Minor updates and code changes occur every day. Only significant or noteworthy updates are shown here. Updates shown with a gold background are (or were at the time) only available to Advanced HOPS members.

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Time Date	System Updates
Update 1101 16 November 2024	Details of Timesheets have been added to the 'Time' tab on the user details page. Timesheet info is shown in addition to the existing information about Time Register records. The date range filtering facility has also been improved and is available for both Time Register and Timesheet lists.
Update 1018 5 November 2023	HOPS has a new tool for enabling staff to give feedback about the progress of trainees. The feedback takes a mixed form of some written and some 'scores'. For footplate roles, some additional fields are available for specific footplate-related recording. It is intended that other types of role will have specific feedback fields in due course, eg Guard, Signalman, Platform, Retail, etc. Permissions 505 and 506 apply. (Note staff can always view their own feedback, no permission is required for this.) Managers can view trainees' progress in the competence management system, and the progression of 1-5 scores can be seen by comparing vertical columns of scores through time. It is hoped that a team will be identified to consult and inform the exact boxes that should be available on the feedback system, and the definitions of the 1-5 scores. A video describing the system can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cNnb9wKt_A
Update 1016 5 November 2023	We have done some fiddling so that Google Mail web interface better recognises HOPS styles. Email interpretation in the many many different clients that exist in the world is an ongoing battle, but we hope that recent attention paid to Outlook and Gmail will benefit a majority of users. Thank you
Update 1017 5 November 2023	HOPS has a new tool for Competence Evidence Assurance - checking that evidence that justifies competence decisions exists and is compliant with your railway's SMS. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlHuK3Yn4c8 This tool is currently in trial by a pilot group of railways. If any other railways would like to be part of the trial please let us know. Competence Evidence Assurance involves a second person checking that evidence exists and is compliant. This is following a few instances where evidence has been found by railways, uploaded in to HOPS by their assessors, but being way off compliant - eg wrong forms used, not filled in correctly, not signed, not marked, etc, etc. The is a 'Competence Evidence Assurance' tab in Competence > Competence Management which shows info for all elements across the whole railway. There is also an 'Assurance' tab in each individual element showing info just for that element. Assurance activity on individual element awards can also be accessed from the 'History & Evidence' tab of individual element awards. When a new award is made it still takes effect straight away, and it is considered 'submitted for assurance'. Ie in no-man's land. Hopefully Assurance will take place as the evidence will either be found to be in good order, or not satisfactory. Permissions 496 and 497 apply. (If it's not satisfactory the system says it will send emails about it but it does not do this yet. It also says that if it remains unsatisfactory for 7 days the competence will be revoked, but it does not do this yet either. These will be completed once it's had a bit of a trial.) If you would be interested in taking part in the trial, please let us know.
Update 1019 5 November 2023	Work has been done to improve the bevahiour of user telephone numbers presented in New HOPS to encourage users' devices to make them diallable when clicked.
Update 1014 31 October 2023	Pilot railway(s) wanted for 'Competence Evidence Assurance' tool. Please email Danny. The idea is that competence evidence is looked at by a second person to check that it (exists and) is compliant. This is following a few instances where evidence has been found by railways, uploaded in to HOPS by their assessors, but being way off compliant - eg wrong forms used, not filled in correctly, not signed, not marked, etc, etc. There is a 'Competence Evidence Assurance' tab in Competence > Competence Management which shows info for all elements across the whole railway. There is also an 'Assurance' tab in each individual element showing info just for that element. Assurance activity on individual element awards can also be accessed from the 'History & Evidence' tab of individual element awards. When a new award is made it still takes effect straight away, and it is considered 'submitted for assurance'. Ie in no-man's land. Hopefully Assurance will take place as the evidence will either be found to be in good order, or not satisfactory. (If it's not satisfactory the system says it will send emails about it but it does not do this yet. It also says that if it remains unsatisfactory for 7 days the competence will be revoked, but it does not do this yet either. These will be completed once it's had a bit of a trial.)
Update 1015 31 October 2023	We have done some fiddling so that Outlook better recognises HOPS styles. (Outlook is generally not very good at respecting styles properly.) We haven't been able to get it to constrain the width like it should, but it's better than it was, particularly paragraphs now space themselves nicely.
Update 1013 26 October 2023	The HOPS-comms messaging system overhauled to New HOPS. * Messages can be constructed and saved as draft to return to later. * Messages no longer constrained to plain text. Header, bold, italic, underline and strikethrough formatting available. * Links can be inserted (with alternative link text). * Images can now be included in messages. * Files can now be included in messages (with option to attach them or not to the email the user receives) * Option to require acknowledgement of the message, and visibility of who has opened and/or acknowledged it. * Messages are now spooled up and sent in the background, so it is no longer necessary for a sender to wait ages for messages to large numbers of users to spool up emails before the form unloads. * The original message is now included when replying or forwarding via HOPS. * Tick box mode for mass-deleting messages and marking all as read/unread. There are no changes to permissions. We hope you like it!
Update 1012 20 October 2023	The terms of use of HOPS, Security, Backups and GDPR information have been reviewed. No significant changes have taken place, but some wording has been altered to make clear that it applies to non-heritage railway organisations making use of HOPS as well. Some redundant text relating to Covid has been removed (eg resilience actions we took at the time).
Update 1011 4 October 2023	The editing of age boundaries for competence element, where the expiry is determined by age, no longer requires programming by HOPS. Hurrah! You can now edit them yourselves. The interface is a little basic, but it's not something used very often so hopefully not an issue. Expiry lengths have to decrease as age increases.
Update 1010 28 September 2023	Following very significant work on rosters arranged by custom column, there is now a facility for editing the ordering of columns in Roster Settings. If anyone observes any irregular behaviour of rosters, particularly those arranged by custom column, please raise a support ticket. Thank you.
Update 870 15 June 2022	The availability matrix in HOPS has a new 'white stripe' added when a person is fully utilised. A person is considered fully utilised when they have been allocated the number of turns they asked for or, if they indicated 'unlimited', when they have been allocated a turn on every day they are available. This makes it easy to visually distinguish a 'Yes' that is able to be used (green) from a 'Yes' that can't be used as the person is already working their max amount (green with white stripe). If all Ys are green/white, the max utilisation has been reached and therefore the best efficiency from the roster availability. Link to examples: https://www.facebook.com/HeritageOps/photos/a.274448152666082/5101371096640406/
Update 201 24 March 2013	A new function has been completed for administrating group bookings. New permission 101 applies and the new 'Group Bookings Admin' option is in the Commercial menu. Like the Purchase Order functions, this is initially a beta release version, so please feel free to have a play and see what you think!
Update 101 29 August 2011	I have spent AGES overhauling the competence update pages. There is no significant functional difference, apart from now everything works! I hope I have eliminated all the '1970' dates, and I have also altered it so that if the 'competence attained' date is altered, when the 'Standard Competence Length' is selected, the end date will automatically follow it. It will be the Standard Length after the start date instead of the Standard Length after today's date. (When Standard Competence Length is selected, the date is not shown on the input page any more, but it will be applied when the record is saved.)