VETtrak 20.1.0 Release Notes - 4/03/2020

Version 20.1.0 is a major update from 19.3.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 [email protected].

The most significant changes are:

• USI AUSkey replacement.
• Wizard page navigation.

Changes in 20.1.0.3 patch (24/04/2020)

1. VIC COVID-19 (C19) claims exclusion. A new "C19" option has been added to the "Claims exclusion" drop-downs in the Enrolment and Edit AVETMISS Values wizards in VIC, for reporting training that has been disrupted by COVID-19 to avoid immediate SVTS reapportioning. The new option is also available for bulk update in Data Insights.
2. Edit AVETMISS Values. An error that occurs when saving the Edit AVETMISS Values wizard after clearing a VIC Funding Eligibility Key, Eligibility Exemption Indicator or VET Student Loans Indicator field has been fixed.
3. Retrieve SMS Replies and Delivery Receipts. An error that occurs when closing the Retrieve SMS Replies and Delivery Receipts wizard the second time after declining to close the first time has been fixed.

Changes in 20.1.0.2 patch (30/03/2020)

1. Repeat feedback. An issue causing VETtrak to ask for feedback again after you submitted feedback and pressed the window close button during the "Thank you for your feedback" message has been fixed.
2. Enrolment Task wizard. An issue that can cause the currently-selected unit to jump around when ticking tasks has been fixed.
3. VETtrak 18.3 upgrade. An issue upgrading an old version 18.2 database to 18.3 using VETtrak 20.1 has been fixed.
4. Canvas LMS blank page. An issue causing the Canvas LMS login screen to be blank in hosting has been fixed.

Changes in 20.1.0.1 patch (11/03/2020)

1. Transfer Enrolment wizard. An error that occurs in the Transfer Enrolment wizard has been fixed.
2. Missing wizard components. An issue that caused some components to not be visible in the View Email wizard, Invoice Exporter wizard, Payment Exporter wizard and View Sent SMS wizard has been fixed.
3. Publish Occurrences wizard. An error that occurs when selecting a state in the Publish Occurrences wizard has been fixed.
4. Wizard navigation first page. An issue that caused the first page to not be bolded in the page navigation when opening some wizards has been fixed.
5. Hosting USI CAA changeover. If you are hosted, when VETtrak starts it will now show a warning message in the bottom-right corner if you have an AUSkey configured for USI and you have not yet changed over to use CAA for the AUSkey replacement. You must complete the process to change over from AUSkey to CAA before AUSkey is decommissioned on 27th March 2020. For details on how to change over, refer to this article and then this article.

USI AUSkey replacement

Changes have been made to support the AUSkey replacement for USI. Note that you can continue to use your existing Device AUSkey for USI in 20.1 only until the 27th of March 2020, but to continue to use the USI service after that you will need to have migrated to the new authentication mechanism.

All customers

All customers that use USI will need to perform the following before 27 March 2020:

1. The Principal Authority for your business must set up a MyGovID at https://www.mygovid.gov.au
2. The Principal Authority must use their MyGovID to log into RAM (Relationship Authorisation Manager) at https://authorisationmanager.gov.au and link your ABN
3. The Principal Authority can optionally set up other people who can access RAM for your ABN, with various access levels, if they want other people to be able to perform the subsequent tasks.

For more details on this process, refer to this article. The next steps to complete are different depending on whether your VETtrak is hosted with us, or locally installed.

Hosted customers

Customers whose VETtrak software is hosted with us will make use of a new "Cloud software Authentication and Authorisation" (CAA) mechanism to authenticate your organisation with the USI web service. Local install customers cannot use CAA. CAA avoids hosted customers from having to obtain or share a machine credential or device AUSkey with us. Instead, after linking your ABN into RAM and upgrading VETtrak to 20.1, you will need to complete the following process before 27 March 2020. For more details on this process, refer to this article.

