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The Arbor Change Log provides updates on new features and improvements made to the Arbor platform, including enhancements for guardians to report absences, integration of cashless catering, improved navigation tools, and new reporting capabilities. It highlights changes from July 2023 to July 2024, detailing functionalities for both staff and parents, such as the ability to manage student information, attendance, and payments more efficiently.
September 2024
- We have added the English Deprivation Indices Dataset to the National Data Connector. This dataset allows users to get a more holistic understanding of the backgrounds of their students and inform decisions based on this context.
- K marks (Education Provision Arranged by LA) were originally set up to not count as statistically present, meaning that a student with all K marks would have shown as 0% present. This has been corrected to line up with DfE expectations and the mark now counts as statistically present, so a student with all K marks will now have 100% present attendance.
- Q marks (Lack of Access Arrangements) were originally set up to count as an authorised absence. This has been corrected and the mark is now treated as not statistically possible (in line with X codes), so a student with all Q marks will now show N/A for present, authorised and unauthorised absence.
- Venn diagrams have been released in Arbor Labs. This feature can be accessed in Students > All Students > Venn Diagram Analysis. Users can also decide not to use a fixed layout which will change the Venn diagram into a Euler diagram which also uses circles to represent data sets but only shows actual, meaningful relationships without requiring all possible intersections.
- MAT staff profiles are now in a list view by default. If you go to Group Staff > Browse Staff > MAT Staff, the page now loads by default as a table. Users can still get to the Profile View by clicking the button at the top of the page.
- The Arbor Student App has been released as part of Arbor Labs with a limited number of schools available to participate as the app is rolled out. The number of schools available is steadily increasing as we continue to refine the Student App, and you can see is this Arbor Lab is available for your school to join by going to School > Arbor Labs.
- We have improved the search function for sent mail merge communications, allowing schools to search all Mail Merge Outbound communications rather than only the first page. We have also added additional search settings including searching for 'Exact word' matches (e.g. search for 'Summer Term Attendance' will only show communications that contain all of those words in the Subject/Summary) or 'Include any words' which will return results with a Subject/Summary that contains the words 'Summer' or 'Term'.
- We have changed the Ask Arbor 'Student Report' button to 'Student Summary'; the function remains identical.
- We have updated some of the bulk actions across the system to allow users to send in-app messages to students. There may be some low-traffic pages where this function is not yet live, but these will be updated in the coming weeks.
- We have added a banner to the Bulk Edit Marks Standard/Advanced, Roll Call Marks, Absentees by Date, and Raw Attendance Marks pages to advise schools that the H, J, and Y codes should not be used to record attendance moving forward.
- We have added a new Leavers report to the Capital One exports. This report contains any student who has left in the past twelve months. Schools can create this report ad-hoc or, if they have automated exports, scheduled it for a set time or set up a repeating schedule. For this, we have also included a new scheduling option: 'Last day of the academic year' for automated leavers exports. Additionally, attendance strings in Capita One will now be exported in CSV format to be in line with CTFs.
- AI Cover Suggestions have been released on Arbor Labs for selected schools. This AI-powered feature creates cover suggestions for cover requirements based on default and custom rules. It provides explanations for each suggestion and allows cover managers to accept or decline each suggestion, or all suggestions. Go to School > Arbor Labs for more information on this feature.
- We have made changes to Staff Development permissions relating to Appraisals and Objectives across the School and MAT MIS. These changes are reflected in this guidance.
- We have updated the School Phase in the MAT Custom Report Writer. There is now an option called Census School Phase which lines up with what schools set themselves in their details page (in School > School Details). We have updated all existing custom reports that were using this as a field and they will now show the new field instead. However, any report that had this as a filter will need to re-select it so that they can choose the relevant option.
- The new DfE attendance codes (seen in this article) are now reflected in the census.
- In the census, National Tutoring Programme has been renamed to Tutoring (Formerly NTP), and T Level Transition Programme has now been renamed to T Level Foundation Year.
- The E attendance code has now been changed from Excluded in the census to Excluded with no Alternative Provision.
- The functionality to record tutoring hours remains in place, but this information is no longer included in the census XML file as it is no longer collected in the census.
- We have implemented functionality to convert English attendance codes to Welsh attendance codes when generating CTFs for Welsh schools.
August 2024
- We've added a new base report - Point Awards - to the Custom Report Writer. You can find this in School > Custom Report Writer > Create New Report > Who or what is this report about? With this new report, schools can now:
- Have more grouping functionality to group by student, points, scale, narrative, awarded on, and more.
- See a breakdown of points per scale per student.
- Group by event or location to get a better analysis of where most points get awarded or deducted.
- Schedule point reports for specific timeframes
- Include behaviour incidents fields in the Points report to have a combined view of behaviour in one report.
- We've made a change to the Standardised Assessment Mark field slide-over in the MAT Custom Report Writer - previously, you had the choice to select an Academic Year to give a drop-down of assessments that were in use. We have removed the drop-down and now just have a list of all Standardised Assessments to choose from - you can use then type in the field to reduce the number of options shown.
- We have implemented the existing Staff Development module to MAT sites; this covers Training Courses, Appraisals, and Objectives. See our article on Appraisals and Objectives in the MAT MIS here, and our article on Training Courses here.
- We have added Houses Datasets in the BI Connecter, so data on student Houses and House Tutors can be found in the BI Connector.
- We have updated the UI for Ask Arbor messages (School > Ask Arbor). This means that new messages will be added to the list of messages, you can rate individual messages, load historic conversations and links can also be added.
- In Students > Examinations > Results Administration > Results Import, you can now see the series identifier on the Results Import Page.
- You can now favourite specific actions. For example, you can favourite the Create Suspension pop-up window in Students > Behaviour > Suspensions > Add Suspension by clicking star icon next to the Add Suspension title of the pop-up window - along with many more pages.
- We have implemented the same Password Rules UI that exists in the School MIS to the MAT MIS. This allows MATs to set password rules for staff. Staff will need the User Details: View All Users permission to see the rules and User Details: Manage All Users to manage rules.
- We have expanded the navigation for DfE assessments to bring them in line with the branching navigation menus seen throughout the MIS.
July 2024
- Guardians can now report same-day absences for their students via the Parent App. See our guidance to find out how to turn this feature on and use it, along with seeing how guardians can use this feature here.
- Admin staff are now able to see the reasons why a staff member, guardian, or student cannot log into Arbor. Clicking on the User Details section of any profile in your school site will show a message explaining why that profile may not be able to log in. For more details on this, see our Help Centre article here.
- Arbor Payments and Pebble cashless catering integration. Previously, schools using Pebble Till for cashless catering needed to use a separate third party payments system for meal top-ups. Now, Pebble integrates seamlessly with Arbor. See our article here for all the details.
- The Sidebar has been released on MAT and school sites. The sidebar provides faster navigation on any page to key areas including calendars, favourites, and more. See our Help Centre article here for a full breakdown of its feature.
- The Arrange Cover page has been released on school sites. This new page provides a more streamlined experience when viewing absent staff members and assigning cover to their lessons. Features include viewing a staff member's entire working day for better visibility, filtering results so that you can find the information you need, and seeing how much cover your staff have provided all on one page. Our Help Centre article here provides all the details on this latest update.
- Live National Benchmarks in the BI Connector - Arbor National Benchmarks for six metrics (Present, Persistent Absence, Suspensions rate, Permanent Exclusion Rate, % Students with 1 or more suspension, and Trip Rate). This includes both the school average, the national average, and the school percentile (so that schools can see where they sit in the distribution nationally). Compared to DfE benchmarks these are live and easy to access. For more information, see our article here.
- The Arbor parent app has had its name changed from "Arbor" to "Arbor Parent App" on Google Play Store to match its name in the Apple App Store.
- The colouring on the Arbor dropdown menus has been changed from a gradient to a solid colour.
- We have added a new and easily-accessible page into where users can see all permissions and what permissions are assigned to them. Users can go to My Items > My Permissions to see a list of all permissions, and they can search either for the exact name of permissions or for key words in the permission descriptions. Our new Roles & Permissions FAQ article here details this.
