VETtrak 18.3.0 Release Notes - 12/10/2018

Version 18.3.0 is a major update from 18.2.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:

• New Unit Results Updater and Payment Importer.
• Dated file notes for various records.
• New Training Package and Qualification imports from TGA.

Changes in 18.3.0.1 (9/11/2018)

• Importer performance. An issue that can cause very slow performance with the matching and validation process in the new Unit Results Importer and Payment Importer has been fixed.
• Study reason. The new study reason 13 "To get skills for community/voluntary work" has been added. This is not valid for 2018 and should only be used in new enrolments that will be started in 2019 or later.
• Duplicate employer in NAT20. An issue that causes the same employer to be repeated multiple times in the NAT20 file in Generate National AVETMISS, when the same employer is used in nationally-reported enrolments in different states with the "Report employer as a location in AVETMISS" option on, has been fixed. This has necessitated the removal of the "Employer being reported (as location) has a business address in a different state to the enrolment's location" warning.
• Inactive records. An error that occurs when editing a client that has an inactive visa type, or when editing a file link that has an inactive file type, has been fixed.
• Data Insights must not match criteria. An "access violation" error that occurs when running a Data Insights query that uses "must not match" criteria has been fixed.
• Assessment mode fill-down. An issue causing assessment modes that contain spaces to not fill-down correctly when clicking its header in the Training Plan wizard has been fixed.
• Payment type. The "Indicate payment type" error is no longer shown in the Payment wizard when editing a payment that does not have a payment type, such as a transfer from holding.
• Client Importer external codes. An issue importing external codes for new clients in the Client Importer has been fixed.
• Childcare session. An "access violation" error that can occur after adding a childcare session has been fixed.

New Unit Results Updater and Payment Importer

VETtrak 18.3 introduces a new standard framework for importing data from Excel spreadsheets or CSV files into VETtrak. So far, there are two new importers that make use of this new framework:

• Unit Results Updater, replacing the old one. This allows you to update most fields in enrolled units from a spreadsheet, including results and training plan data. This can be found in the Utility menu -> Update unit results.
• Payment Importer. This allows you to import payments against invoices from a spreadsheet. This can be found in the Utility menu -> Finance utilities -> Import payments.

The functionality includes:

1. Specify which VETtrak fields each of the columns in your spreadsheet map to. This uses the same drag-and-drop interface as Data Insights, allowing you to use any column available in Data Insights.
2. For each column, you can choose whether it is used to match to existing data in VETtrak (so VETtrak will use the column to identify which record to update), whether it is updated in VETtrak, or whether it is ignored by the importer. You can also use data in related tables for matching. For example, in the Unit Results Updater, you could match your data to enrolled units using client code, enrolment start date, qualification code and unit code columns in your spreadsheet, if this is enough to uniquely identify your data.
3. Advanced settings allow you to specify what row in your spreadsheet the data starts on, and what date and time format your data uses. For CSV files, you can also specify what separator, text qualifier, and end-of-line character your data uses.
4. Your specifications of column mappings and advanced settings can be saved to layout files, and later loaded back in, allowing you to build up a library of layout files to suit all the different spreadsheet layouts you import.
5. On the second page, you load your Excel or CSV file. VETtrak will validate the import data, match it to VETtrak, and show you the status (with details) and what action will occur for each row if you proceed with the import. You can view any dependent data that is missing, with buttons to open the correct wizard to help you create the missing data. You can choose to only import selected rows.
6. If you were using the old version of the Unit Result Importer, you can instead use the new Unit Result Updater with the UnitResultsDefault.vtlayout layout file provided in the ImporterLayouts folder, to continue to import your original-format spreadsheets.
7. In future, we plan to replace the Client Importer with this new framework, and use the framework to implement additional importers.

