Release 6.2 - 16th September

Attendance Tracking

Ahead of a bigger roadmap item planned for 2026, we have developed a small enhancement for you to track attendance outcomes in Bud.

We have created a new activity type called "Workshop" available to add to your Activity Library and programmes.

Key points:

• You will be able to edit your existing programmes to create & add these new activity types to your live standards, so there is no need to create whole new programmes.
• You can add "Workshop" activities to the Activity Library and then add them to your programmes from there.
• You will be able to change the activity type for any existing activities in the Activity Library to the new "Workshop" type. So if you already have existing activities specifically for workshop learning but under a different type (e.g. Assignment) then you will be able to quickly change that activity type to one of the new ones.
• The normal activity propagation rules will apply to the new activity type. You can read up on the propagation rules in this article.

The "Workshop" activity will behave in the same way as other activity types in Bud, with the addition of an "Attendance" tab on the activity in the learning plan. Here, you will be able to record the following attendance tracking information:

• Workshop date (mandatory)
• Attendance status (mandatory)
• Additional information (optional)

It will be mandatory to complete "Attendance" tab before being able to complete a "Workshop" activity in the learning plan.

For this release, you will only be able to record attendance outcomes for learners on an individual basis. However, in the October release we will extend this functionality to the Group Learning feature where you will be able to record attendance information for multiple learners.

Visa Expiry

We have added two new questions to the "Basic personal details" page of the Apprenticeship application to capture visa information:

• Does the applicant have a visa?
• Visa expiry date

Both questions are optional to answer and therefore will not reset any signatures for in-flight applications when this update is deployed. However, if you already have signatures and then choose to answer the visa questions, then this will reset signatures.

If "Yes" is selected to the first question, but no visa expiry date is provided, then a warning will be displayed on the "Candidate Overview" page:

The warning will not prevent completion of the application.

The visa information will be displayed on the Application Summary document, if answered.

The visa expiry date will also be available in the Data Warehouse.

Training Plan OTJT Updates

We have made two small updates to the Training Plan document to clarify OTJT:

1. The wording in the "Off-the-job training" section has been updated so that 2025/26 applications no longer reference the old calculation.
2. We have added a total OTJT value at the bottom of Appendix A.

Programme OTJT Text

We have updated the OTJT information on the "Activities" tab of Programme build. This makes it clearer what the minimum OTJT requirements are, depending on the start date of the application.

Employer Archive

We’ve added new functionality that allows providers to archive employer records from within the Employer area of Bud. You can also unarchive Employers.  

An archived employer will no longer appear as an option when adding or changing an employer on an applicant or learner. However, if an applicant or learner is already linked to an employer that has since been archived, workflows will continue as normal, ensuring progress isn’t blocked.

This helps you keep your employer list organised and valid, without losing important historical data. 

For more information, please see this article.

Bug Fixes

In this release, we have fixed the following bugs:

Snapshot improvements - Following on from successful improvements delivered in the preceding release, we will be continuing our drive to improve this area of the platform by introducing further enhancements to the snapshot mechanism for Training Plan and Funding documents. This concludes the work in this area for the immediate future having seen significant reductions in reported issues since commencing this work. 

From the release onwards there should be a noticeable reduction in the number of failed snapshots seen for Training Plan and Funding documents. Issues may still be seen for snapshots that were instigated for the first time prior to the release as this is a forward only fix. 

Funding document trainer signature not displaying - We have addressed an infrequently observed issue, where following the signing of the funding document and the subsequent creation of the document snapshot, the trainer’s signature image was not displayed.

Files deleted from trainer instructions removed for associated programme - We have resolved a bug where the deletion of files from the “instructions and materials” section of an activity for an individual learner, were subsequently also removed for all learners on the same programme.

From this release forward, if files are deleted from this section for a learner, they will be removed for that learner only and will remain accessible to all other learners on the same programme. 

500 error when submitting a submission with no comments added - We have resolved a bug that would result in a 500 webpage error if a submission was made and no comments were added, but a character space was inserted instead of actual text (i.e. instead of entering words, the user only hit the spacebar one or more times to allow the page validation to trigger the save option). 

To be able to save a submission from this release forward, characters (text) will be required to be entered to activate the save option. Entering only spaces will not permit the user to move beyond this page. 

Trainer/IQA notes not displaying intermittently - We have fixed an issue that would result in notes entered on the EPA page to intermittently not be displayed on the EPA gateway page. Notes entered in this area of Bud will now remain visible when entered without the need for repeat page refreshes. 

"Bulk Add Funding" error message - To avoid any confusion, we have amended the message seen when adding funding data via the “Bulk Add Funding” method to reflect that learner data will be added to Bud, rather than “replaced” as seen when the “Bulk Update Funding Records” function is used.

Profile pictures not displaying when leaving messages - A bug has been fixed that previously may have resulted in a Training provider user’s profile picture not being displayed on messages sent, even when one was present on their user profile. 

Coming Soon

There are two key updates that will be released between the September and October main releases:

1. Site reliability fixes relating to Activity Library, Training Plans, and Documents.
2. API Enhancements

Further information on when these items are to be released will be communicated as soon as possible.

Site Reliability Fixes

Over the past few months, our site reliability team has been focused on improving the performance and reliability of key areas within the Bud platform. This work is now complete, and we will be scheduling an additional planned release in September so customers can benefit from these enhancements as soon as possible. 

The exact date and time will be shared via platform notification at least 24 hours in advance, and the release will take place outside of core business hours to minimise disruption.

This update resolves a number of issues that, in certain situations, may have impacted some users:

Activity Library and Training Plan

• Applications sometimes not receiving the correct activity updates from their programme build
• Living Training Plan occasionally showing invalid dates during the edit flow
• Living Training Plan sometimes displaying “Null” or “Jan 1970” dates when adding or deleting activities

Documents

• Activities being added to the Training Plan document upon signing
• Deleted activities occasionally appearing on the Training Plan document when not required
• Document signatures sometimes being unexpectedly reset

These changes are designed to improve overall stability and consistency across these areas, helping to reduce the likelihood of similar issues in the future.

API Enhancements

New API capabilities will be introduced in an additional release between 6.2 and 6.3, allowing us to make them available ahead of the next scheduled update. The exact release date will be shared in the coming days. These enhancements will extend integration and data access options, giving customers and partners greater flexibility. Further details can be found here.

Business Intelligence - Wednesday 17th September at 15:30

ILR Reconciliation Report

We have made a couple of enhancements to our ILR Reconciliation Report in this release.

Smarter Cross year identification

Throughout the report we have applied better cross year matching to our ILR Reconciliation pages, this should mean that changes affecting only last contract year will no longer appear as reconciliation errors in the current contract year unless they also need correcting there. This applies to most reconciliations where we can identify an effective date and includes:

• Withdrawals
• Breaks
• Break Returns
• EPA
• Completed Aims
• Completed Programmes

Better funding monitoring

We have also included a few more fields in the Full Learning Aims page of the ILR reporting to aid in monitoring the ILR specific fields needed for funding management. These include:

• TNP Breakdown of TNP1,2,3&4 (this will show the latest ILR values for these fields)
• EPAOrgID – detailing the ID of the EPA Organisation
• Funding Model ILR Code
• Programme type ILR Code

New contract year switchover

We have also made the change to automatically display 25/26 ILR data when loading the report. 24/25 data is still available until hard close to assist with year-end tidy ups and can be accessed simply by changing the ILR Year slicer. This change has also been made in the Accountability Framework Report.

Data Warehouse Fields

In this release we have added the below new fields to the data warehouse.