- The Access Control pages have been reworked into tables to make it easier for users to search and understand the access for each role. Users can go to School > Users & Security > Access Control and click either Business Roles or Roles & Permissions to see this change.
- We've made the 'Display' options on the Behavioural Incidents Reporting > Settings popup, so they now change based on whether the "Separate behaviour incidents by students" checkbox is ticked. When the box is unticked, only display options which apply to overall behavioural incidents will be visible (e.g. Reporter, actions taken). When the box is ticked, additional options which apply to individual students will be visible (e.g. Sex, Pupil Premium, Year Group).
- We have increased the "hit area" of links in the Custom Favourites panel, and increased the font size of the Placeholder text in the Search panel (which also fixed styling of the keyboard shortcut tip when hovering over it).
- We have added a new column to the suspensions reporting page - Days Suspended. This column counts all term-time school days that a student is suspended for.
June 2024
- Arbor Labs has been released, allowing eligible schools to test out new functions before wide release. To see if you are eligible to try out any new features, head to School > Arbor Labs.
- Club sessions now have more Bulk Action options allowing staff to record Behaviour Points, log Incidents, assign students to Interventions and assign students to detentions.
- Some schools have been selected to take part in beta testing for the Arbor Student App. The student app will allow students to view their timetable, in-app messages, and ask our Ask Arbor AI questions relating to events in their timetables (e.g. Will I need my P.E. kit this week?).
- Filters and synonyms have been added to the global search bar at the top-right of your Arbor page. The filter can be applied before or after you search, and helps you navigate Arbor more quickly. Synonyms allow you to search for an area in Arbor without needing to type in its exact name, such as 'End of Year Procedures' to find the New School Year Setup page.
- Timetable slots have been converted into tables. When you are in a Course or Classes & Lessons page, clicking on Timetable Slots on the left side of the page now displays this information in a more user-friendly.
- Updated all dropdown boxes in Arbor (such as the To dropdown box when sending communications) to improve performance.
- Neutral behaviour incidents are now visible on the Parent Portal. Previously, only behaviour incidents with a positive or negative value would display on the Parent Portal.
May 2024
- Enhanced reporting for observations: expanded data fields added to the analysis page which now allows users to view additional details, including lesson name, date/time of observation, and observer name. We've also added a new base report for observations into the Custom Report Writer module, allowing you to pull your observation data out of Arbor for further analysis.
- Set staff ID to be added to downloadable table live feeds, this means you no longer need to use Custom Report Writer for everything.
- New setting added to prevent students and guardians from seeing next year's calendar. A new setting named "Show next academic year calendar" has been added under Parent Portal settings.
- Users can now enable the Student Portal themselves, previously this could only be done by Arbor, you now can manage this at your school. Go to Students > Student Portal > Student Portal Settings.
April 2024
- Search for your favourite in the global search area, make finding your favourite pages quicker.
- Create a custom assessable within the learning units of an exam, and this can be used within the scheduling section of exams.
- Mark assessable as do not show in the scheduling sections of Arbor, this can be done via the qualification assessable instance. When marked as do not show it will not be displayed in, exam clashes, school timetable, candidate timetable, and allocate exam room.
- Exclude staff from cover, you can now exclude certain staff from showing as cover options. This means finding staff to cover is now quicker.
- Bulk enrol students into linked courses from a programme. School > Programmes > Programmes of Study > [Select a programme and a programme instance] > Enrolled Students > Bulk Enrol Students in {academic year} Courses.
- Users with Finance: Administer, will be able to disable bank accounts set up for recording cash/cheques payments. Once the bank account is disabled, they will no longer show in Arbor
- Extra level of confirmation when logging a planned absence for more than 50 students in one go, a planned absence over 2 weeks long or both.
- The Global Search is getting an upgrade to show pages when you search for similar terms or synonyms. For example, search for 'parent app' and you'll see the Parent Portal Settings and Usage pages. We'll be adding more search terms over time.
- New Trips and Guardians datasets for our BI Connector Version 2. See how the Guardians view links to Consents and User Defined Fields Values in the Entity Relationship Diagram.
- In tables, we've added a light background to drop-down icons to show they can be clicked. When the tables don't have any data, they'll display some handy placeholder text.
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The School > All Staff > Browse Staff > Staff Profile page is searchable and the page title shows in your browser tab.
- Our Full video list now sits within Customer Education, Training and Videos, instead of in its own area on your Help Centre homepage. Updated videos for Begin Build Boost are in their topic sections - for example, for behaviour videos go to Behaviour > Getting Started with Behaviour.
March 2024
29th March
Favourites: Personalise your Arbor Homepage
With the new Favourites menu you can bookmark the pages you use most often to get to them quickly and easily every day. Plus, rename your favourited pages to make them more relevant: Custom Favourites on My Homepage
Navigating around Arbor
We've improved our navigation menus for these areas. These pages are now searchable, and the page title shows in your browser tab.
- School > School Structure > Faculties and Departments
- School > Timetable
- School > Emergency Alerts
- Students > All Students > Browse Students > Student Profile
We've also made improvements to the whole top menu navigation on the Group MIS to sort them alphabetically.
Programmes of study
- When transferring individual students from programmes, you can also select a course to transfer them into: Ending a programme by transferring
- We have removed the ability to transfer students from/to teaching groups from Programmes.
- The Bulk Update Core Learning Aims page is now Bulk Update Programmes of Study. Take all the same bulk actions as within a programme in the Students tab, plus there's the Courses and Programme Instances tabs for an overview.
What else is new?
- View a full year of Cohort or Mark Level data in MAT MIS Assessment Analysis.
- In the event a student needs to be marked as deceased, you can unsubscribe their guardians from communications in the same step.
- The Global Search box has a fixed width of 600px.
- On MAT MIS staff profiles you can record a School ID Card.
- Ofsted and IDACI Data Connectors are now available with the BI Connector.
- We’ve added a new output format for Live Feeds, HTML v2.
- The Burger Menu on small screens focusses correctly for greater accessibility when using a screen reader.
- Select a dynamic date range when filtering for required cover.
- Use the new setting if you need to change your date range for the ILR.
- No need to create a custom report to find users who have never logged in - just use the improved User List.
15th March
This week our teams have been at ArborFest 2024, our in-person customer conference. We met school and trust leaders from across the Arbor Community for a day of inspiring talks and workshops. But we've also released these new updates:
- The School > All Staff > Staff Development menu in the top navigation matches the left-hand menu. This includes now being searchable, with the page title showing in your browser tab.
- When you click the Help Centre button you'll be taken to content relevant to the page you're on. We've updated these links to include our recent documentation release, Begin Build Boost.
- Don't lose what you're working on - hover over a result in the global search, then click the icon to open the profile or page in a new tab.
1st March
BI connector and Data Warehouse
Centralise your data in Arbor’s Custom Data Warehouse.
You can also connect your Arbor data into your BI tool with our BI Connector Version 2, with brand new datasets and templates: Arbor’s BI Connector
We've just added 13 new datasets for our BI Connector Version 2, including Custom Groups, Emergency Alerts, Student Educational History, SEN Needs and Event Outcomes, Consents, Assessment Completion and School Events.
What else is new?
- The 250k and 100k SMS bundles are no longer available to purchase.
- When ending the enrolment for a student mid-year, programme enrolments are now ended too.
- The Students > Interventions menu in the top navigation matches the left-hand menu. The Intervention Group > Attendance and Intervention Session > Register pages are now always visible, where they were previously hidden if there wasn't at least one session register.
- When a Custom Report Writer report is scheduled via email, we show No Access in the Excel fields that the sender does not have permission to view. This prevents users without permission being able to share data with themselves.
February 2024
16th February
Entity Importers for MAT MIS
We’ve added our Entity Importer feature to the MAT MIS so you can import staff details in bulk via spreadsheet: Entity Importer to import a spreadsheet of data into MAT MIS
Programmes of Study and Courses
- Use the Enrol students from courses option to automatically enrol students enrolled in a course today into a Programme: Setting up Programmes
- When withdrawing individual students from programmes, you now have the option to withdraw them from courses linked to the programme instance: Withdrawing students
What else is new?