Dated file notes for various records

You can now enter dated file notes against various types of records in VETtrak. The functionality includes:

1. In the Configuration Manager, set up file note types, to categorise your file notes. You can select which types of records each file note type can be used with.
2. Each file note has a type, date, comment, and tracks when the file note was created and last updated and the user that did it. File notes are currently available for any of these types of records: clients, employers, enrolments, occurrences, enrolled units, awards, invoices, client events, employer events, occurrence events and task enrolments. We plan to expand this list in future. Each record can have any number of file notes.
3. In the corresponding wizards, there is an additional page allowing you to view, add, edit and delete file notes for the record (depending on security permissions).
4. A new "File notes for selected item" panel has been added to the Client Manager, Employer Manager, Programme Manager and Staff Manager, allowing you to easily view, add, edit and delete file notes directly for the node selected in the tree. You can also filter file notes by type and comments, and run a report of file notes. Please note that any existing saved layouts have been cleared, to accommodate the new panel, so you may need to re-customise your manager layouts.
5. Each file note type can have one or more "canned" file notes set up in the Configuration Manager. This canned text can then be quickly inserted into a file note, useful for templates or guidance about what should be entered in the comment.
6. In the Bulk Enrolment Results, Occurrence Results and Extend Unit Dates wizards, you can now choose to add a new file note to each affected enrolled unit, instead of appending to its description.
7. File notes are available to be queried through Data Insights. File note reports can be run in bulk for the various types of records.
8. If you are using the Student or Trainer web portals, you can specify which file note types are accessible in which portals - this allows you, for example, to have some file note types that students and trainers can see, others that only trainers can see, and others that neither can see.
9. Any existing award history records, enrolment contact records, and enrolled unit contact records, have all been migrated to file notes. All functions for contact records have been replaced by equivalent file note functions.

For more information, refer to the File Notes article.

New Training Package and Qualification imports from TGA

1. Training Package Importer.The existing Training Package Importer in the Qualification Manager has been replaced with a new version. The improvements in the new version include:
   1. It obtains its data from a central store (held on VETtrak servers) that is automatically updated from training.gov.au each day, so you can get updates to training packages in a more timely manner.
   2. New column filters allow you to more easily find the training packages you are looking for.
   3. For each training package, its status and the last time it was updated on training.gov.au are shown.
   4. More data about each unit in the training package is now imported/updated, including name, release number, status, and nominal hours (including separate hours for WA where applicable). New fields for Release Number and Status have been added to the Unit wizard to accomodate these.
   5. The old functionality to import training packages offline from files has been removed, as the files that this requires are no longer produced. VETtrak requires an internet connection to be able to download training packages.
2. Qualification Importer. You can now right-click the Qualifications node within a Training Package, or the Courses node, to import some information into your database about selected qualifications, skill sets or accredited courses from the training.gov.au data in the central store. This works much the same as the new Training Package Importer, including column filtering. Note that the import only includes the following qualification-specific information: code, name, release, status, VET flag, recognition status, level of education, ANZSCO, and field of education. Units are not automatically assigned to the qualification/skill set/course.
3. Update AVETMISS Fields. The Qualification Updates and Unit Updates sections of the Update AVETMISS Fields wizard now use the central store to source up-to-date data about qualifications and units, and can update all the same fields as the Training Package and Qualification importers above. A new tickbox to "Update all records" has also been added to this wizard - ticking this will do a full update of your database from all data in the central store, not just those records in the central store that have changed since the last time Update AVETMISS Fields was run.

For more information, refer to the Importing Training Packages From TGA article.

AVETMISS changes

All states and national

1. Enrolment wizard AVETMISS page rearrangement. On the AVETMISS page in the Enrolment wizard, the "Delivery type (2017)" field has been moved from the top-left to within a tab alongside the "Delivery modes (2018+)" field, as it is not required going forward. The other fields have been rearranged to fill the gap - the top row now has "Commencing status" and "Study reason", the second row has "Funding source" and either "Purchasing contract" (or state equivalent) or "Specific funding" (for national) as applicable, and the third row contains "Specific funding" and "Fee concession/exemption" as applicable.
2. Minor client survey contact status. The client survey contact status field is now only set to "Minor" (M) and disabled if the client will be under 15 years of age at the end of the current year (instead of this happening if they are under 15 years of age now).
3. Specific funding validation. The AVETMISS page in the Enrolment wizard now validates that the "Specific funding" identifier can only be set if the national funding source is "Commonwealth specific funding program" (13).
4. International character capitalisation. Any international characters in generated AVETMISS files are now capitalised correctly.

Victoria

1. Specific funding identifier. The Specific Funding field has been added to the VIC state page in the Enrolment wizard. This is mandatory for any enrolment that finishes in 2019 or later, that has a state funding source with a national funding source of "Commonwealth specific funding program" (13).

