This page contains list of releases and changes for the Practique Server software.

Practique Server and Practique for iPad compatibility

This table shows which versions of Practique Server and Practique for iPad are compatible. Versions indicated in bold have changed Practique server requirement for the iPad application.

Practique Server browser compatibility

This table shows which versions of browsers have been tested with the use of Practique.

4.3.5 - 20th May 2016

PRAC-971 Keep order of items when combining exam
PRAC-970 Updated Question statistics analysis report
PRAC-872 Improved examiner z-score report
Fix for 'Failed on CSP' alert message on candidate list page It was a false alarm there are candidates failed on CSP even if there were no such candidates.

4.3.4 - 4th May 2016

PRAC-969 Fixed change case view which raised UnicodeError

4.3.3 - 4th May 2016

Fixed redirect bug when changing dates of exam.
PRAC-967 Allow to keep role players in their circuit while copying them across other sessions

4.3.2 - 4th May 2016

Global marksheet does not allow to set borderline marker

4.3.1 - 4th May 2016

Fixes

PSD-217, PRAC-947: OSCE - Candidate/Examiner import from LDAP does not specify dimension type

Bug in the integration code with LDAP caused that the LDAP groups imported for Candidates/Examiners created Blueprint dimensions with wrong type which might lead to duplicate Blueprint dimensions.

This has now been fixed and LDAP integration will import groups as Blueprint dimensions with correct type which prevents duplication. 

4.3.0 - 12th April 2016

New Features & Improvements

Updated Marksheet editor

Item Marksheet has been updated to provide better user experience, provide useful hints and help texts as well as allowing introduction of new features such as Critical Stop Points (described in next section).

1. As the Creation and Editing of the Observation criteria is becoming more complex due to new features and additional settings we have moved the user interface into separate screen accessible via Add new criteria and Edit buttons.
   
   
2. Introduction of new column to indicate that the Observation criteria is functioning as Critical Stop point, see Critical Stop Point section.
   
   
3. Mandatory, Feedback Visible and CSP settings for an Observation criteria is now highlighted on the marksheet to provide strong feedback as these settings directly influence marking on the iPad.
   
   
4. Clear visual indication of Marksheet sections throughout the editor as well as quick links to edit Global Marksheet. Each section of the marksheet is now split (if necessary) into Global and Local subsections. This allows you to quickly identify which Observation criteria have been defined in Global marksheet and which are Local to the item.
   
   
5. Order of the sections visible on the marksheet editor matches order defined in Manage Sections and will be the same as order in which marksheet is represented on the iPad during exam.
   
   
6. Count as settings visual feedback - If you use Count as feature to assign Observation criteria to Blueprint dimensions this settings will be indicated by changing the Count as button to Change Count as.

Critical Stop Points - OSCE

Critical Stop Points (CSP) is a new features which allows Exam teams to create marksheets which allows Examiners to indicate candidate's critical error, serious professional concerns or stop point during the exam/procedure. When Examiner marks candidate performance with CSP the Candidate will fail the station at which the CSP occurred regardless their achieved score.

CSP - Marksheet authoring

In order to provide CSP functionality we have updated Item Marksheet Editor to allow creating marksheets with Observation Criteria functioning as Critical Stop Points.

Observation criteria as Critical Stop Point (see above screenshot ②)

• Can be only of type Boolean
• It is automatically set to have weight of 0 to exclude it from Candidate score
• Is automatically set not to be mandatory

CSP - Electronic Marking

This feature has minimal impact on electronic marking and only impact is validation of the marksheet before submission by the Examiners, for more details see Practique for iPad release notes.

CSP - Result processing and statistics

Candidates which have failed station due to CSP are included in statistics and results processing as usual. Critical Stop Point only influence calculation of the Pass/Fail for the station which is marked as CSP. This can then result in situations where it is possible to have candidates with high score for a station but still be Fail due to CSP.

Candidate feedback report has been update to indicate if the station has been Fail due to CSP or not.

Standard setting screen has been updated to indicate how many Fails is due to CSP.

4.2.2 - 12th April 2016

Improvements

PRAC-903: Written - Improve sorting of (V)SAQ answers wile marking

SAQ and VSAQ answers are now sorted by given response with the most frequent answers first which allows quicker marking.