- The Students > Behaviour and Students > Attendance menus in the top navigation now match the left-hand menu. Top Tip: If you see a page name in orange and underlined, this means you can click it to get to the landing page.
- When you delete all the text in an HTML editor (such as for emails or Custom Report Card), we will strip all formatting except for structural elements such as tables and lists. You can then paste and match style.
- Delete incorrect pay scales from the pushdown on MAT MIS: Delete pushdowns
- Open the search with your keyboard - ⌘ + K for MAC, or Ctrl + K for PC.
- We've made a change to the Arbor Standard Report Card layout to better format Ad Hoc assessments: Ad-Hoc Assessments
2nd February
SAMpeople and Arbor Integration
SAMpeople includes everything you need to manage your staff effectively. With our joint integration, your staff data will flow instantly from SAMpeople to Arbor! Take a look here on how to get the integration set up: SAMpeople and Arbor integration
Exams
- We now surface exams costing from the basedata, so you can report on fees and more easily manage your budgets: Exam fees and costs reporting
- Exam seating plan printouts have the Exam Seating Plan to the top left and we've removed the exam room name from the middle of the printout.
Statutory returns
- Independent schools can now access and complete CES census where required.
- If the previous census started generating over an hour ago but hasn’t yet completed, you can regenerate.
- For certain institutions completing the ILR, you may need to add a Learner number prefix.
- For the ILR, if any of your learners receive Adult Skills Funding, record DAM (Devolved Area Monitoring) codes 1-4.
- For the ILR, you can add Prior learning funding adjustment and Other funding adjustment.
- For the ILR, Learning Support Funding can be set on programme enrolments.
What else is new?
- Improved search for Pages: Using the search
- There's new Print Preview button in the text editor in Comms and Custom Report Cards. This means you don't have to add student groups to Report cards and have them show on the Portals to be able to see a preview! Top Tip: This isn't available in tables, such as for Assessment comments.
- When reporting on Gender Identity in the Custom Report Writer, the actual preferred terms are shown rather than just text saying ‘I prefer to use my own term’.
- Numeric columns when drilling down on your homepage show helpful tool tips when you hover over them.
- The Students > Bursaries and School > Users & Security menus in the top navigation now match the left-hand menu. Top Tip: If you see a page name in orange and underlined, this means you can click it to get to the landing page.
- We’ve made requirements on the password reset page clearer for users.
- Due to the introduction of SUM assessment, we no longer support custom assessment periods for stranded assessments so have removed this functionality.
January 2024
19th January
MAT MIS
- Add Allowances for your MAT staff in the Contracts area of their profile on MAT MIS.
- The National Average benchmarking measure is now split by phase when drilling into Attendance KPIs on the homepage and in Analytics > Attendance.
- We've added more explanation to the tool tips when hovering over your Attendance KPIs.
What else is new?
- The T level planned learning hours field is hidden for ILR colleges, as they should record this information on the T-Level Programme instead (alongside the contributing learning aims).
- The Students > Medical and School > Data > Export menu in top navigation now matches the left-hand menu. Top Tip: If you see a page name in orange and underlined, this means you can click it to get to the landing page.
- When filling in the GCSE Attainment for Funding page, use the new Leavers tab to more easily fill out prior attainment for last year's students: Prior attainment
- When enrolling students from the Table View page, you can select in a combo box to add them to other courses. You can also see how many students are already in these courses.
- We've improved the layout of Interventions on the student profile, and added a year drop-down.
5th January
Share information with parents
- Parents can now download and share Report Cards and Attendance Certificates on the Parent App! Top Tip: They will need to download the latest version of the app.
- Send SMS or In-app messages to guardians from within a trip: Communications for a Trip
What else is new?
- When pushing out Pay Scales from MAT MIS, it's no longer possible to push out the same pay scale twice, preventing errors.
- The My Items menu in top navigation now matches the left-hand menu.
- We have added three new columns to the Bulk Update Learning & EEP Hours table: T Level Planned Learning Hours, T Level Planned EEP Hours and Total Hours. You can also update these fields using new bulk actions: T-levels
- When selecting students for Emergency Alerts, it now shows what registration form they are in.
- A new field has been added to the Funded Hours and Hours At Setting. Expanded hours will be collected from the Summer Census onwards: What are expanded hours?
December 2023
15th December
Audit your schools' Parental Engagement
See an overview of where each of your schools is in the process of rolling out the Parent Portal and sending communications: Track your schools' Parental Engagement from the MAT MIS
Breadcrumbs
On every page in Arbor, you can now collapse the left-hand menu, and see breadcrumbs showing the navigation pathway: How to get around Arbor
Parent App
Enable parents to download a printable PDF of their children's timetable from your Parent Portal settings.
The Parent App now mirrors the Parent Portal so you can view past and future days: The Calendar and timetable on the Parent Portal and Parent App
What else is new?
- Add transportation details to staff profiles on the MAT MIS.
- There is now a 75 student limit when logging incidents from custom groups. Top Tip: Logging incidents from everywhere else hasn't changed.
- Delete unused Grades from Pay Scales.
- Improved validation on reporting pages so you can't choose an end date that's before the start date.
- Select the new Legal First Name, Last Name or Full Name merge fields in communication templates.
1st December
- We now filter incomplete Assessment Data Collections on your To Do list and the My Items > My Classes page to only display for the current academic year: Data Collections
- We've renamed the Arbor App to the Parent App. All the functionality is the same, but it's now clearer that it can't be used by students or staff. You can still find all our resources on the Help Centre using the term 'Parent App'.
- You can now add an abbreviation to the Identity section on MAT MIS staff profiles.
- The Output Format is now required when creating or editing a Live Feed.
- The Planned Hours field for Work Experience Placements is now an integer value rather than hours and minutes, in line with statutory guidance to be a whole number between 0 and 9999.
- We've changed our tables from Alpha sorting (by ordering the first digit based on the alphabet), to Natural sorting (that takes into account the whole number).
- We've tidied up the left-hand menu in the Linked Organisations area.
November 2023
17th November
Tables to Charts
Create charts straight from any table with numeric values in Arbor, including in custom reports. Create graphs in your chosen colour and style and export them to add to presentations or share with others. See full details here: Charts and graphs of Arbor data
NFER Assessments in Arbor
Our integration with the National Foundation for Educational Research’s free online analysis tool means you can now see assessment data in Arbor MIS and MAT MIS, giving you the full picture of student progress across your trust: NFER and Arbor Integration
Parent Portal and Arbor App
- The Total Outstanding figure on the homepage lets parents know how much they owe the school across all top up accounts, Trips and Clubs. They can click on the figure to view a breakdown, and to see accounts that are running low. See how this looks or share this article with parents: Payment accounts and topping up on the Parent Portal or Arbor App. Top Tip: Schools can switch this off if needed.
- We've added helpful tips to the login page on the Arbor App if parents are struggling.
What else is new?
- Report on your trip participation, including uptake by demographics such as Pupil Premium: Report on trips
- In tables, Column Border and Cell Colour styling controls are now an icon with a text label, rather than just text.
- There are three new bulk actions for the Enrolled Students table in Programmes of Study. You can now easily change the Planned Start Date, Planned End Date and Actual End Date for multiple students at once.
3rd November
Updates to our tables
- On all our tables, there's now better formatting for stacked column headers, plus you can cut and paste, and delete several cells at once by selecting a range of cells and pressing the backspace or delete keys.
- We've added extra columns to a few pages: a Registration Form column to the Students table in an Internal Exclusion session, a Type column to the Internal Exclusion statistics table, and an Event column to the Emergency Alert Report table to see where the alert was triggered.
- In the Census Summary Inspection, the table header and cell text is wrapped rather than cut off, the column size now adapts to the content, and you can scroll to the right if there's not enough space to fit everything on-screen.
- We've added the option to Create Ad-Hoc Intervention on all tables where you can already add an intervention using the Bulk action button.
What else is new?
- Filter the columns in our bulk enrolment spreadsheet.