New South Wales

1. Report past units for awards. A new tickbox to "Include past units linked to reported awards", ticked by default, has been added to the Generate State AVETMISS 8 wizard for NSW Smart and Skilled reporting. When ticked, the NAT120 file will include all reportable units from past reporting periods that are linked to any award being reported in the current reporting period. This is useful, for example, if all units were reported in 2017 and the award is being reported in 2018, as this will include all the 2017 units in the 2018 generation.
2. Client title. The client's title is no longer mandatory in the NAT85 file for NSW Smart and Skilled AVETMISS generations.

Queensland

1. QLD Payment Importer unpaid claims. The QLD Payment Importer will mark any row with a "ts_pay" column value of "N", in the QS or PS files, with a yellow status and will not import them.

Western Australia

1. L concession tuition fee cap. The WA Enrolment Export wizard will now show a warning message after performing a search if there are any clients where the total of the tuition fees for their started L-concession units is more than $420 in a calendar year, for the current or previous calendar years. These are marked with a yellow status in the grid (if there are no other errors).
2. Nominal hours. The unit hours for WA are now set from a specific list of WA unit nominal hours when running Update AVETMISS Fields or Import Training Packages.

Enrolment/result changes

1. Not yet started (85) result type. A result type for "Not yet started" (outcome 85) has been added to the database if you haven't already created one. The use of this result type is usually optional, but some states may need it to be used in certain situations.
2. Assessment modes. The old Assessment Mode column in the Training Plan wizard and Enrolment Results wizard is now deprecated and is read-only. You can now optionally set up your own list of assessment modes in the Configuration Manager, and use a new column in the Training Plan wizard and Enrolment Results wizard to select multiple assessment modes per enrolled unit.
3. Extend Unit Dates columns. Additional columns for "Occurrence ID" and "Occurrence Code" have been added to the Extend Unit Dates wizard.
4. Funding model pricing calculation information.When entering the pricing page in the Enrolment wizard, a side-bar alert will now inform you if there are any special conditions present that will impact the calculation of pricing from a funding model:
   1. A "Tuition fees waived" alert will show if the enrolment has a fee exemption selected that has a tuition fee calculation method of "Fee waiver"
   2. A "Tuition fees use concession amounts" alert will show if "Tuition fees waived" does not apply and:
      1. The enrolment has a fee exemption selected that has a tuition fee calculation method of "Reduce tuition fee", OR
      2. The enrolment's location state is VIC or QLD and the client(s) have an indigenous status of Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander or both
   3. A "Government contributions have loading applied" alert will show if the enrolment's location's state is QLD and the location has a loading that is not 100%
5. Don't use training plan finish date when starting units due to task activity. A new preference to "Use Training Plan planned finish date when auto starting a unit" has been added to the Task Preferences page -> Unit Start tab. This is ticked by default, to maintain the existing functionality that when units are automatically started due to task activity, the end date of the unit is set to the unit's training plan finish date if there is one. If you untick this preference, any training plan finish date will be ignored, and the "months in future" setting will be used to calculate the unit end date (capped to the enrolment end date).

Occurrence changes

1. Moved booking information. The booking information page is no longer shown when editing an occurrence/booking. Instead, you can right-click an occurrence/booking to "Edit booking information" in a separate wizard.
2. Programme Manager improvements.The following improvements have been made to the user interface in the Programme Manager:
   1. The display will update as you hold down the thumbnail and scroll the Gantt chart.
   2. The mouse wheel will now scroll the Gantt chart directly.
   3. When searching for an occurrence, the Gantt chart will now automatically scroll to the found occurrence.
   4. The Search panel has been changed to a single text box where you enter the occurrence ID or code, with a radio button allowing you to choose whether to search for occurrence ID or code.
   5. The captions are now always shown on the filter tabs, instead of only showing when you hover your mouse over them.
3. Occurrence task activity columns. The last task status, start date and percentage have been split out into separate columns in the grid in the Occurrence Task Activity wizard, so they can be separately sorted.
4. Attendance auto unit element results. An issue causing an automatic unit result that is generated by a client attending a class (when configured to do so) to also automatically record element results, when the "Automatic element results after unit result" preference is not ticked, has been fixed. Now the automatic element results only occur when the preference is ticked.
5. Programme code length. The maximum length of the code field in the Programme wizard has been increased from 10 to 20 characters.

