ampEducator:Release Notes
From ampEducator
The notes below provide some basic information on changed made to the ampEducator application. Minor software releases are usually made on a weekly basis. Note: In some cases features may be available before the official release date.
Release 2.3.25 (Anticipated Sep 3, 2010)
New Features
- Role Restriction by IP
- Under Roles->Edit Role, you can now specify a list of IPs from which a role is allowed to access the ampEducator application.
- Reporting Engine
- We've decided to replace our custom developed reporting engine with the open-source JasperReports [1] engine. This will allow us to provide more reporting options as well as allow institutions to design and run their own reports.
- Database Sandbox
- A mySql sandbox database is now available which will let you run sample queries for custom reports. To use the sandbox you must enable your account under Institution->Preferences.
- Custom Reports
- You can now create and upload custom reports for use in ampEducator. For more information see Custom Reports.
- Course Scheduling & Attendance
- You can now setup, schedule and take attendance for courses with multiple events in each day.
General Changes
- Course Attendance
- The attendance view has been updated to display only days on which events are scheduled. It also now displays the times for each day. This is in preparation for allowing multiple attendance events on the same day.
- The attendance stats on the main course list page have been altered. They now show the following:
- P = Total number of classes present
- A = Total number of classes absent
- T = Total number of classes
- P% = The student's attendance rate for this course (P / T)
- L = Total number of classes late
- Student Attendance
- You can now generate a student attendance report.
- Emails
- The email tab now opens up a new window to make it easier to work with emails while working on other parts of the application.
- The email tab now displays the number of new emails in your inbox. This is updated every 5 minutes or whenever the screen is refreshed.
- The email add/edit layouts have been changed to make emails easier to read and create.
- Options to to 'Paste From Word' and 'Remove Formatting' have been added to strip out any unwanted characters when pasting.
Fixed
- Transcripts
- Fixed bug which was preventing courses with no associated terms to print.
Release 2.3.24 (Aug 18, 2010)
New Features
- Campaign Module
- Campaigns are a series automated actions performed on prospects which can be triggered by either the number of days or the current status of the prospect. The actions include:
- Change Status
- Send Email to Prospect
- Send Email to Owner
- Add Activity
- Add New Campaign
- Drop Campaign
- Campaigns are a series automated actions performed on prospects which can be triggered by either the number of days or the current status of the prospect. The actions include:
For example a campaign might send a 'Welcome' letter on the first day of the campaign, add an activity and remind the owner to contact the prospect if their status hasn't been changed on the fifth day and send a second email on the 10th day.
- Prospect Configuration
- You can now setup a default campaign for prospects under Configuration->Prospects.
- ID Cards
- The id card section has been updated to make it more flexible. You can now add and format only the fields required. You also now have the option to disable the barcode.
- Course Attendance
- You now have the ability to indicate and 'Authorized Absence'. This type of absence gets recorded but it's not used in calculating the average absence.
- The user and modified date/time of each attendance is recorded and available when viewing attendance details.
- Student Attendance
- There is now a separate tab under Students called 'Attendance' which gives you an overview of a student's attendance rates (Current, Overall, By Academic Year, By Term and By Program)
- You can also view the attendance for a student for all their courses.
General Changes
- Calendar
- The current filter settings are now displayed on the main calendar page for easy reference.
- A refresh button was added to refresh the contents of the current view.
- A message box was added to show provide feedback on event changes (i.e. successfully moved, deleted, problem etc...)
- Shares
- In Prospective, Student and Course configuration, you now have the option to automatically share all existing members with a new group when you add that group as a default share. Similarly when a default group is removed, all shares are deleted as well.
Fixed
- Calendar
- Fixed an issue which prevented staff from viewing their assigned activities on the calendar.
- Convert / Add Student
- The status now initially reflects the default status configured
- Course Educators
- A problem preventing course educators from altering course grades or generating student/attendance lists was corrected.
- Emails
- A problem preventing non-owner users you had access to a prospect but could not access assigned emails was corrected.
- Course Student & Attendance Reports
- Fixed a bug which was causing the error page to appear when no students were found with the selected report settings. A warning message is now shown.
- Program Avg Attendance
- There was an issue preventing some avg attendances to be incorrect. This has now been corrected.
Release 2.3.23 (Jul 5, 2010)
New Features
- Open Ended Courses
- You can now have 'Open Ended' courses, which are courses without end/start dates. These can be used for schools which have ongoing courses and don't want to create a course each time a group of students starts. You can make a course open ended when creating it or by editing it afterwards.
- You can now complete student courses individually under Courses->Student List.
- Attendance
- Added the ability to directly enter the number of hours an individual student was present for on a given day as an alternative interface for attendance.