- You'll get an alert if your behaviour workflows use outdated detentions: To Do for expired detentions
- Improved formatting for date fields in the Custom Report Writer, so you can output them as dd Mmm yyyy (25 Oct 2023), dd/mm/yyyy (25/10/2023) or dd/mm/yy (25/10/23).
- Create a report about Suspensions in the MAT MIS Custom Report Writer.
- We've switched the old grey buttons in the Arbor App to white with a green outline, so it's clear they are clickable.
- Number fields aren't limited to 2 decimal places. You can now have up to 5, and longer numbers typed in will be rounded.
- You can now swap the staff who verified an Account Type, so this won't prevent you from deleting a staff member if needed.
- Removed the Meals section from the Data Migration report as they do not migrate.
October 2023
20th October
Update pay scales across your MAT
In time for the Workforce Census, manage your schools’ pay scales without needing to log in to each individual school site. Update your pay scales in MAT MIS, then push them down to your schools with the click of a button: Pay scale pushdown from the MAT MIS
What else is new?
- We've added the Documents: Administer permission to the MAT MIS. Assign this to staff for them to be able to see migrated documents.
- When reporting on UDFs on the MAT MIS, they will now show N/A if the UDF hasn't been pushed down to a particular school.
- More easily edit meal prices during the year: Changing the price of a meal
- Tables on the MAT MIS are now paginated.
- We've replaced the way we generate PDFs in the background. You shouldn't notice any changes, but there's a small chance that there may be a slightly different font if we've been unable to use an exact match.
6th October
Reporting on Assessments
Quickly change your Custom Report Writer report to look at your next assessment period using the Bulk Edit Assessment Periods button: Report on summative assessments in the Custom Report Writer
Post-16 School Census
- We’ve introduced new Arbor census validation errors, designed to alert schools to issues with GCSE Prior Attainment records for students who left in the previous year: English/Maths grade at last census is lower than the current grade, not set, or set to 'Not Recorded'
- No more double-counting of planned learning hours when a student transfers - Arbor now only includes programme enrolments between the start of the last year and the autumn census date.
- For students who joined after the previous year’s autumn census, you'll need to set their total planned learning hours manually.
- We have added two new columns to the Bulk Update Learning & EEP Hours page to show the Planned Learning Hours/Planned T-level Learning Hours as of the census day.
- Transfer students into Programmes of Study that take place the following year.
What else is new?
- Does your school use Meal Menus? Parents can see which meal they chose after the deadline has passed!
- The top navigation bar is reduced from 103 pixels to 85 and is now keyboard accessible using your tab, arrow and enter keys. The drop-downs are also responsive to page size.
- The Suspension Reasons field when running a Custom Report Writer report on Suspensions base report can be formatted as DfE Label or DfE Code.
- We've added a reminder to the login page to say MAT users must log in through the MAT MIS, not into school sites directly. Reset password emails won't be sent if you're a MAT user trying to log into a school's login page.
September 2023
22nd September
Assessments
- Previously when setting up Summative assessments, you could select from a list of pre-named assessments. Now we'll take you right to the step to set up a new assessment. Please note this means you are no longer able to set up FSP and ELG summative assessments in bulk.
- Assessments added to the Annual Policy on school sites or pushed down from the MAT MIS will no longer be added to any existing report cards.
What else is new?
- Include unique identifiers when downloading student data from any table! Just go to School > Data > Export > Export Options to add in Arbor Student ID, Year Group, Registration Form, UPN, ULN or UCI.
- The EDI export jobs table shows all candidates, and any differences between Arbor data and the EDI file will be highlighted in red. We'll also show if the UCI is different.
- Already available for Android, parents and guardians using the Arbor App on iOS can now click the back button.
- Improved the TimeTabler import process for staff and NTAs and made it impossible to import more than one file at once.
- The Separate invigilation Access Arrangement is now called Alternative rooming arrangements.
8th September
- Offering the same Exam qualifications next year? You can now quickly copy over your Qualification Offering, ready to make entries - no need to manually add again using QAN codes.
- Report on Summative Mark Comments in the Custom Report Writer - perfect for pulling these comments into our recently-released Custom Report Cards!
- For the Workforce Census this year, you can record users with the Position Category (also referred to as Post) of School Business Professional (SBP). Anyone with this Post will need their Professional Qualifications recording, and a Destination and Leaving reasons when their contracts end.
- There's also a new flag to identify members of the Senior Leadership Team (SLT).
2022 - 2023 updates
August 2023
25th August
Exams
- You can now add an end date to Non-EDI qualification aspects.
- New validation to prevent accidentally uploading duplicate EDI result files.
- Improved the default columns, pinned columns and added optional extras to the Per Qualification and By Subject analysis pages.
What else is new?
- Log behaviour or send communications in bulk from within a Custom Group.
- Easily track and analyse Behaviour by reporting on Behaviour Notes in the Custom Report Writer.
- When scheduling events, the required participants field is now ticked by default. You can also return to the event and edit whether participants are required to attend or not.
- We’ve removed the School > Communications > Email accounts page, as this was a legacy feature. If you were one of the few schools with this page, you can still see communications from the Communications Log.
11th August
Ask Arbor
Powered by Microsoft Azure OpenAI, Ask Arbor is your new collaborator and assistant. It’s built seamlessly into Arbor MIS and is designed to turn your words into actions. The first two features, free to all schools that we have released in this suite include:
- Draft an email, letter, in-app message or SMS (located in Communications)
- Create a report for a student (located on Student Profiles)
For more details, check out our webpage or Help Centre guidance.
Exams
- Upload your own 9B and 7B basedata: Setting up BTECs and using Results Request files
- Manually add students to the results page and add results without needing to make incorrect EDI entries: Add results for students who took exams at another centre
- Set an embargo date and time during results import: Add or import exam results into Arbor
What else is new?
- When importing from TimeTabler you can copy over the timetabled staff members and rooms to your Shared Teaching courses.
- We’ve renamed Fixed Term Exclusions to Suspensions on the MAT MIS.
- We have removed the list of academic years and the Import from Options link from the top navigation menu. To get to these pages, just go to School > Programmes > Courses.
- We've slightly amended the URL of the Free School Meals Eligibility page, but using the old URL will still work.
- Improved the error message when you don't have permission, to direct you here: Check access
- The student switcher on the Arbor App is wider, so guardians can read what it's for.
July 2023
28th July
- Report card emails are now marked Public, so can be seen from student and guardian Communication logs.
- As long as no data has been imported, you can delete an imported CTF or ATF.
- We have updated our SMS bundle pricing.
14th July
Custom Behaviour Workflows
Need that extra flexibility to create behaviour workflows bespoke to your needs? Custom Behaviour Workflows let you create and assign custom workflows to behaviour types, in addition to the existing automatic workflows based on severity levels.
Biometric Login for the Arbor App
We’ve taken onboard your feedback and now logging into the Arbor App is much quicker! Parents can use face, fingerprint recognition, or their device’s pin code to log in without needing to enter their password every time: Logging in on the Arbor App
Report on Club Attendance
To help review your offering when Ofsted calls, there are now two ways to report on clubs in the Custom Report Writer: Report on clubs and analyse club attendance
What else is new?
- View all users across your trust, including whether their account is enabled and their last login date: MAT MIS Full Staff User List
- Use the new status bar in tables for an average, count, min, max and sum of the data you highlight!
- We'll remember whether you've chosen to expand the table.
- Drop-down boxes now don't highlight a value, but if you type into the box it will highlight the first possible option. Press enter and it will select that option, or use your up and down arrow keys to cycle through.
- We've improved some of our error messages so you know where to direct your query.
- We've add a warning to the Students > Examinations > Candidates > Internal Candidates if there are any duplicate UCI or Candidate Numbers. We've also made it so you can't accidentally create these duplicates.
- Tick a box to also enter candidates into the corresponding learning unit(s) or award when making an entry from the Award Candidate Entries or Learning Unit Candidate Entries pages.
- Record behaviour from within any past detention session.
- We have added character validation to the behaviour point award narrative field, so you can enter up to a maximum of 255 characters.
- Filter our Bulk Edit Marks attendance pages by multiple year groups.