Client/employer changes

1. Client AVETMISS field order. The order of the fields has been changed on the AVETMISS page in the Client Personal wizard, so the flow is closer to the standard enrolment form questions.
2. Search employers by legal name. A new option to do a "contains" search for employers by legal name has been added to the drop-down in the employer search. In addition, selecting an employer in the Employer Manager that has a legal name will show that legal name in the caption at the top.
3. Multiple external codes for employers. Employers can now have a separate external code entered per external system, with one marked as primary, in the same way that clients can. A new option has been added to External Systems in the Configuration Manager allowing you to specify whether an external system applies to clients, employers or both. In addition, you can specify which external system is the default for employers, separately to the default for clients.
4. Duplicate external codes. A new option has been added to External Systems in the Configuration Manager to have VETtrak produce a warning or error message if you attempt to enter the same external code against more than one client or employer for the same external system. This is useful if the codes need to be unique in that external system.
5. Client Importer VIC Industry of Employment. An issue matching imported VIC Industry of Employment names has been fixed. In addition, you can now also use the VIC Industry of Employment code instead of the name.

Email/SMS changes

1. Merge template reply-to address. You can now specify a default reply-to address in a merge template, that will be used when the merge template is selected.
2. CC/BCC clients. The Add button for the CC and BCC fields in the Send Email and Email Template wizards now allow you to search for and select any clients in your database, not just staff members.
3. PO Box in postal street address. The PO Box is now included in the postal street address merge field in the Occ Enrolment, Enrolment and Waitlist merge contexts (it was already present in the other merge contexts).

Event changes

1. Show complete events on dashboard. An "Include completed events" tickbox, ticked by default, has been added to the "Upcoming events assigned to me" section on the dashboard. Unticking this will hide any events marked as completed.
2. Show new events in calendar. A new tickbox to "Show new events in calendar" has been added to the Event wizard. If this is ticked, when a new event of this type is created, the "Show in calendar" tickbox will be ticked by default. This setting is also used for events created through the Trainer Portal, where the "Show in calendar" tickbox is not available.

Finance changes

1. Part-paying multiple negative invoices. An issue that could cause incorrect disbursals to be recorded when part-paying negative invoices using the Pay Invoices wizard has been fixed.
2. Removed credit card details. For security reasons, sensitive credit card detail fields have been removed from the VETtrak database. The Purge Credit Card Details wizard has also been removed.

Data Insights changes

1. Filtering/grouping information. When you apply column filtering in the Results tab in Data Insights, the top of the screen will now indicate how many records match your current filter criteria. When you group result columns, the number of rows in each group is now indicated in the group header.
2. Reorder multiple query fields. In the Query Fields grid, you can now hold CTRL or SHIFT when clicking to select multiple fields. You can move the whole set of selected fields Up and Down with the buttons, or drag-and-drop the whole set of selected fields to a different position in the list.
3. Jobactive provider. Jobactive provider information is now available for clients in Data Insights.
4. Employer archived flag. The Archived field is now available for employers in Data Insights.

Report changes

1. Run reports. A new "Run reports" menu option has been added when right-clicking a client enrolment, VET Student Loans course of study, VET Student Loans unit of study, award, invoice or payment. This opens the Bulk Run Reports wizette (the same as that used in Data Insights and Triggers and Actions), allowing you to select one or more built-in reports to run for that record, and choose to output the report(s) to email (each recipient gets a single email with a separate attachment per selected report), save to file(s), and/or save to document database. The ability to select multiple reports to run is also now available when bulk running reports in Data Insights and Triggers and Actions.
2. VET Student Loans Statement of Covered Fees. New menu options have been added when right-clicking a VET Student Loans Course of Study, to show or email a new built-in Statement of Covered Fees report.
3. Image report export. The "Separate files" option is now off by default when exporting reports to an image file (BMP, JPEG, TIFF, GIF).