1. In VETtrak, go to the File menu -> Global Preferences -> Compliance Preferences -> USI CAA tab. This screen shows VETtrak's ABN and your VETtrak "software ID" for USI, which you will need to create a cloud software notification. If it's empty, contact VETtrak Support for assistance.
2. Use RAM to create a notification to authorise VETtrak's ABN to transact on your behalf, with the "software ID" (SSID) that was provided above, to the Office of the Student Identifiers Register. Note that you can revoke this notification in RAM at any time. If you have multiple organisations with different ABNs in VETtrak, you should create a separate notification in RAM for each of those ABNs, with the same "software ID" on each.
3. Back in VETtrak's Compliance Preferences -> USI CAA tab, tick "Use CAA to connect to USI service".
4. In the Configuration Manager in VETtrak, edit your organisation. Enter your ABN and National RTO ID if you haven't already. Note that the notification must be created for the ABN which is associated with your RTO's National RTO ID on training.gov.au (this same National RTO ID and ABN must be entered in the Organisation wizard in VETtrak).

Local-install customers

Customers with a local installation of VETtrak will then need to perform the following process to replace your device AUSkey, after upgrading VETtrak to 20.1 and before 27 March 2020. For more details on this process, refer to this article.

1. Use RAM to create a new machine credential for your business. This will require a web browser extension to be installed and can currently only be done in Chrome or Firefox. When performing this process, note where the machine credential file is being saved, enter a password for it, and enter a name (we suggest "VETtrak").
2. Move the new machine credential key store file (an XML file) somewhere where all VETtrak users can access it (e.g.. on a network share, or in the MachineCredential folder within the VETtrak installation).
3. In the Configuration Manager in VETtrak, edit your organisation. On the USI screen in the Organisation wizard, click the Browse button to browse for and select the key store file. Click the "Open key store" button. Select the machine credential from the list, enter the password, and click the "Check" button.
4. Note that the machine credential you use must be for the ABN which is associated with the organisation code on training.gov.au (this same organisation code must be entered in VETtrak in the "National RTO ID" field on the first page of this wizard).
5. If you have multiple organisations with different ABNs in VETtrak, you will need to create a machine credential for each ABN and specify it in Organisation wizard for the corresponding organisation.

Wizard page navigation

A new page navigation bar at the top of the longest and most frequently-used wizards shows the pages that are in the wizard. The page you are currently on is shown in bold, and you can jump to any other page in the wizard by clicking its link, avoiding having to go Next or Back through every page. If a page has a validation error, VETtrak will stop on that page and you'll need to fix the validation error before you can proceed to any subsequent pages. When you are on the Finish page, the Finish link in the navigation bar changes into another Finish button that you can click to save the wizard.

The page navigation bar is available in these wizards:

1. Client wizard
2. Client Personal wizard
3. Enrolment wizard, all variations (including Occurrence, Occurrence Enrolment, Booking etc)
4. Contract wizard
5. Employer wizard

Product feedback

Feedback from our users is highly valued at VETtrak and is the main driver of improvements to VETtrak products and services. To give more opportunity to all our users to contribute, periodically you'll be asked to provide feedback within the VETtrak, Trainer Portal and VTDocs products. We would encourage everyone to participate and we thank you for your time.

State reporting changes

1. TAS NAT120 file. The "Program commencement date" field is no longer included in the NAT120 file in TAS from 2020 as per version 1.02 of the Tasmanian Requirements for AVETMISS Reporting.
2. Generate State AVETMISS advanced options. The rarely-used location, funding source and purchasing contract filters have been moved to a new "Advanced options" button at the bottom of the first page of the Generate State AVETMISS wizard. The "Zip output files" option has been moved to the "Save NAT files" button pop-up, and the "Stop on error" and "Reduced memory usage" options have been moved to the bottom of the first page.
3. NSW fee-free traineeships. New NSW Smart and Skilled fee waiver codes W003, W004 and W181 have been added to the Eligibility Info part 2 tab in the Enrolment wizard.
4. VIC negative client fees - other. Generate State AVETMISS in VIC will now show an error if the reported "Client fees - other" in the NAT120 file is negative, as SVTS 11.1 does not allow this.