- We've renamed Fixed-Period Exclusions to Suspensions across the MIS.
June 2023
30th June
DfE Assessment National Benchmarks
With our Live National Benchmarks, you can see real-time year to date National Average and National Percentile data. The figures enable you to see how your school compares today with other Arbor schools across the country.
Custom Report Cards
Use our Custom Report Cards feature to create bespoke custom report cards in Arbor, then send them out to parents.
Audit your schools' New School Year Setup from the MAT MIS
See an overview of where each of your schools is in the process of setting up for the next academic year: Track New School Year Setup completion from the MAT MIS
Shared Teaching
- Students synced to teaching school sites are now automatically enrolled into a year group and registration form (required by many third party apps). We'll create the new form for you using the home school's name.
- To avoid duplication of student profiles, we'll merge guest profiles with existing profiles using the UPN to match them.
- If a guardian already exists on the teaching school site, we won't add their email address, plus all transferred guardian user accounts will be set to disabled by default.
- New pinned items will now sync unless their 'pinned until' date has passed. When a pinned item is deleted, this will also be deleted from the teaching sites.
- Adding new timetable slots to a shared teaching course now creates student enrolments retrospectively, not just for future classes.
- Student profile pictures are now synced.
What else is new?
- Easily add applicants to Custom Groups so they can make payments for Clubs, Trips or School Shop, right from the Applicants page.
- You can now use elements like full screen mode, better styling such as bullet points, and better keyboard controllability in editable cells in tables.
- The section selector (such as on the main student profile page) is now sorted alphabetically.
- Tables now have a set height, and there's a button you can use to extend the table - more tips here: Tables across the MIS
- The setting for displaying either the current week’s attendance marks or today’s attendance marks in registers has moved to Students > Attendance > Admin > Take Register Settings.
- The Phonics Screening Check pass mark has now been released as 32.
- Invoices now show on the Parent Portal for payments made during the school holidays. The term selector on the Invoices page now displays all purchases made within the term, and up to the start date of the next term.
- When withdrawing exam candidates from a learning unit within your Qualification Offering, we'll now also remove them from the award.
- Use the new pages in Group Staff > Browse Staff to see only your MAT Staff Profiles, or Browse All Staff to see your staff at any of your schools. Top Tip: Click on a staff member to jump to their profile on the school site.
16th June
Statutory Attendance for Schools and MATs
We've added a new Statutory Attendance KPI to include only students aged 5-15 who are not enrolled as Guest pupils. Take a look at our guidance here for the MAT MIS, or here for guidance on your School MIS homepage KPIs.
New fields in the Custom Report Writer
- Report on your Formative Curriculum assessments using the new Curriculum Mark (by Statement) and (by Module) fields.
- We've added a new SEN Notes field to the Student report. You can pull in all notes for a student in one cell, or add a filter just for specific date ranges or summary content. This feature is particularly useful for reducing double entry in multiple systems for IEP Reports.
- We've added an Actions Taken field to the Behavioural Incidents report, enabling you to see or filter on the follow-ups and outcomes of incidents.
What else is new?
- Easily remove candidate numbers for previous academic years in bulk.
- We'll let you know how many students will be enrolled when setting up an automatic enrolment, so you can make sure you're setting it up as intended.
- More easily identify which payout invoices relate to using the VAT Invoices page.
- We've improved our error message pop ups to direct you to our Contact Us form.
- If you don't have permission to click a button, we'll let you know the URL in a tooltip so you request access from your admin team.
2nd June
Check staff access and permissions
Need to check what your staff can access in Arbor? Now you can easily see whether staff can access a page, and what permissions are required to do so using only the URL! Full details here: Check permissions
Statutory DfE Assessments
- You can now flip between different academic years on the DfE Assessment Analysis pages on the MAT MIS.
- To enable you to compare data with past years, we've switched to using live data on school sites and from your schools on the MAT MIS, rather than Insight (as this dataset will soon no longer be available).
- Report on any DfE Assessment results from any academic year using the improved Custom Report Writer field.
Examinations
- Now when accessing exam information on student profiles, there's a page for each section.
- When printing candidate labels your selections will be saved the next time you open the slide over.
- We've sped up the import time for results files.
- We've updated our integration settings to prevent API partners from retrieving embargoed exam results (unless given permission to do so, like 4Matrix).
May 2023
19th May
Easily send out DfE Assessments results
Previously, you'd need to generate End of Year Reports, and manually send them out to share DfE statutory assessment results with students. Now you can add these to Arbor Report Cards, meaning you can email them to guardians or students, or put them on the Parent or Student Portals.
School Shop
- For parents, invoices we now show more detail about the status of the invoice, not just colour the word 'Status'. It'll either show 'Status: Paid' in green text, or 'Status: Issued' or 'Status: Cancelled' in black text.
- No more confusion when adding a new School Shop account type as you won't be able to accidentally tick the student or staff account setup boxes.
Exams
- You'll have issues making entries if the entries file is missing the Centre Number, or student sex or UCIs. Now we'll let you know when these are missing, and you'll need to fix these before the file can be generated.
- View and download exam seating plans using our new Table View.
- Access Arrangements need to be authorised, so we've amended the permissions needed to update Access Arrangements so teachers no longer have permission by default.
What else is new?
- On the MAT MIS, you can pick your own name for your schools and keep it separate from the name that a school might want to use on their site.
- We’ve added an additional column to the MAT MIS Staff Absences page to show the date the absence was created.
- We've made it much easier to set up and copy Shared Teaching courses and timetable slots - you can now copy the setup, and copy them between years in bulk: Set up Shared Teaching courses for the next academic year
5th May
New HTML text and communications designer
Our new designer tool will give you the flexibility to format text exactly the way you want to. You'll see the big changes when drafting emails and templates, but this also includes other communication types, certain text boxes, assignments and much more! Set your own fonts and colours, undo and redo, full screen mode and add in tables and merge fields - all controllable from your keyboard.
Exams
- Enable Access Arrangements to show on Lesson Dashboards, so that teachers can easily factor these into lesson plans or tests.
- You no longer need to allocate exam rooms first - now you can just duplicate a seating plan, and the students will be seated in the same rooms.
- We've optimised the Result Import page, removed the date produced column, and added an academic year filter.
- Bookmark the In-house Exams page to be taken back to the same filter settings.
- It's no longer possible to add a UCI that another student already has.
DfE Assessments
- On the school MIS, you can analyse your Multiplication Tables Check results, or share them in End of Year Reports. Top Tip: You can flip between different academic years on the Analysis pages.
- On the MAT MIS, you can analyse your MTC results and EYFS scores (which already existed on the school MIS).
Summative Assessment Analysis
- The DfE have changed their methodology for Progress 8, so we've updated our calculations. Use our new KS4 Assessment Analysis page to track student progress in more detail, plus you'll get a Progress 8 estimate based on last year's Attainment Band data.
- Non submission grades are available on Assessment Import Spreadsheets on both the School and MAT MIS.
- There are new Microsoft Power BI Datasets for Ad Hoc Assessments.
What else is new?
- See when a behaviour incident was logged with our new Recorded By and Recorded On fields in the Custom Report Writer Behavioural Incidents and Students involved in Behavioural Incidents reports.
- Guardians can no longer select meal choices for when there's a holiday - they'll get a message saying ‘School holiday - no choices available’.
- We've made the process for recording GCSE Prior Attainment for English and Maths clearer and easier, by renaming Previous grade to be Grade at last census, and showing more data in the GCSE Attainment for Funding section within the student profile.
- Improved page design, including bringing you back to the top when you close an error, no missing columns when filters are set, and improved help text when filtering rows in tables, or trying to delete clubs.
April 2023
21st April
Sex and Gender updates
To align with the DfE, we've made some changes to the gender field in Arbor. Please visit our Help Centre article for more information on the updates: Sex, Gender and Gender Identity in Arbor and statutory returns. These are the two key changes:
- we've relabelled the Gender field in Arbor to Sex to reflect its existing use in the census
- we've added a new field on student, guardian and staff profiles for Gender Identity. You can select Male, Female, or I prefer to use my own term (with free text for you to record the term they use).