Fixes

PRAC-650, PRAC-845: OSCE - Export OSCE results not transferring text feedback

4.2.1 - 5th April 2016

Fixes

PRAC-624: ASCII error when downloading results from View standard screen

Case when Candidate information or Marks contained special characters outside the ASCII range caused Practique to fail.

It is now possible to download results containing special characters.

PRAC-829: Examiner room not showing when the examiner has no Candidate

When the Examiner started in Rest room there was no room number on View Logins screen for that examiner.

View Logins now correctly displays room number for all Examiners regardless if they start in Rest rooms or not.

PSD-210: Written - Unable to mark incorrect VSAQ answers as correct in a batch operation

When marking VSAQ questions of the written exam it was not possible to mark wrong answer as correct one in batch operation and Practique would display an error. When marking one question at a time the problem didn't occur.

It is now possible to use batch operations during VSAQ marking.

PRAC-895: Possible to corrupt an exam and trigger iPad crashes

It was possible to corrupt an exam by changing date of the exam while the exam had already locked locked Item sets and Examiners.

This has been fixed by allowing to change date of the exam only when all sections on the Continue preparing screen are all unlocked.

4.2.0 - 31st March 2016 (requires Practique for iPad version >=4.1.0)

New Features

Combining exams

Combining exams feature provides means how multiple OSCE or Written exams (more specifically exam blocks) can be combined into single exam of the same type to allow desired results processing.

This feature allows you for example to run 2 day exam with the same Candidates on both days but with different Item sets (2 part OSCE) and then combine these 2 parts into single exam for processing. After combining the exam you can use all result processing and reporting functionality for Combined exam as you'd use normal exams.

Changes to the current functionality

• Create new exam now allows to create Combined exam
• Combined exam can be crated by combining any number of exam blocks of the same exam type (OSCE / Written)
• Dashboard has been enhanced
  • to indicate which exams are Combined exams
  • to indicate which exams are part of the Combined exam
• Completed exams screen allows to display exams which are part of Combined exam, these exams are not displayed by default
• When working with Combined exam or Exams which are part of Combined exam user is notified about this to prevent errors.

Communicate to iPad that the candidate ‘Did not attend’

Practique Server allows marking Candidate as ‘Did not attend’ via View logins screen. This information has not been previously propagated to iPads meaning that examiners still had Candidate visible on their schedule and could mark Candidate who did not attend. User interface for the ‘Did not attend’ features has been reviewed and updated to be consistent and easier to use.

Practique now propagates ‘Did not attend’ to iPads so that Examiners are clearly notified that the Candidate did not attend and are not able to mark such Candidate.
Please refer to Practique for iPad release notes for more details.

Show which iPad has been used by which user in View logins screen

View logins screen has been improved to provide information which iPads are used by each user. There is a new column ‘Devices’ which is populated over the time of the exam with iPad Device Names for each user. This feature is very useful (especially in off-line mode) when marks needs to be extracted for specific Examiner. Previously exam team would need to either keep records themselves or check every single iPad to find one used by specific examiner.

Separation of Examiner/Candidate ID and their Passwords for iPad application

Practique used Examiner/Candidate IDs which were imported or synchronised (LDAP) into Practique as passwords for iPad application as well as Examiner/Candidate identifiers. This caused problems as there was transformation (removing letters, etc...) of the identifiers into the passwords which were hidden from the exam teams and done automatically. As a result and despite Examiners/Candidate has been imported with correct IDs it may happen that iPad passwords were unexpectedly different.

Practique now separates Examiner/Candidate IDs from iPad passwords. New field Password is now available for Examiners/Candidates. You have also option to import Examiners/Candidates with new 'password' field which should be populated with desired iPad password 'as is' should you wish to have different passwords from Examiner/Candidate IDs. If you wish to have iPad passwords same as Examiner/Candidate ID you omit 'password' field from your import files or won't set it during editing and Practique will use ID as password.

Improvements

PRAC-705: Show assigned Blueprint Dimension Category including whole breadcrumb trail

Practique now displays complete information about assigned Blueprint Category on the Item > Overview and Item > Blueprinting screen. This allows users to clearly see what Dimenstions & Categories are assigned to the Item

PRAC-804: Edit Global Marksheet - ‘Apply If’ show whole path in Blueprint category drop-down

When using ‘Apply If’ feature via Edit Global Marksheet it was difficult to distinguish different Blueprint Dimensions and their Categories because dropdown menu to select the Blueprint Category only contained Category names. This has been improved and dropdown now shows complete information including Blueprint Dimension and parent categories  (if any).