Client changes

1. Overseas address. The "This is an overseas onshore/offshore client" tickbox in the Client Personal wizard has been renamed to "Report address as overseas in AVETMISS" to make its effect more obvious, with an Info bubble added to explain exactly what impact ticking this has on AVETMISS reporting.
2. Labour force status and occupation fields. If the collection state is VIC or TAS, the Client Personal wizard will now show a side-bar alert if the client's Labour Force Status indicates they are employed, but the Industry of Employment or Occupation Identifier have not been entered.
3. Regenerate in-use client code. If you change a client code to one that's already in use by another client, VETtrak will inform you when saving and give you an opportunity to generate a new code.
4. Client Manager enrolment grid buttons. An issue that could cause the button columns in the enrolments grid in the Client Manager to become too small to use when running in high DPI has been fixed.

Enrolment/occurrence changes

1. Create occurrence enrolments. A new option to "Create occurrence enrolments" has been added to the Create menu, and when right-clicking the Occurrence Enrolments node in the Client Manager. This opens a new wizard that allows you to enrol this client, or multiple selected clients, into multiple occurrences at once. If you opened this from the Create menu, you will first search for and select multiple clients to enrol. Either way, you will then search for (by ID, code, or an advanced search with multiple filters) and select multiple occurrences to enrol into. Pressing Finish will enrol all the selected clients into all the selected occurrences with all the default options.
2. Allow AVETMISS fields to be blank in occurrences and profiles. A new "Allow AVETMISS fields to be empty/invalid in occurrences and profiles" preference has been added to Global Preferences -> Compliance Preferences, which is off by default. If you turn this on, VETtrak will allow you to leave fields blank or invalid on the AVETMISS page in occurrences and profiles, even if it's marked as reportable. This is useful to force users to enter the missing AVETMISS data when enrolling in those occurrences or profiles. Note that if you choose to turn this option on and reportable enrolments are created via other means that don't go through the Enrolment wizard (such as web enrolments, creating contracts/enrolments from profiles, the Fast Enrol wizard, or the new Create Occurrence Enrolments wizard), you may need to edit the enrolment to enter any missing data. Generate AVETMISS will inform you if data is missing as per usual.
3. Attendance type and task status report colour. You can now assign a report colour to each attendance type and task status in the Configuration Manager, to use in custom reports and in the Trainer Portal.
4. Edit processed web enrolment. When a web enrolment is processed, VETtrak will now ask if you want to open the new enrolment in the Enrolment wizard so that you can review or edit it (this defaults to No).
5. QLD $0 tuition fee alert. The pricing page in the Enrolment wizard in QLD will now show a side-bar alert to indicate that the tuition fee will be reported as $0 if the funding source doesn't have "This funding source reports a tuition fee" ticked.
6. Copied data. When duplicating an occurrence when "Copy notes" is unticked, any notes against the occurrence's units are no longer copied to the new occurrences. If you have recorded a default result in an occurrence unit and then reset it, the unit reset information is no longer copied when enrolling into or duplicating the occurrence, which would cause a strange-looking initial entry to be shown for the unit in the Enrolment Comments and History report.
7. Duplicate occurrence with expired units warning. When duplicating an occurrence, a new side-bar alert will indicate if any units in the occurrence are archived or have a non-current status in TGA.
8. Occurrence Task Activity. An issue causing a validation error about a completed task status to remain after the task status is cleared has been fixed.
9. Occurrence Task wizard performance. Performance improvements have been made to the Occurrence Task wizard when there are a large number of units or tasks in the occurrence.
10. Add enrolment with no access to AVETMISS Values. Users with no, or view-only, access to the AVETMISS Values security entity are now able to add enrolments as they are now allowed to select a location, organisation and qualification when creating (but not editing) enrolments. Such enrolments cannot be made reportable.
11. Occurrences feature. The "Short courses" feature in the Security Manager has been renamed to "Occurrences" to make its functionality more obvious.