User interface changes

1. New toolbar. The toolbar has been replaced with a new version that uses new larger icons. Only the most commonly-used functions are now on the toolbar: Create client, Manage clients, Create employer, Manage employers, Create occurrence, Manage programmes, Calendar manager, Standard reports, Custom reports, Data insights, Award register, Generate state AVETMISS, Generate national AVETMISS, Collection state selector, and Help.
2. Menu changes. The AVETMISS menu has been moved out of the Utility menu into its own top-level menu. In the Create menu, the Booking and Fast Enrolment menu options have been moved next to the Occurrence option. "Invoicing utilities" in the Utility menu has been renamed to "Finance utilities".
3. Bold menu options. Any menu options that were newly added to the application's menu bar at the top of the screen in the most recent minor/major update are now shown in bold.
4. Help button. Most wizards now have a help button near the top-right corner. Pressing this button does the same as pressing F1 on the keyboard, opening your web browser to show a help centre article or search results pertaining to that wizard.

Web portal changes

For details of changes to the web portals for 18.3, refer to the Trainer Portal 18.3.0.0 Release Notes and Student Portal 18.3.0.0 Release Notes.

1. Multiple external links. The Links tab in Student Portal and Trainer Portal Preferences has been removed and replaced with a new "External links" node in the Configuration Manager. This allows you to add/edit/delete and re-order multiple external links for each web portal. These links can be for websites, email, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, and general. The web portals will show these links to users.
2. New streamlined attendance recording. The Trainer Portal can use a new customisable streamlined attendance recording process. To enable this, in the Attendance tab in Trainer Portal preferences, select to use Customisable mode (instead of Legacy mode, which is the default). You can configure which attendance types to use for absent and present, which signatures are required, whether notes can be entered, and whether times can be changed. Furthermore, you can override these global attendance recording settings for individual programmes in the Programme wizard (in the Configuration Manager).
3. Event permissions. In the Event wizard, you can now configure whether events of this type can be viewed or added in the Student Portal or Trainer Portal.
4. View unassociated client events. A new function-type entity to "View unassociated client events" has been added to the Trainer Portal roles, which is off by default in existing roles. If you grant View access to this entity in the Security Manager, trainers in that role will be able to see all events associated with any client they have access to (not just events that the trainer is associated with).
5. External authentication providers. Functionality has been introduced to the Security Manager so the Student Portal or Trainer Portal can be configured to allow users to authenticate with different external authentication providers (instead of just using a VETtrak username and password). Currently, the options are ADFS (Microsoft Active Directory Federation Services), Microsoft OpenID, and Google. This links the email address in the user's account in the external authentication provider with the client's email address in VETtrak to identify the client. For details of how this works in the portals, see the "Add external authentication to a portal" article. Please contact VETtrak sales if you wish to activate this functionality in your VETtrak subscription.
6. Document permissions. The Documents tab in the Student Portal and Trainer Portal preferences pages now allow you to configure which entities can have documents viewed, separately to which entities can have documents uploaded.
7. Signature documents. You can no longer save or email FileTrak "documents" that are trainer or student signatures from the web portals.

Other changes

1. Unit used by. A "Used by" button has been added to the Unit wizard. When clicked, this shows a pop-up of two grids, showing the Training Packages the unit is in, and the Qualifications the unit is in (with its cluster in each). You can open the Qualification wizard from here.
2. 2019 public holidays. A list of public holidays for 2019 (that are currently known) has been added.
3. Comments for deleted records. When deleting clients, enrolments, enrolled units, employers, awards, invoices, payments, VET student loan courses of study, VET student loan units of study, programmes, suburbs and CRICOS CoEs, you can now enter an optional reason for deletion. This can be shown on deleted record reports.
4. Duplicate names. A number of configuration wizards will now produce nicer validation messages if you attempt to create records with duplicate names/codes where this is not allowed.
5. "Not a valid date and time" error. An error that can occur in a few wizards, such as the Update AVETMISS Fields wizard, if it is used by users with different date/time formats on their computers, has been fixed.
6. Registration key update from approaching expiry message. On the message that VETtrak can show during start-up up to one month before your subscription expiry, you can now go straight to updating your registration key if you have already paid.
7. Updated third-party components. VETtrak's platform, and various third-party components, have been upgraded. Benefits of this include improved scaling on high-DPI screens (please note that VETtrak does not yet fully support different per-monitor DPI settings, so unusual scaling behaviour may occur if you move VETtrak from your primary monitor to a different monitor that has a different DPI setting).