- Student Programs
- The option of automatically enrolling students into program courses is now available when enrolling a student into a new program.
- You can now manage and assign sub-stati to the standard 'Enrolled','Withdrawn' and 'Completed' stati.
General Changes
- Courses
- The list course page now shows both the number of enrolled students - students with course status of 'Enrolled' or 'Pending' - and the number of completed students - students with course status of 'Completed'.
- The Hrs column on the Course Students page now reflects the total hrs of the course and the % calculation is based on this rather than being based on the total course hours to date.
- Programs
- Weights can now be assigned to program template courses giving greater flexibility to calculating final program marks.
Fixed
Release 2.3.22 (Jun 7, 2010)
New Features
- Credit Card Payments
- We have added the ability to accept credit card payments directly from within ampEducator (both admin and student logins). Currently only one merchant gateway is supported (ForwardLine) but others including PayPal and Google will be available soon.
- Prospect Auto Reply
- You can now specify an auto-reply email template and subject line under Configuration->Prospects. Once setup every new prospect which is added through the Prospect Form, Web Form or Web Services will automatically receive the email.
- Staff Import
- You can now import basic staff information.
- Contact Import
- You can now import contact information.
- Students
- There is now a 'Recalculate Totals' button on the student list. This will automatically recalculate all student totals and credits earned (student term, student academic year and overall).
- Courses
- Scheduling for courses has been updated to give single day control over course events. You can now schedule and manage course events individually.
- Course terms have now become optional and can be added/removed even after the course is created.
General Changes
- Educators
- Having both staff and educators was confusing and repetitive since both modules were nearly identical. Educators have now been rolled into staff with an 'Educator' role.
- Calendar
- The activities tab has been renamed 'Calendar' and a large title has been added to the calendar. This was done as the calendar will start to display course schedules in addition to existing activities.
- Courses
- The existing 'Schedule' tab has been renamed 'Timetable'. The timetable for a course can be used as a template to schedule the course events.
- Any user can now be assigned as an Educator to a course.
- Sharing has now been enabled for courses. Course educators automatically have read access to courses while courses must be either manually shared with other roles or automatically shared using the sharing options under Config->Courses.
Fixed
- Courses
- There was a problem which was preventing student term, academic year and overall totals and credits earned from being calculated properly which was fixed.
- Students
- There was an issue with the Program Filter in the student list which was fixed.
- STEPS Storage
- The STEPS storage module is now available again. It allows institutions to directly store transcripts with the OACC STEPS application.
Release 2.3.21 (May 3, 2010)
New Features
- Student Import
- You can now import basic student information.
- You can now import student program information.
- You can now import student financial information.
General Changes
- Activities
- Activities now launches in it's own window and resizes according to the size of the window.
- You can now specify 'To Do Items' which only require a date and no start/end time.
- The associated phone & email is now displayed when you edit an activity.
- Clicking on the associated name will now open a new window displaying the details of the associated object.
- Sharing
- Added options under Prospect/Student configurations which let you determine the groups to automatically share prospects/students.
- Students
- You can now delete student program records in addition to being able to withdraw them from a program (which keeps a record of the withdrawl).
- Program Intakes are now optional and you can select a start date outside of the the program intake.
Fixed
- Activities
- There was a problem saving follow up activities which was resolved.
- Emails
- There was an issue associating emails with prospects and students which was resolved.
Release 2.3.20 (Apr 14, 2010 )
New Features
- Roles
- Institutions can now create and manage their own roles.
- Sharing
- A new sharing system has been implemented which gives greater control to users and admins in determining access to objects such as students, prospects, activities etc...
General Changes
- Student Schedule
- Added ability to generate schedule by date range.
- Student Courses
- Added ability to permanently delete a student course instead of simply withdrawing them.
- Attendance
- ampEducator now automatically tracks the absence and late rates by course, by program and overall. The percentages appear on the Student Course list page as well as under Students->Edit Profile->Other and individualyl for each program under Students->Edit Profile->Programs.
- Transcripts
- Added ability to display course hours and student course hours on transcript.
- Letters / Letter Templates
- Letters and letter templates now have access to student/prospect custom fields, middle name, gender and title.
- Error
- A more user friendly error page was created which automatically emails support staff when an error occurs.
Fixed
- Prospects
- Fixed a problem where some prospect information was not being included when converting to a student. When converting all prospect activities,emails,documents,letters and notes are now associated with the student.
- Fixed a problem with the built in prospect request form.
- Students
- Fixed a problem preventing users from deleting students.
- Course Attendance
- Fixed a problem with course attendance not updating properly. Only affected newly created courses under some specific situations. Attendance is now updating properly for all courses.