Arbor Insight
We’ve taken the decision not to produce Arbor Insight Reports or Online Dashboards this year.
- Arbor Insight is no longer available to Insight-only customers.
- For Arbor customers, you'll be able to access Insight until Friday 28th of April. Please see this article for more information on what will happen on this date and the actions we recommend: 2023 Insight and ASP data in Arbor
What else is new?
- Previously on the Entries Overview tab of the qualification offering, we showed tick, cross and clock icons. We've now changed these into words (e.g. yellow clock is now Entered Pending Submission). The Entries by Student Group page currently still has the symbols.
- We've updated removed the word Statutory, and updated the descriptions of the Attendance KPIs on your homepage, to make it clearer that these have always included guest students.
- In the Custom Report Writer, you can now choose to display the Long name, Short name or Value when adding summative assessment columns in bulk.
- Email notifications are no longer sent when past cover arrangements are cancelled.
- Icons and formatting now display properly in filters on our tables. There's also a handy Reset button to quickly clear the filters applied to a column.
- We've improved the recalculation time for % completion of Data Collections when marks are entered.
7th April
Looking for help?
You can now find the resources you're looking for more easily using the Help Centre button. We'll take you to tailored guidance based on what page you're on right now! For example, if you're in the Attendance area, we'll take you to our attendance guidance, or if you're on the page for National Tutoring Programme Hours, we'll take you right here.
Assessments
In the Custom Report Writer, you can now choose to display these fields using Long name, Short name or Value: Summative Mark, Predicted Mark, Predicted Final Mark, Year Target and Final Target. This is currently available for individual columns, and bulk adding ad-hoc assessments - we'll also be adding this to the bulk adding summative assessment button very soon.
Due to the recent changes of how Progress 8 and GLD works, we’ve had to remove these historic fields from the Custom Report Writer: EYFS Good Level of Development, KS2 Prior Attainment and Predicted Attainment and Progress 8.
Don't worry, they won't break or be removed from your existing reports, you just can't create new reports with these fields. Instead, you can see how to report on DfE assessments here, and Progress 8 here.
What else is new?
- We've improved the loading time for Custom Report Writer reports that contain UDFs, and the Bulk Export Student Marks page.
- Our tables now have consistent sizing behaviour - if the height is less than 700px it will adjust its height to match the table content, and if above 700px, the table height will stay as 700px, and it will scroll internally.
- Some tables need you to hit save or submit to store the data you've input. For these tables, we'll now warn you if you're trying to navigate away with unsaved changes.
- On the MAT MIS, you can now filter absences based on the Created Date, plus we've improved the logic of the date ranges.
- Previously if pages had a long title and you made your screen narrow, the text or buttons could get cropped off! Now it adapts to the page, with consistent sizes and fonts across Arbor. We've even included a handy tool tip on some pages where there's more information to display.
- We've introduced another email reminder to top up your SMS credits when your balance drops to 1000.
- We’ve changed the class selection method when enrolling students on the Bulk Enrolment page and from student profiles, from tick boxes to a multi-select drop-down box. Top Tip: When enrolling single students from their student profile, you'll also now see the number of students already enrolled in the class on the date selected.
March 2023
24th March
Schedule emails, SMS and in-app messages
No more logging in out of hours - you can now choose when to send out your communications! Draft as usual, then just click Send later to pick the date and time. You can then see your scheduled communications from your Drafts page. More details here: Schedule an email, SMS or in-app message to send later on
Automated Capita One exports
We've worked with Capita One to automate the Capita One Export, reducing school workload and improving data quality for your LA. You can select to export either an attendance or full export daily, weekly, monthly or termly. Top Tip: If you don't see the automation, you'll need to ask your LA to get in touch with us.
There's also added functionality for schools that use Destination nodes to track children missing education. Just select whether to output educational institution enrolment note from the General Settings tab.
What else is new?
- The permissions needed to edit the date and time of a Detention Session have been tightened. Previously, you only needed Student Profile: Behaviour: Administer My/All Students, but now you'll need either School: Behaviour: Behaviour Policy or School: Behaviour: Administer.
- On certain tables (like on Bulk Edit Attendance Marks) we've reduced the column width from 100px to 80px to fit more on the page, and the drop-down will no longer be too skinny when you have a narrow column.
- There's a new alert for Attendance Officers when a fixed-period exclusion overlaps with an existing planned absence.
- Parents can now easily jump to the School Shop area using the Quick Actions on the Parent Portal or Arbor App.
- No more instances of parents being able to purchase at the same time and go over the max available. Now they'll get a friendly message to say the item is sold out, and the button to pay will be un-clickable.
- Meal choices now appear in the meal register when meal registers are generated at 4 am, rather than having to wait until attendance is taken.
- We’ve improved the spacing and formatting for KPI panels with bar charts.
- Fill in all blank values in a table column in bulk.
10th March
Improvements to our new tables
Based on feedback from schools like you, we've made even more improvements to our new tables:
- If you try to go to another page in Arbor, we'll ask you whether you want to keep editing, or if you want to navigate away and remove the invalid data.
- If you try to click a save/submit button with invalid data (such as a date in an invalid format), we'll let you know you need to correct it.
- The Small and XS table spacing options are now much smaller and denser, with less line height and padding.
- Click the cog button to enable vertical border lines, or disable cell colours.
- Previously when selecting rows to perform bulk actions, they were ordered by ID. Now the bulk actions will order them in the same order as displayed on the page.
What else is new?
- Click Assessments from the left-hand menu for a class to select your summative or formative assessments. To enable this, we've removed the Latest Marks page, but you can still use the Full Marksheet to view the most recent marks - just change the filters to today's date.
- Now when accessing payment account information from student or staff profiles, there's no more confusing long left-hand menu. Just click Payments and select the account. There's also a handy button to take you back to the main profile.
- We've added Live National Benchmarks to your Persistent Absentees KPI on your School MIS homepage.
- Your schools' short names will be used across the MAT MIS.
- The Staff Absence pages in MAT MIS are now sorted by Institution, Name, then Absence Date.
February 2023
24th February
New tables are here to stay
As part of the roll out of our new table design, we’ve now removed the toggle to switch back to the old table format. Our new tables are now applied for all users. Click here or on the question mark icon on any table for more details on how they work.
A better MAT SCR
We've improved our Single Central Record on the MAT MIS. Use the Settings page to choose which additional columns to show, then filter down and see staff data on the main page. Missing or expired data in shown in red so you can easily jump into staff profiles to amend it, or follow up in bulk with an email.
What else is new?
- When arranging cover, if Send email notification is unticked and the cover is cancelled, an email will no longer be sent to let the person covering know it has been cancelled.
- We've changed the date selector on the Internal Exclusions > Daily Attendance page from a long list to a calendar date selector.
- Lots more pop ups are now keyboard controllable and more accessible, such as when you click +Add on the student profile, or when adding more students to student groups.
- When downloading the Entries by Student Group page in the Exams area, the table headings now include the unit codes.
10th February
Assessments
Add columns for all Summative or Ad Hoc assessments to a Student Custom Report Writer report at once! Just click the Bulk Add Assessment Columns button and select the year, assessments and periods, and for Summatives choose which marks or targets to show.
In the left-hand menu of lesson dashboards, click Assessments to view your Full Marksheet from the Summative Tracking tab or select the assessment from the Formative Tracking tab. We've removed the Mark Assessments page, and will also be removing the Latest Marks page (the same page but for classes) soon. Top Tip: You can still use the Full Marksheet to view the most recent marks - just change the filters to today's date.
Pop ups
- Snippets are now keyboard controllable and more accessible.
- Previously, clicking full screen mode in a table or slide over would only fill that space. Now, the pop up or slide over will take up the whole page, and you can easily minimise it again.
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All pop ups can now be displayed in full screen mode - perfect for a better view when sending communications directly from student profiles. Just click the button, press the Escape key to exit full screen mode, then press Escape again to close the window.
What else is new?
- When logging Behaviour Points in My Classroom, we've renamed Incident Summary to Narrative, to match what it's called elsewhere in Arbor.