Email changes

1. Email enrolment employer contact. A new "Email employer contact" option has been added when right-clicking an employer enrolment, allowing you to send email to the contact on the employer enrolment using the "employer enrolment" merge context. If the enrolment does not have a contact selected, this will email the employer's primary contact instead. The "Email confirmation to primary contact" option has been changed to "Email confirmation to employer contact" and now works the same way. Please note a few limitations with this functionality: the sent email will be recorded under the employer (not the contact), and the {ContactGiven} and {ContactSurname} merge fields will merge empty if the enrolment does not have a contact selected causing the email to be sent to the employer's primary contact.
2. Data Insights email enrolment contacts. The "Email all enrolment contacts" option when performing a bulk Send Email for client enrolments in Data Insights will now work properly. Note this also has the limitation that the sent email will be recorded under the enrolled client, not the contact.
3. Test email settings. A new "Test email settings" button is available in Email Preferences to have VETtrak send a test email using the currently-entered preferences. This email will be sent from the configured "Default from address" and to the email address of the logged-in user. If you are using individual staff member email logins, the button can instead be used in the Client wizard to send an email using a staff member's email login.
4. Slow merge templates. The Merge Template wizard will now remove any unused styles from email merge templates when saving. This issue could cause some merge templates to take a long time to load. If you have any merge templates like this, edit and re-save them.

Data Insights changes

1. Contracts. You can now query for contracts in Data Insights. The "Industry award", "Full time" and "Prior training credit" fields have been added. The following bulk actions are available when querying contracts:
   1. Change staff
   2. Run reports: Units, Training Plan, Invoice Schedule, Events and Placements (note that emailing the output is currently not available as contracts don't have a merge context)
   3. Update status
   4. Update dates
   5. Update field: Postcode, Industry award, Full time, Prior training credit, Contract type, Vocation, RTO employer, AAC employer and any custom fields
2. Sample queries. A Samples folder has been added to Data Insights that contains some sample Data Insights queries. You can use these as-is, or duplicate and modify them as you wish. There are many more common Data Insights queries available in this article that you can download, import and modify in Data Insights.
3. Last login date. A new "Last login date" field is now available for client querying in Data Insights. This will be empty if the client has never logged in.
4. Refresh Lists button. An issue causing the Refresh Lists button to not work correctly has been fixed. You can use this button to refresh the contents of drop-down lists in Data Insights if you subsequently make changes to those lists in the Configuration Manager.

Finance changes

1. Delete reversed payment. You can now delete reversed payments, as long as you've been granted delete access to payments (which is off by default), and the payment is not related to a holding entry.
2. Performance improvements. Performance improvements have been made when right-clicking a payment node and when generating scheduled invoices.

FileTrak changes

1. Save all documents. A new "Save all" button has been added to the FileTrak grid. Pressing this will ask you to select a folder, and it will then save a copy of all documents listed in the grid into that folder. This will skip any signatures and web URLs.
2. Sort dates. An issue sorting the date fields in the FileTrak grid has been fixed.

Report changes

1. Right-click reports. The terminology of "built-in" reports has been replaced by "right click" reports to better describe what they are.
2. Report scheduler. The Report Scheduler will now log the full path of the report file being run, and all email attachments, including those from the merge template, to assist with diagnosing issues. When selecting a report file, only .fr3 files will be shown. A new version 1.1 of the Report Scheduler Windows Service is also now available for download in the Support Centre to fix an issue when running it with a VETtrak.ini file created by VETtrak 19.2 or later.

New importer changes

1. Payment Importer default layout. In the default layout file for the Payment Importer, the Recorded Date field has been changed from an Update operation to a Match operation to better detect existing payments.
2. Payment Importer first invoice. An issue with using the "First invoice" relationship in the Payment Importer has been fixed.
3. Sort by status. An issue causing sorting by status to not work correctly in the new importers has been fixed.

Assess2Educate (A2E) changes

1. Coaching guide. The "Open results" button has been replaced with a "Coaching guide" button when viewing a completed A2E assessment, which opens the assessment's coaching guide PDF in a web browser.
2. Probability percentage. When downloading A2E assessment results, the probability of success percentage will now be stored in VETtrak. This can be seen when viewing a completed assessment.