Release 2.3.19 (Jan 25, 2010)
New Features
- Activities Calendar
- Added calendar views (1 Day, 5 Day, Week, Month, Agenda) to activities with ability to modify events with dragging/dropping.
- Timeline View
- Added a timeline view under Courses. Timeline view allows you to see courses in a format similar to a GNATT chart allowing you to see the layout of courses over time.
- Prospect Mailing Labels
- You can now generate mailing labels directly from the prospect list page by selecting the desired prospects and clicking on the 'Mailing Label' button.
General Changes
Fixed
- Course Templates
- Fixed a problem with editing educators.
- Student Financials
- Student payment plan amounts were not being updated when a financial transaction relating to them was deleted. This was fixed.
Release 2.3.18 (Jan 18, 2010)
New Features
- Students
- The automatic Student ID has been replaced with an editable 'Assigned Student ID' - this was to give institutions more flexibility is assigning students id which matched previous numbering systems.
- All pages/pdfs were updated to display the 'Assigned Student ID'.
- Student Configuration
- A new configuration tab for Student IDs was added to allow institutions to customize the auto generated ids. Several options for appending pre/post text to the id have been included.
General Changes
- Prospects
- The prospect notification email was updated to include all fields submitted.
- Program Templates
- The pre/post id fields have been removed in lieu of the editable 'Assigned Student ID'
- General
- Application version numbering was changed combining the last two place (i.e. 2.3.1.8 became 2.3.18) to make it easier to track.
Fixed
- My Account
- A problem with student's being able to update their account settings was fixed.
Release 2.3.1.7 (Jan 11, 2010)
New Features
- Courses
- The ability to override completed course grades was added. When a course is complete (or a student is indicated as 'Completed') a new link in the Course->Student Grades->Edit Student Grades page will now let you override the lock and update any necessary grades.
- Custom Domains
- You can now add point your custom domains (e.g. studentdb.school.com) to ampEducator by adding an entry under Institution->Preferences and by adding a CNAME record to your DNS.
- Live Chat Support
- Live chat support has been made available. A 'Live Support' link in ampEducator will launch a chat window through which you can discuss any issues/question/comments with one of our staff - please note that staff might not always be available.
- Status Blog
- A status blog has been started to inform of the current status of the application, any ongoing issues or upcoming maintenance. The blog can be found at status.amperea.com. A 'Status' link can also be found in the upper right hand corner once logged in.
General Changes
- ampStudents Domain Removed
- Student no longer have to login at ampStudents.com and the domain will be removed in a month or so. In the meantime all requests to ampStudents.com are automatically redirected to ampEducator.com. This was done to decrease confusion arising from the multiple domains.
Fixed
- Course Grades
- Another problem with multiple course grades was found and fixed.
- Transcript
- A problem with transcripts not displaying enrolment status and course credits was resolved.
Release 2.3.1.6 (Jan 4, 2010)
New Features
- Student Schedule
- Added ability to generate pdf student course schedules.
- OpenID and Google
- You can now login to ampEducator using your Google ID. Support for other openIDs will be added as requested.
- Email
- Previously all email was handled through ampEducator's email servers. However this meant an additional email account for users and users could not synchronize their desktop email with the ampEducator email. In order to alleviate this users will now be required to enter their primary email account information before email options are available. ampEducator will poll the email account and download any new emails and send emails through the user account. From the receiver's point of view all email will have originated from the sender's primary email account and not ampEducator.
- Title & Gender
- Title and gender fields were added to prospects, students, educators and staff.
General Changes
- Reports
- Added report module to all roles including Student Services, Recruiter, Educator and Front Office.
- Added ability to set read, generate and modify permissions by report for each role.
- Transcript Templates / Transcripts
- Added ability to override marks for incomplete, failed, withdrawn, and active courses with custom text (e.g. 'INC' for incomplete, 'F' for failed, 'W' for withdrawn, 'IPR' for active).
Fixed
- Courses
- A problem with course grades with the multiple and take best settings which was preventing marks from being saved was resolved
- A problem with course averages not being correctly calculated was resolved
Release 2.3.1.5 (Dec 7, 2009)
New Features
- Interim /Final Marks
- ampEducator will now calculate, display (and even print where requested) a student's interim or final mark. Previous all marks displayed were interim - i.e. if a mark hadn't been entered for a student it was not taken into account when calculating the final mark.
- Transcripts
- Transcript templates were added and transcripts from Student->Config and Program templates were removed. The settings were expanded to allow a greater flexibility when generating transcripts.
General Changes
- Courses/Course Templates
- Non termed courses have been removed. Courses must now be assigned to a specific term and academic year. However the course start/end dates can be manually set. The non-termed courses were causing confusion and in most cases were unnecessary.
