PDF if fonts are not installed has been fixed. A more helpful message will now appear when exporting a report to a PDF with embedded fonts when the report contains fonts that are not installed on your machine.
4. Custom Report layout. An error that occurs when opening the Custom Report Manager when a layout for it had previously been saved has been fixed.
5. High-DPI. The reporter now works better on high-DPI screens, especially in report dialogs.
6. Database upgrade report update. Standard and built-in reports are now automatically updated during the database upgrade process. The message that used to appear after completing the database upgrade to warn you to update your reports has been removed.

Data Insights changes

1. Show occurrence clients/enrolments in Data Insights. In the Programme Manager for an occurrence, you can now right-click the Enrolments node and select "View records in Data Insights" -> "Clients" or "Client enrolments" to automatically generate and run a simple Data Insights query that shows the clients or enrolments in that occurrence. This is useful for running bulk actions on those records.
2. FileTrak data. In Data Insights, new "File links" relationships have been added to allow you to query metadata about the files/documents that are linked to various records.
3. Date calculations. Additional date calculations for the start/end of the next/last week/month are now available in Data Insights.
4. Queries with recursive relationships. An error that occurs when saving a Data Insights query that contains the same relationship repeated multiple times in the one field has been fixed.

Web Portal changes

1. Web client matching. When matching web clients, if there are no clients in the database with a surname starting with the web client's surname, the initial search results will be empty to indicate this (you can still perform searches as normal). Also, VETtrak will warn you if you elect to match to an existing client that has a different name to the web client.
2. Idle session expiry. The Notifications preference page has been renamed to "Portal preferences" and a new setting added to it to control how long web portal users are allowed to keep their session idle before being automatically logged out.

Release notes for the changes in version 19.2 of the portal products can be found here:

• Trainer Portal
• Student Portal
• VTDocs Portal
• Progress Portal

Other changes

1. C0000006 errors. Changes have been made that should reduce the chances of C0000006 errors occurring when running VETtrak off a network share.
2. QA documents. The QA Manager now allows you to edit the metadata of or delete documents that have been attached to a QA item.
3. Calendar agenda view. An issue in the Calendar Manager preventing the printing of the Agenda or Calendar Details styles has been fixed.
4. Result type colour. You can now assign a colour to each result type in the Configuration Manager. This is not used in the software but can be used on custom reports.
5. Custom fields in high-DPI. An issue that could cause custom fields to appear in the wrong order on high-DPI screens has been fixed.
6. Event holiday warnings. The Event wizards will now show any holiday clash warnings in the side-bar instead of on the Finish page.
7. Unit search archived training packages. Archived training packages are no longer shown in the unit search.