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.
• 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.