- Course components have been removed. While useful the components added a layer of complexity which most schools using the system don't require. Grades are now assigned directly to the course.
- You can now specific the number of hours per scheduled course time instead of the application calculating this from the start/end times - in case the course hrs is different from the scheduled time (i.e. with breaks)
- The ability to order course grades was added.
- The GPA course grade type was changed from a manual entry to a select list - this was done to reflect the face that GPA is normally linked to letter grade and rarely entered on its own.
- Editing student grades and attendance was changed so that only one grade/day can be edited at once. This was mainly a performance issue and also prevented the application from overwriting previously entered grades/attendance in case of an error.
- The interface for editing student grades individually was updated to more clearly reflect grade weights and marks.
- A 'Late' button was added to the student list attendance page - previously to indicate a student late you would have to click on present twice - this simplified the interface.
- Changes to grades are now date, time and user stamped.
- The ability to override a final grade was added.
- An alternate final mark type was added - when specified you can display the final mark of the course on transcripts in an alternate format
- Course days was removed
- Custom fields were removed
- Course Configuration
- The grade tab was updated to reflect that letter grades and GPA are now linked.
- Program Templates
- Termed/Non termed was removed - it was unnecessary and causing confusion
- Program components were added to help schools organize their programs (i.e. by Year or Module)
- An alternate final mark type was added - when specified you can display the final mark of the program on transcripts in an alternate format
- Custom fields were removed
- Academic Years Configuration
- The interface to manage academic years was altered to make is more clear and intuitive.
- The ability to add overlapping terms was added.
Fixed
- Emails
- Emailing from within prospects and students caused a problem which didn't allow you to select an email template which was fixed.
- Group List
- Fixed issue which was preventing the sort options from working properly
Release 2.3.1.4 (Sep 14, 2009)
New Features
- Groups
- Ability to print / export group lists.
General Changes
- My Account / Preferences
- The default per page was set to 50 and ability was added to set up this preference under My Account->Preferences.
Fixed
- Hours
- Fixed a problem which prevented updating existing hours recorded into the application.
- Groups
- Fixed a problem which caused fonts to appear larger than intended when generating group letters.
- Courses
- Fixed a problem which was causing the application to display a blank page after cancelling a course.
- Fixed a problem which displayed Fixed Marks (i.e. out of #) and GPA marks as % on the Student Grade List.
- Configuration
- Fixed a problem which prevented users from updating the grading scale under course configuration.
Release 2.3.1.4 (August 10, 2009)
New Features
- Feedback
- Added a new feedback/ideas tab which lets users submit and vote on ideas for new abilities in ampEducator.
- The 'feedback' tab is visible on all pages along the rigth hand side
- Prospects
- Added ability to automatically generate, validate and submit prospect information requests with the addition of one line of code into institution web pages
- Mailing Labels
- Added ability to generate single mailing label from Prospects, Students and Contacts.
General Changes
Fixed
Release 2.3.1.3 (July 20, 2009)
New Features
- Students
- Added ability to enrol multiple students into multiple courses in one step
- Added ability to enrol multiple students into a program in one step
- Added ability to undo multiple student course and program enrolment
- Groups
- Added group filter to Students,Prospects,Educators,Staff.
- User Interface
- Brought back data list multi actions buttons at the bottom of datalists in addition to the 'With Selected...' select list at top.
- Changed inline dhtml windows to real browser windows to speed up interface
- Added ability to turn on/off pop up windows under user preferences.
- Courses
- Added ability for administrator to manually update course averages and enrolment totals
- Application
- Rewrote parts of application to make data access more efficient.
- STEPS Module
- Module was redesigned to make it simpler to use.
- Minor bug with the location being identified properly on the STEPS transcript was fixed.
General Changes
- Program Intakes Display
- Changed the display when configuring program intakes to make it more intuitive.
- Emails
- Added spell checking ability when creating and editing emails.
- Groups
- Added 'Status' column for group members when viewing in member list.
Fixed
- Academic Years
- Fixed problem which prevented academic years from being deleted.
- Reports
- Fixed a problem with the 'Prospect Export Report' when using the 'Date Added' input.
- Courses
- Fixed a problem with the course count when listing courses as an educator.
- Programs
- Fixed a problem when listing students under programs.
- Group Letters
- Fixed problem with margins not being set properly from the chosen letter template.
- Attendance Report
- Fixed problem when generating attendance reports for courses with multiple components.
Release 2.3.1.2 (June 15, 2009)
New Features
- Groups
- Added ability to track, manage and send bulk emails directly from within the groups module.
General Changes
- Courses
- Moved updating the course and program averages into a background job to return control back to the user more quickly when updating student grades.
