Important Upcoming Changes in the Summer 2024 Update

Important changes requiring attention

Major Update to the Institution Coverage Tab

This update introduces enhancements made to the Institution record Coverage tab (members only), allowing members to see more detail about the Outreach and/or Partnership activity an Institution benefited from, including which member delivered that activity.

If your role allows you to view Institution records, you will be able to view the Coverage tab. Members who use Custom Roles will need to update these with the ‘View Institution Coverage’ permission to access the data.

The ability to export this new Coverage data (members only) will apply to Lead, Lead Lite, Coordinator, Coordinator Lite, and User with Reports HEAT database roles only. Members are able to customise access to this export option through Custom Roles, using the ‘Export Institution Coverage’ permission.

For more information, please see the Summer 2024 Update page.

Major Update to the Office for Students Monitoring Report

To accommodate changes advised by the Office for Students (OfS), this report has been updated to incorporate attainment raising Activity options, which will support Uni Connect members in their wider monitoring return when submitting this report to the OfS each year.

As the OfS have instructed us to improve the Activity Delivery and Unique Learner Engagement sheets, alongside the addition of the two new sheets, Engagement AR (this period), and Outcomes AR (this period). Our Uni Connect Lead, Lucy Bailey, will be in touch with all Uni Connect Partnerships regarding these important changes.

For more information, please see the Summer 2024 Update page.

Significant Change in Recording Parent/Carers and Staff at Beneficiary level

This important change transfers Total Staff and Total Parent/Carer counts from the overall Activity record to each Activity beneficiary. It was proposed and approved by the Database Development Panel (DDP) with the purpose to improve reporting and data accuracy.

If your organisation has this information stored within the database, we have contacted your Point of Contact to discuss the migration of this data. API Users should note that this is a breaking change to the Activity endpoint and requires attention.

For more information, please see the Summer 2024 Update page.

Postcode Profiler Update

To improve the format of data available on the Postcode Profiler template, we will be releasing an updated version of the Postcode Profiler report, which is intended to also increase usability. This new version will replace the current Postcode Profiler report as the default option when generating a report. To support with transition, this older format will be available for generating a Postcode Profiler report for up to a year following the new release, should this be required.

We would like to notify members that part of this work involves the archive of fields from the report and the underlying source file. These fields will also be removed from the Delivery Report, Infographic and HESA Report on the database, the Geography tab in the Student record, the Indicators tab of Event Programme Applications. As such, the removal of these fields impacts All Student exports and Event Programme Application exports.

For more information, please see the Summer 2024 Update page.

Student record export Activities bug fix

This update to Student exports resolves the issue and ensures ‘Activities Attended’ and ‘Outreach or Partnership Activities Attended’ only count Activities with the record state of ‘Current’.

Please be aware of this fix if you report on the ‘Activities Attended’ and ‘Outreach or Partnerships Activities Attended’ fields.

For more information, please see the Summer 2024 Update page.

Student Matching Criteria and Postcode Sector change

This update redefines the Student Matching Criteria for the ‘Postcode Sector field to the first two characters of the Postcode.

As such, this update affects Student matches 3, 5 & 8 of the HEAT Student Matching Criteria, meaning these matches will be improved with this fix. Any duplicates created following deployment will now be flagged as a potential duplicate Student record if the first two characters match.

For more information, please see the Summer 2024 Update page.

Other Changes

As part of this release, we will be deploying other notable and minor changes that you may be interested in. This includes development to the File Store and new i-Buttons as part of the work to improve our resources, a new option to include ‘Open institutions only’ on Public Forms, and exciting display updates to the User Interface of the database.

For the full list of changes, please see the Summer 2024 Update page.

Summer 2024 Update Webinar

We are delighted to introduce you to these changes and to showcase our new Public website at the upcoming Summer 2024 Update Webinar.

We warmly welcome all Users to attend this webinar, simply sign up using the link below. 

Book your place below:

Monday 22nd July, 12:30 PM – 13:15 PM

Further details will then be sent out to registered attendees in due course. If you are unable to attend, the recording will be published after the event.

Please note: We recommend that you log out of the HEAT database before completing your application to prevent potential time-out issues

If you have any queries regarding this announcement, please do not hesitate to contact HEAT Support.