- When clicking on a student on the Absentees by Date page, you can see the room location of the class they were scheduled to be in.
- We've made the Hide Columns feature in tables easier to spot.
- We’ve optimised saving marks in the background for attendance, meaning no delay when inputting marks from a slide over.
- When creating an internal exclusion session, you used to have to add a name, but this then wasn't visible anywhere. We've removed this so there's one less field to fill in.
January 2023
27th January
Taking attendance
Want all Teachers and TAs to take attendance? With our new Relax take register access option, you can enable all Teachers and Teaching Assistants to take attendance registers for any class!
Apple Pay and Google Pay
If you've purchased the Payments Plus module, you can now give parents the flexibility to pay the way that suits them! No more re-entering card details every time on the Arbor App - click here for further details.
New School Shop Orders dashboard
Our new School > Payments > School Shop dashboard gives you an overview of orders, payments and refunds without needing to click into each item. Plus we've added a new School Shop: Administer permission you can assign to only give access to mark orders as issued or not! You can see more information here: Reconciling and reporting on School Shop purchases
What else is new?
- We've made two updates to to prevent mistakes and speed things up in the background. First, we've locked the Generate Census button until it's finished generating. When an assessment is deleted from the Annual Policy, you'll see a helpful message, and you won't be able to add it again until it's finished deleting.
- We've also optimised filters and tabs. When going to a page we'll load each tab as you click into it, speeding up the loading time. We've also made filters accessible using your keyboard.
- We now migrate Medical notes from SIMS into Medical Notes, rather than into Medical conditions. We'll be rolling this out for other MIS migrators in the future!
- Academic Unit marksheets now include Bulk actions for adding students to interventions and custom groups, or sending communications. We've also renamed Multiple Column Edit Marks to Bulk Edit Multiple Columns.
13th January
Improvements to login management
We've updated your To Do list on My Homepage to only flag the most important potential login issues - duplicate emails for current or future staff. We've also improved the duplicates page by splitting out your report to show staff, guardian and student issues separately, so you can prioritise what to resolve first. Take a look at our updated guidance here: Duplicate email addresses
Once your users get logged in, you can use our new Login History page to view when they've logged in, plus whether they've logged in using Single sign-on (SSO) and Two-factor authentication.
If you use Google or Microsoft Single Sign-on (SSO), you can also enable our new Bypass two-factor authentication option to only require Arbor Two-factor authentication when using the Arbor Username and Password, but not when logging in with Single sign-on (SSO).
Detentions
- Create new SMS and email templates to notify guardians about behaviour incidents or detentions. Add detail with our built-in merge fields, or set different messages for different severity levels.
- Detention information on the parent portal now has room numbers.
- We've added Year Group and Registration Form to your list of unassigned detentions.
Getting around Arbor
- Now when going to Students > Demographics > Derived Indicators, you'll see a handy list rather than more pages to select. Click on an indicator type, then select your demographic in the filters. You can also filter by student group, or switch to view the inverse of the demographic.
- Instead of different options for logging behaviour points for each scale in menus and Quick Actions, you can now log or report on points from one place - just use the filters to select your Point award scale. Top Tip: Any Live Feeds from these pages will need to be set up again.
What else is new?
- We'll use your schools short name when sending emails from the MAT MIS. Your schools can set this from the School > School Details page.
- See Behaviour Incidents that take place on certain dates on the Behavioural Incidents Dashboard.
- Jump to the main Behaviour Incident from the Student Involvement overview using the View Behavioural Incident button.
- Changes to Timetable Cycles are now only possible between 2pm and 5pm each day.
- Charts, such as the horizontal bar charts on MAT MIS, are now keyboard controllable.
December 2022
22nd December
New in your To Do List
We’ve added a new flag on To Do lists on My Homepage for potential login issues. This will highlight how many students, guardians or staff have email addresses on more than one profile which can stop them from being able to access Arbor. You'll then be taken to a page where you can easily change or delete the duplicate emails: Login issues in my To Do list on My Homepage
Random Student Picker
Engage your students and choose them fairly using our new Random Student Picker. Available in the Student View of My Classroom, the student picker spins to select a random student from your class - perfect for projecting on your board.
Assessment reporting
- Filter by Demographic and Demographics vs Inverse on the Grade Distribution and Attainment Over Time assessment analysis pages.
- Filter by year, year group, assessment or assessment period on the Raw Summative Marks page for easier export.
- See strands on the Manage Assessments page on MAT MIS, enabling you to import marks.
What else is new?
- When using the Global Search, we no longer store students, staff or guardians in different years, allowing you to easily access all profiles from the All Results page.
- Sometimes awarding organisations don't add a date and time for an exam to their basedata. Now we show the start and end date of the series, or the date and time you've set on the Allocate Exam Rooms page rather than TBC.
- Send emails to your MAT or school staff from the Group Staff > Absences > All Staff Absences page on the MAT MIS.
- Parents can look at future Meal Menus in different terms using a drop-down on the Parent Portal or Arbor App.
- In our new tables, profile photos (when they're in the same column as names) no longer show when you select the XS or S column sizes, so you can fit as many rows on the page as possible.
- Assignments can now be marked as Waiting for student to submit after they’ve been marked as submitted. We've also removed the bulk actions to change the submission status for assignments submitted via Arbor to Submitted or Late, as this has never been possible.
- Printable registers for cover or lessons now have room numbers.
- Use the new Detentions happening today field in the Custom Report Writer.
- We've improved the left-hand menu when you click into an Intervention group.
- Processes that run in the background after you edit your attendance Roll Call times have been optimised. To enable this, we now lock down the ability to edit roll call times again for 30 minutes after a change is made.
9th December
Parent Portal and Arbor App
Parents can now see their child's calendar for today on the Arbor App! To make space for the calendar, we've removed the last/current and next lesson buttons on the App (but not from the Parent Portal).
You can also now report on meal choices made through the Parent Portal or Arbor App in advance: Reporting on future meal menu choices
Staff reporting on the MAT MIS
Our Group Staff > Absences > All Staff Absences and Statistics pages now allow you to report on staff absences for your schools, as well as your MAT staff. We’ve also added bonus features, such as the Bradford factor, and ability to filter by staff in the Workforce Census.
Top Tip: Any Live Feeds from these pages will need to be set up again.
We've temporarily removed the Record New Absence button from the All Staff Absences page while we add the ability to record School staff absences. In the meantime, you can log absence from staff profiles. We're also going to group absences by staff member, and add pagination, bulk emailing and filtering by staff type!
What else is new?
- Just like our previous updates for Predicted Marks, you can now see Current vs Previous Marks on marksheets.
- Examination seating plans now have space for invigilators to sign at the bottom.
- Pop ups and info cards at the top of student, staff and guardian profiles and in slide overs have now been refactored to be accessible with your keyboard, and show one row per item.
- Toggle whether student photos show on the My Classroom Student View.
- In our new tables, click on the corner of cell and drag down to fill in, just like in Excel.
- We’ve added Young Carer Status, Early Years Pupil Premium, Hours at Setting, Top Up Funding and Disability Access Funding to our Entity Importer so you can import them in bulk via spreadsheet.
November 2022
25th November
Improvements on My Homepage
Compare your school's attendance performance live against Arbor schools across the country with Live National Benchmarking. No more waiting for data drops - compare your school's data live against Arbor schools across the country with both National Average and National Percentile figures.
Drill down to see how each demographic group at your school compares. We've also updated to the new tables on the drill down view, enabling you to quick search to filter for certain groups or students.
Assessments
- The Transition Matrix assessment analysis page includes all students in the calculations so you can see data for previous cohorts. Easily exclude your leavers by clicking into the filters and ticking the Don't include students who have left school already box.
- Just like our previous updates for Baseline and Year Target, you can now see Current vs Predicted Mark on marksheets.
- We’ve brought the Final Target, Predicted Mark and Predicted Final Mark assessment columns in the Custom Report Writer in line with other assessment columns by reducing what you have to fill out in the slide over.
What else is new?
- We’ve optimised the loading speed on the Clubs page on the Parent Portal, and in the To box when sending Mail Merge communications.