Fixed
- Attendance Reports
- Fixed an issue which was preventing the generation of attendance reports for some time periods
- Activities
- Fixed an problem which prevented users from seeing all of a prospect's or student's activities (i.e. when another user was assigned to that activity)
- Student Grades
- Fixed as issue which could have caused data to be lost under Student Grades in cases where there were multiple pages of students
- Datalists
- Fixed a general problem in datalists which showed no results in searches when there were results.
Release 2.3.1.1 (May 21, 2009)
New Features
- Email
- Send and receive emails directly from ampEducator
- Emails sent to username@purl.ampeducator.com where PURL is your institution's unique purl and username is your username will come directly to your inbox.
- Associate emails with prospects, students or groups
- Send bulk emails to groups
- Use letter templates as templates for emails
- Organize and manage email folders
- Send and receive emails directly from ampEducator
- Documents
- Added a folder user interface to allow users to quickly jump between folders
General Changes
- Prospects
- Added ability to assign follow up activity to another recruiter when adding prospects.
- Removed the ability to add / edit activities using dynamic lists and replaced them with inline windows - the dynamic list version did not have all the features of the full add/edit activity pages.
- Students
- Removed the ability to add / edit activities using dynamic lists and replaced them with inline windows - the dynamic list version did not have all the features of the full add/edit activity pages.
Fixed
- Letters
- Fixed issue which was preventing non-admin users from creating and managing letters
Release 2.3.1.0 (April 29, 2009)
New Features
- User Interface
- Tables have been redesigned with the following features:
- Separate scrollable area for table data (i.e. no need to scroll entire page)
- AJAX Update for data - when changing views only data is updated without page refresh
- Table Views - you can create a view from any table settings which will you can save and use when viewing that table again
- Filter & View Pane - a separate expandable/collapsible pane where you can manage filter and view settings
- Windows
- The ability to show inline or pop-up windows has been implemented in various parts of the application. This lets you see and manage information without leaving your current page.
- Tables have been redesigned with the following features:
- Mailing Labels
- Added the ability to generate mailing labels for any group
- Added the ability to create mailing label types under configuration
- Added several standard mailing label templates which can be used as it or modified to suit institution needs
General Changes
- Letter Templates
- Adjusted merge fields to not display with red and bold font.
- Prospects
- Activities tab was streamlined to allow managing of prospect activities without opening a new page.
- Prospect Import
- The import methods were altered to use less resources so as not to affect other users on the system.
- The ability to stop current import jobs was added.
- Students
- Added ability to 'Re-Enrol' students back into courses after they are withdrawn.
- Added ability to choose default sort column for student list under configurations (StudentID, First Name, Last Name)
- Activities tab was streamlined to allow managing of student activities without opening a new page.
- Transcripts
- Added ability to overide all course fail marks with default fail text
- Added ability to enable/disable auto generated footer
- Program Templates
- Program templates courses are now sorted by course code instead of course name.
- Course Templates
- The course template list page now defaults to sort by course code.
- User Interface
- HTML Page title now shows current module and menu - helpful when ampEducator open in multiple tabs of browser.
- Login
- Login page now displays logo of institution.
- Time Picker
- The time picker widget now allows you to manually type in types. Previously you were limited to 15 minutes slots from the pop-up picker.
Fixed
- Student Dashboard
- Fixed a problem which was causing the section list to appear when items on the student dashboard were rolled over.
- Emails
- A configuration problem was preventing emails from being sent out from the system. This issue has now been resolved.
- Student Courses
- Added check to make sure that a student can't be enrolled into the same course twice (i.e. hitting refresh by accident).
- STEPS Transcript Storage
- Fixed a problem with assigning the correct STEPS location id to stored transcripts.
- Programs
- When viewing program details, delete program intakes no longer show up.
Release 2.3.0.19 (March 23, 2009)
New Features
- Documents
- Prospects, Students and Groups now have a new 'Documents' tab. This allows you to upload and store files related to prospects, students and groups.
- Groups
- Ability to generate letters for a group was added.
General Changes
- Letter Templates
- Ability was added for all applicable user types to create their own letter templates and control who can use and modify them.
- The letter creation page was given a small face lift, separating the letter from the properties and expanding the letter creation area.
- Students & Prospects
- The profile page was cleaned up a bit, some section were combined and organized better.
- A 'Letter' tab was added and the letters menu item removed. Ability to generate a document for storage from a letter was added. The letter creation page was given a small facelist for easier use.
- Courses
- Added ability to allow educators to edit course grades.