Web Portal changes

Updates have been made to the Trainer Portal, Student Portal, VTDocs and Progress Portal for 20.1.

1. Authentication Provider claims. A new option to identify logging-in users using their client code, and a new field to allow entering of the name of the claim to use, have been added to external Authentication Providers in the Security Manager.
2. Trainer Portal client image QA. Trainers can now update a client's first image in the Trainer Portal. If this update is sent through QA, the Quality Assurance Manager will show the client's existing image one, and the proposed new image one, which can be changed or reverted before accepting if required.
3. Student Portal documents. Student Portal preferences -> Documents tab now allows you to configure students to have view access to documents for qualifications and Programmes in the Student Portal.
4. Trainer Portal documents. Trainer Portal preferences -> Documents tab now allows you to configure trainers to have view access to documents for qualifications and Programmes in the Trainer Portal.
5. VTDocs document batch. A new "Document batch" security entity has been added to VTDocs Plus in the Security Manager, off in existing roles. This allows access to batches of QR code scanned documents in VTDocs.
6. Progress Portal events. The Event wizard now allows you to grant View access in the Progress Portal to allow events of that type to be visible in the Progress Portal. New security entries for Client Events and Employer Events have also been added to the Progress Portal in the Security Manager.

Other changes

1. Manager search right-click menu. You can now right-click a record directly in the search results in the Client, Staff and Employer Managers to get the same menu as you get when right-clicking its Personal or Details node. A new "View client/staff/employer in new tab" option has been added to that menu allowing you to open a new copy of the Manager for that record.
2. Custom fields for more records. You can now assign custom fields to qualifications, units, invoices and awards. Set this up in the Configuration Manager.
3. CRICOS CoE new fields. New fields for the English test exemption and reason, English test date, and Other Form of Testing type and comments have been added to the CRICOS CoE wizard. The CRICOS CoE Importer will import values for these new fields.
4. Database backup warning. If your VETtrak is locally installed, a new General Preference has been added to "Show warning if last database backup is older than", with a customisable time period. This defaults to on and 2 weeks. If the last database backup detected by VETtrak is older than this, it will be highlighted in red on the dashboard. It can now also show the last time that a SQL Server database was taken. Note that if you are using a Firebird database, this is the date the Backup Wizard in VETtrak was last used to make a database backup - if you create your database backups a different way, VETtrak will not be able to detect that so you should turn off this preference.
5. Single day event. The "Milestone event" tickbox in the Event wizards has been renamed to "Single day (milestone)" to make its function more obvious.
6. Security Manager. The Session Management node is now split by application to make it easier to see the login sessions for an application. You can now right-click an "in use" feature under Licence Utilisation to force the user to log out.
7. Change unit code warning. The Unit Wizard now shows a warning message if you change the code of an existing unit that has already been reported. In most cases you should import the Training Package containing the new unit or create a new unit instead.
8. Credit terms wizard display. An issue causing the checkboxes to be cut-off in the Credit Term wizard has been fixed.
9. Existing employer name. A nicer validation error will now display if you attempt to give an employer the same name as an existing employer.
10. Staff member grid in high DPI. An issue causing the staff member grid in the Contract and Bulk Change Staff wizards to be cut-off in high DPI has been fixed.
11. F1 help. Fixed the F1 help pages for the Update AVETMISS Fields wizard and Booking Information wizard.
12. Calendar Manager SQL Server. An error that can occur in the Calendar Manager when using SQL Server with a native client vendor library has been fixed.
13. Canvas LMS SAML login. If you are using SAML for your Canvas login, and it does not support the Canvas OAuth process, a new "Bypass Canvas SAML login page" option can be ticked in the LMS Configuration wizard before logging in. This will send you to the standard Canvas login screen to log in, then you can press the "I am logged into Canvas" button at the bottom of the screen to start the OAuth process.