- We’ve added a new row on your Data Quality Dashboard Overview to quickly see the number of duplicate Email addresses.
- You will now need to have the Finance: View permission (not just Meals: View) to be able to view meal reports related to financial information, such as the Meal Balances, Charges by Person and Charges by Date pages.
- We’ve made the requirements for verification documents clearer when setting up card payments.
- The Capita One Export has been updated based on requirements from Capita.
11th November
Assessments
- Just like our previous update to view Progress from Baseline to Current grade on marksheets, you can also do this for Current Grade vs Year Target.
- The Attainment Over Time analysis page includes all students in the calculations so you can see data for previous cohorts. Easily exclude your leavers by clicking into the filters and ticking the Don't include students who have left school already box.
- Have you rolled out assessments from the MAT MIS? To add marks there's no need to log into individual schools, as you can now download and import a spreadsheet right from Administration > Assessment > Annual Policy > Manage Assessments. Just select the assessment, then go to Import marks from the left-hand menu!
The Custom Report Writer
- We’ve improved the Summative Baseline and Year Target assessment columns by removing unneeded fields in the slide over, pre-filling the academic year, and automatically selecting the display grade when an assessment is selected.
- The Detention Type(s) column has been renamed to Detention Type(s) Issued, to reflect that this column is actually for reporting on when the detentions were issued. We'll soon be adding a new column for detentions happening on the date specified.
- It was already possible to report on students' age in years. Now you can also use the Age (Months) column - perfect for identifying students who may need more support, such as by looking at current age vs reading age.
What else is new?
- To prevent issues with data, we now only allow you to set up third-party API integrations when your school site is live. If your school is live and you're seeing the Application Not Live banner, please contact the Arbor Support Team if supported by Arbor, or your Support Partner if not supported by Arbor.
- There are new Microsoft Power BI Datasets for Academic Units, Academic Unit Enrolments, Timetable Slots and Timetable Slot Staff.
- We've increased the background priority for Emergency Alert emails so they'll be sent out as soon as possible.
- We've improved attendance calculations to minimise missing marks when you run interventions. If an attendance record starts prior to a Timetable Period but ends during the period, we consider that attendance mark to calculate that Timetable Period's best mark.
- We’ve added new bulk actions to the Update GCSE Attainment for Funding page so you can more easily update the individual Maths and English grades and information.
October 2022
28th October
Improvements to our new tables
We've now added our new table format to all remaining pages in the MIS including:
- The Students table on the Lesson Dashboard
- The Formative Assessment Markbook
- The Attendance Bulk Edit Marks Advanced page
To enable these updates, we've changed how bulk actions work, replacing Bulk Mode. It's now even easier to change assessment and attendance marks - click here to see how: New tables across the MIS
What else is new?
- Our loading icon is now the Arbor logo!
- Report on Young Carers using our built-in demographic page, or a custom report.
- There are new Microsoft Power BI Datasets for Student Academic Year Enrolments, User Defined Fields (UDFs) and student Preferred Names.
- On the MAT MIS, we’ve changed the landing page for Analytics > Assessment > Analysis to the Cohort Level Analysis page.
- For schools moving to Arbor from SIMS, we'll send you a reminder if your DMS folder wasn't imported.
- The event widget (e.g. to show previous and next lessons on student profiles) has now been refactored to be keyboard controllable - press command and click to open the event in new tab.
- Accessibility improvements for screen reader devices, including better labels and category descriptions, plus landmarks enable you to skip from section to section on a page.
- We migrate UKDFE Teacher Properties from Progresso, and addresses are now migrated without 'Other' or 'None' from ScholarPack.
- Once set up, use the Bulk action button in Data Collections to assign multiple staff to complete a collection item.
14th October
Cunninghams Cashless Catering
With our new integration, you can manage cashless catering payments directly from your MIS! Parents and staff only need to log in to Arbor to get full visibility over students’ meal purchases and payments.
Easily keep track of School Events
Go to School > Timetable > School Events to use our new event management pages.
- Use All School Events to see all your events, and use the bulk actions to change the staff or location.
- Use Repeating School Events (List) to see events that happen more than once, and use the bulk actions to change the staff, the event type and whether cover is required.
MAT MIS
- Charts now compare your data to the previous academic year rather than 2 years prior.
- We’ve removed the Region field from the Institutions page.
- The Schedule button on the Custom Report Writer will now allow you to schedule reports.
What else is new?
- The Students > Demographics > Students with SEN page now includes the end date, so you can report on expired statuses, or see EHCP end dates.
- Generate a quick summary report of your Post-16 data to ensure you receive all your funding from the School Census: Autumn Census Post-16 Report
- Automatically set Outcome Grades from Exam Results for the ILR.
- When importing from Options, unique ID is now required, but name and ID matching is no longer case-sensitive.
- We've improved the processing in the background when you create, end or delete timetable slots.
- When students are deleted in bulk (such as via the Data Retention page), these are now staggered in the background. You might find when deleting large amounts of data, the process will be locked for a few minutes while this is done.
- We've added clearer information on the requirements when setting up card payments.
September 2022
30th September
Rotating Meal Menus & Parent Portal Meal Choices
Set up our new Meal Menus that rotate every one, two, three or four weeks - choose which meals to enable your menus for, when the menu is available and when the cut-off is for changes. Then guardians can choose exactly what their children should eat through the Parent Portal or Arbor App! Get started here: Rotating Meal Menus
Assessment
- See a Current vs Baseline progress score on marksheets: Progress from Baseline to Current grade on marksheets. We'll also soon be adding this for Previous, Predicted and Year Targets.
- Our assessment import spreadsheet can now be used to add predicted marks and aspirational targets.
Timetabling
- Set your Timetable Slot Staff to be Academic Leads for courses in bulk - particularly useful after an Edval import.
- The final step when importing from TimeTabler will now automatically map your weekdays.
- You can now print room timetables with the School: Teaching: View permission.
Improvements to the new tables
- Use the extra small XS setting to reduce the row height even further to fit more data on your page.
- If you filter out a row, bulk actions won't be applied to those rows - we also show a pop-up to let you know.
- We've removed the search bar, hidden columns, the download button and the ability to reorder columns from tables in slide overs.
You can see full details of how our tables work here.
What else is new?
- You can remove a date of birth from a guardian’s profile.
- Report on Court Orders for students, guardians and staff.
- There are new Microsoft Power BI Datasets for SEN Statuses and Student's registration forms.
- The Students > Attendance > Absentees By Date page now includes U marks so you can follow up with these physically present but statistically absent marks.
- When sending emails from people's profiles, we now automatically populate the Bcc field rather than the To field - more details here.
- We’ve updated the SMS Billing page to accurately reflect processing times.
- We've reverted the description for the X code back to Not Required (non Compulsory School Age), as it's no longer used for Covid-related absences.
- You'll only see assignments from the current academic year on the Parent and Student Portals.
15th September
MAT MIS Cohort and Mark Level Analysis
See all your summative assessment data for your schools or individual students in one table, and export into your external analysis tools: Using the Cohort and Mark Level Analysis pages
Shorter course names
Save space on your timetables, calendars and tables across the MIS by reducing the length of course display names: Shorter course names on timetables, calendars and tables
Updates for the census
- Add Alternative Provision placements at companies.
- For the Spring 2023 census, you can note if a student is a Young Carer.
- Also for the Spring 2023 census, you can record your School's Weekly Hours Open.
What else is new?
- Graduate Teacher Programme is no longer a valid QTS route, so we've removed it from the available options when recording QTS.
- Report on IDs from your previous system using the Legacy System ID field in Student, Guardian and Staff Custom Report Writer reports.
- The DfE no longer requires schools to complete the weekly EdSet attendance form, but we won't be removing the Covid-19 Dashboard for now. If you want to continue to share your data, you can use do this via Wonde.
- When reporting on boarders in the Custom Report Writer, the Room field is now optional.
- For Shared Teaching students, we now show the school the mark was recorded at on emergency evacuation registers.
- On the assessment import spreadsheet, the columns will reflect any aliases set up.
- Improved the default mapping when importing your first TimeTabler file of the year.
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