Release 2.3.0.18 (March 17, 2009)
New Features
- Groups
- Added groups module
- Added ability to generate and add to groups from prospects, students, staff, educator, program student list and courses student list
- Functionality will be added which will allow you to generate letters, emails, alerts, mailing labels etc... for groups instead of individually
- Activities
- Added automatic emailing of daily agenda
- Added agenda emailing preferences including the ability to disable, email type, sort by, send when empty and send on weekend options
- Quick Jump
- Holding the mouse over the 'Dashboard' menu in the upper right hand corner will now bring up a list of available sections so that you can quickly jump to any section from any other section without going back to the dashboard first.
General Changes
- Programs & Courses
- The module was split up into two different modules for simplicity
- Documents
- Documents was moved from the dashboard into its own module
- Documents was revamped to work more like a typical file system with folders and files
- You can now create and navigate folders as well as set permissions on individual files and folders
- Reports, Letters & IDs
- The module was split up, Reports was moved into its own module and the Letters & IDs were combined with the new Documents modules.
Fixed
- Prospect Configuration
- Added Postal Code field which was missing from the auto generated html form.
- Course Student Grades
- Fixed a problem with fixed grades not being saved in some cases
- Activities
- Fixed a problem which was redirecting users back to the wrong page after adding a new prospect/student and then a new activity
- Programs & Courses
- Fixed problem which generated an error when trying to switch program templates from active to inactive or vice versa
- Fixed problem which generated an error when trying to switch course status from course list page
- Fixed problem which was generating an error when trying to complete a course under some circumstances
Release 2.3.0.17 (March 2, 2009)
New Features
- Activities
- Added activity notes
- Added the ability to enter activity notes from list view
- Prospect Web API
- Added several methods for those institutions using the web api - see the Wep API for more details.
- getHeardThrough(...) - retrieves the defined 'Heard Through' list in ampEducator
- getInterestedProgramList(...) - retrieves the list of active program templates in ampEducator
- getProgramIntakeList(...) - retrieve a list of program start dates by program code and date range
- getCourseList(...) - retrieve a list of active/pending courses by location and date range
- Added several methods for those institutions using the web api - see the Wep API for more details.
General Changes
- My Hours
- This module has now been included for Recruiter,Front Office and Student Services (staff) roles.
Fixed
- Prospects
- Fixed a problem when adding a prospect and choosing to create a follow up activity, was causing error.
- Fixed a problem preventing the follow up date in prospects from being updated properly when activity date was updated.
- Activities
- Fixed a problem with the user filter for admin users.
- Fixed a problem with the 'Display All Activities' function from prospects and students.
- Documents
- Fixed a problem preventing some users from managing document categories.
- Reports
- Fixed a problem for IE users preventing them from removing input fields.
- Fixed a problem using the category filter when viewing available reports.
- Custom Fields
- Fixed a problem with radio button, checkbox and select field list not displaying the correct value under some situations
Release 2.3.0.16 (February 23, 2009)
New Features
- Students
- Added ability to associate activities with students.
- Added activities tab under Students->Profile. This gives you a quick glance at the activities for the current student and allows you to add/edit/delete activities.
- Dashboard
- Added 'Late Activities' content which gives you a summary of activities which are currently overdue.
- To enabled it you must select it under My Account->Dashboard
General Changes
- Dashboard
- Changed the column layout from free flowing to 2 column layout, 1 small column on left hand side, 1 large column in middle - easier to organize items this way
- Added ability to maximize/minimize dashboard items and remember their state
- Made activities into large column item
- Prospects
- Added default country option for use in Auto Form
- Added CC Email options which lets users specify additional emails which should be ccd whenever a new prospect is added and a notification email is sent out
- Removed 'Activities' menu and replaced it with an activities tab under Prospects->Profile. This gives you a quick glance at the activities for the current prospect and allows you to add/edit/delete activities.
- Activities
- Minor terminology change - activities can now be 'Associated' with students or prospects. Previously this was known as 'Type'.
- Added 'Activity Location' field
- Activity List
- Overhauled the activity list to better present activity information
- Added ability to sort by activity type
- Added date filter to show only current activities and late activities
- Activity column now shows as much information as possible about the activity and the associated student or prospect
- Added ability to generate outlook reminder email from activity list
- Added ability to mark activity complete/incomplete from list
- Added ability to push back items one day from list
- Activity Types
- Added the ability to assign different colours to different activity types
- Colour Picker
- Colour picker was changed to offer more flexible colour choices for application customization
Fixed
- Prospect Auto Form
- Fixed minor spelling error in successful submission message.
- Prospect Web Form
- Fixed a bug which was returning the wrong value for the last for submission causing submissions to fail in some cases (where the last form submitted was more than 24 hrs ago)
- Support & Feature Requests
- Fixed a problem with support and feature requests not allowing users to submit these requests
Release 2.3.0.15 (February 16, 2009)
New Features
- Dashboard
- The dashboard has been revamped to allow us to provide dynamic and customizable overview content.
- The initial content includes:
- Sections - this is the content from the old dashboard and allows you to go to the appropriate sections in ampEducator.
- News & Alerts - this is the latest news and alerts from us regarding the application.
- Upcoming Activity - this is the first real new content and it displays your activities for the next 7 days. You can view either by date or by type of activity as well as indicate completed / incomplete activities.
- Future dashboard content will include an email inbox, late items, schedules, search tools as well as an assortment of graphs and charts aimed at the needs of different users.
- You can move and reposition windows in the dashboard and the application will remember the order next time you login.
- You can control which items are displayed in the dashboard under My Account->Dashboard.
- Time Zones
- Added ability to define time zone by institution location. By default all locations are in Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5:00) but changing this under Locations->Time Zone will record everything into ampEducator using the local time. This will also affect the hour clock which will run under the current time zone selected.
- Currency Format
- Added ability to choose type of currency being used - currently limited to $, € and £. This setting can be found under preferences. Note that this setting is for display purposes only (i.e. switching from one currency type to another will not convert or effect amounts in any way).
- Courses
- Added 'Course Days' to courses and course templates
- Course details page now shows the total number of hours and days the course has been scheduled for. Note that previous courses might have to be resaved in order to update totals.
- Added ability to indicate 'Late' in student attendance
- Added number of lates and number of hours completed to student list, attendance list as well as the Course Student List and Course Student Attendance reports
- Course Configuration
- Added the ability to define the default late amount
General Changes
- Control Panel
- The control panel has now been combined with ampEducator. The separation of the control panel was causing confusion and extra work for users and therefore we decided to fold those features into ampEducator.
- Admin users will find a new tab called 'Institution' in the dashboard which contains the previous 'Institution', 'Location', 'Financial', 'Admin Users' and 'Preferences' modules from the old control panel.
- All users will see a new 'My Account' tab allowing them to adjust their personal settings and preferences
- News tab will no longer be available. A future release of ampEducator will have an alternative for this tab
- Change is part of a larger plan to introduce most relevant information at a glance to the dashboard (i.e. daily activities, history, email inbox, relevant graphs and chart etc..)
- Prospect Import
- Added the ability to use the 'Date Added' field from an imported file instead of auto assigning the current date
- Educators
- Added 'My Hours' section for Educator users allowing them to see their recorded hours.
- Activity Types & Methods
- The activity types and methods under Configuration->Prospects has been removed and folded into the more general Configuration->Activities.
Fixed
- Prospect Import
- Fixed a bug which was not assigning the default status when no status was indicated in the import file
- Adress
- Fixed a minor issue with the display of the 'City, Province/State, PC/Zip' preventing the display of the full PC/Zip.
- Login Messages
- Fixed a minor issue with error messages not being displayed (user received the login prompt again) when the wrong credentials were provided.
- Fixed a bug affecting the ability to list financial transaction for the institution (i.e. fees for ampEducator).
Release 2.3.0.14 (February 8, 2009)
New Features
- Courses & Course Templates
- Replaced and cleaned up course section and grouped course students, grades and attendance into a single menu item
- Added the ability for institutions to define custom grading scales for mark entry and display
- Added the ability to update all grades for all students in a course from a single list page
- Simplified course scheduling allowing you to easily define course dates, times and locations without the need for creating events which were confusing and labour intensive
- Added a redesigned attendance page allowing you to easily indicate whether or not students were absent or present
- Added course attendance report - found under Courses > Student Lists, Grades & Attendance.
- Prospective Web Form
- Added the ability to post existing website forms directly into ampEducator without using web services.
General Changes
- Prospects
- Added ability to select default value for 'Follow Up Filter' under Configuration->Prospects
- Students
- When adding a course as 'Advanced Standing' you now have the option to select the type of advances standing (i.e. Exempt, Transfer, etc..) from a list of customizable items
- Added 'Reason' column in student course list showing you the reason code for withdrawn and advanced standing courses.
- Added duplicate name checking in students and cleaned up add page
- Added 'Absences' and 'Credits Earned' columns to student courses page and transcripts
- Student Config
- Added ability to customize list of advances standing codes and reasons.
- Transcripts
- Added Student Status column in transcript print outs (general and program)
- Removed ability to breakdown transcript by individual component - feature was confusing and not needed
- Removed global 'Comment' option in transcript
- Courses & Course Template
- Removed some drop down lists to make course configuration simpler
- Removed status as a possible final mark type - replaced by custom grading scales
- Added cost descriptions in course costs for more detailed receipts and statements
- Copy course template now allows you to change course template code and name when copying
- When adding a termed course, components for all terms are automatically added
- Programs
- Added cost descriptions in program costs for more detailed receipts and statements
Fixed
- Financials
- Added countries outside of Canada and US to country list in order to allow processing of payments from those countries
- Students
- Fixed financial receipt which was missing .pdf extension and causing problems on some operating systems
- Fixed problem with transcripts which were not displaying proper columns in some configurations
- Prospects
- Fixed problems with prospect import which was not allowing users to import email, phone or custom fields
- General
- Fixed bug which didn't allow the use of some characters in dynamic forms
Release 2.3.0.13 (January 25, 2009)
New Features
General Changes
- Educators
- Added ability to assign multiple location access to educators.
- My Account / Users
- Added ability to allow users to select which page ampEducator will start in when they first login.
Fixed
- Staff / Educator
- When staff and educator profiles were updates any preferences they had previously set were being reset, this is no longer the case.
- Prospect Notifications
- Fixed problem with sending out notifications when adding prospects from ampEducator. Application was incorrectly giving a warning about the recruiter's email when the warning should have been about the recruiter not having notifications enabled (related to Staff / Educator bug above)
- Student Passwords
- A problem with the 'Reset Student Password' was fixed. New passwords were generated and emailed to the student but the password was never updated in the database and students could no log in.
- Student Role
- Several fixes were made to the student role which were preventing students from viewing their personal profiles and courses.
Release 2.3.0.12 (January 19, 2009)
New Features
- Document Repository
- Allows you to upload, store and share files related to your institution in ampEducator
- Document categories can be customized and configured to restrict access to specific roles and locations
- Revisions to documents are tracked and previous versions can be accessed
- Documents can be attached to outgoing emails generated within ampEducator
- Foundation to future document options for prospects, students and other parts of ampEducator
- New Prospect Notification
- When adding a prospect through ampEducator, the auto form or web services a notification is now generated and sent to the assigned recruiter.
General Changes
- Students
- Under financials you can now 'Delete' financial transactions. For security and audit reasons the transactions are not removed from the database but are simply flagged as deleted. Administrators can see deleted transactions and undelete them but they do not appear on student statements or affect their balance.
- Configuration
- Under prospect configuration you can globally turn prospect notifications on or off for prospects added through ampEducator, the auto form or web services.
- User Preferences
- Users can select whether or not they would like to receive email notifications.
- Login
- The login page now tracks the page you are requesting and forwards you to that page once you've logged in. This allows us to send specific links in notification emails and also allows you to bookmark certain pages within the application. Also if your session expires for some reason and you click on a link you will no longer receive an error message. You will be directed to the login screen after which you will be taken to the page requested.
- Prospects
- Prospect letter now auto fills program name instead of program code when you use the '~Prospect.InterestedProgram~' field.
- List prospects now display program name under the prospective student instead of the program code.
Fixed
- Prospects
- Fixed 'CC To My User Email' option when sending prospects an email.
- Fixed a problem where recruiters who were assigned to multiple locations were not available in the recruiter list.
Release 2.3.0.11 (January 12, 2009)
New Features
- Prospect Import
- Ability to import prospects, prospect notes and prospect activities
- Student Services Role
- A new role to fill in the gap between the Location Admin and Front Desk roles. The student services role has full access to prospects, students, contacts, reports and id cards allowing them to fully administer all student needs.
General Changes
- Prospects
- Recruiter filter in prospect list now defaults to current recruiter instead of 'All Recruiters'
- When adding a new prospect the recruiter defaults to the current user
Fixed
- Prospects
- Fixed a problem preventing the deletion of previously converted prospects
- ID Card Configuration
- Fixed problem with font size not displaying properly in configuration.
Release 2.3.0.10 (January 4, 2009)
New Features
- Reports
- Users can now rename selected column headings
- Users can add report inputs/filters allowing them to customize reports to meet their specific needs
- Wiki Help
- Ability to add contextual help within the right hand side of the application was added. Questions automatically open up the appropriate part of the ampEducator wiki manual
- Main help link which appears on every page now opens the ampEducator wiki manual
General Changes
- Courses
- The generate course student list now includes the student's program code and program name.
- Students
- The main student list can now be filtered by program
- The student program (if any) now appears along with the student contact information
- Letters
- Ability to insert today's current date was added for both prospective and student letters
- Ability to insert expected program end date was added for student letters
- Dashboard
- To clean up the interface a bit a module called 'Additional Modules' was created and custom and optional modules now appear under here
Fixed
- Courses
- The generate course student list option to sort by different fields was not functioning and has now been fixed
- Letters
- A problem in student letters which prevented program dates from being displayed was fixed