PRAC-823: "PIN" is used inconsistently throughout the user interface

Multiple pages (Dashboard, View Logins) had field "PIN" which showed different information on each page which made it inconsistent and confusing.

Dashboard has been changed to read "Exam PIN" to indicate PIN required for students to login into Written exam. View Logins page has been changed and "PIN" has been renamed to "Password" to reflect that the fields is used as password for the iPad application (for Examiners/Candidates/Marshals).

PRAC-831: Allow to set "Show on Candidate feedback report" during creating the criteria

In order to show particular Observation criteria on the Candidate Feedback Report users had to first create the Observation criteria and then Edit that criteria in order to be able to indicate that the criteria should be visible on the Candidate Feedback Report.

This has been now improved and users can indicate the desired feedback during creation of the Observation criteria.

Fixes

PRAC-865: Candidate drop down select for Reporting is not sorted in any way

Drop-down with Candidates was not sorted in any way which made very difficult to find specific candidate in order to generate his/her report.

Drop-down is now sorted alphabetically by Candidate ID ascending.

PRAC-889, PSD-203: Inaccurate error message when importing candidate schedule fails

When user tries to import CSV file (in Specify Candidates step of Exam preparation) with invalid format Practique will display error message. This error message has been wrongly formatted and could result in long string of letters in one column instead of row.

Practique now displays correctly formatted error message as well as correct format hint.

PRAC-500: Generated PDF reports are not regenerated when Standard settings changes

When users generated PDF reports using Standard Settings before finishing exam result customization then reports may have not reflected all changes made by users. This problem could have been experienced if the workflow of the Exam team included generation of the PDF reports before they perform result adjustments.

Practique now correctly purges old PDF reports as changes are made to the exam results or Standard Settings.

PRAC-709: Saving an Item may fail due to full-text search index

When an Item (OSCE/Written) contained very long texts (2000+ characters) error would be triggered when saving such an item.

Limit for 2000 characters for Item text information has been removed.

PRAC-787: Displayed wrong number of registered devices

Devices screen did not accurately inform about total number of registered devices (all devices which are/have been approved to communicate with the Server).

The total number of registered devices now indicate correct number.

PRAC-824: Blueprint dimensions and categories are not enforced to be unique

It has been possible to create Blueprint Dimensions and Categories with exactly same name which lead to the duplicates. This could later cause problems during Import and assigning the Dimensions/Categories.

It is now not possible to create Dimensions or Categories (within Dimension) with the same name.

PRAC-632: WRITTEN - Upload results template CSV file has wrong format

CSV file template for uploading results available to download via View Sessions > Upload Result CSV provided CSV file with wrong format. The file contained headers for each column with full question names instead of question code.

CSV template is now provided in correct format where headers only contain station codes such as "SBA: 1", etc...

PRAC-815, PSD-112: WRITTEN - Importing Written exam Item with duplicate Blueprint Dimension(s) cause error

When user tries to import Written exam Item using CSV which contains Blueprint dimension more than once Practique return Unhanded error. For example there are 2 columns named 'Speciality' in the CSV file it will cause an error as Multiple Tagging is not supported by Practique.

Practique now displays correct error message allowing user to rectify the issue (remove second Domain column) with CSV file.

4.1.11 - 22nd March 2016

New features

PRAC-896: Added settings to have different number of decimal places on the Candidate Feedback Report

Since 4.1.10 all mark related indicators are displayed with 2 decimal place precision through out the system. This changes allows to generate Candidate Feedback Report with different number of decimal place then it's set globally for the system.

4.1.10 - 15th March 2016

Fixes

PRAC-871, PSD-180, PSD-178: Fix inconsistent pass/fail calculation due to rounding of the cut score

Issue
Practique Pass/Fail calculation for Candidates has been affected by inconsistent comparisons of rounded exam pass mark with not rounded Candidate score. This inconsistency may result in false Passes for Candidates whose score was very close to the rounded exam pass mark.

Example
Assume Exam pass mark (not rounded) is 32.23 then rounded value is 32 (mathematically rounded down) and Candidate score of 32.11.
When Practique calculate the Pass/Fail for above Candidate comparison is made using following expression “Pass when candidate_score >= rounded_exam_pass_mark (32.11 >= 32) otherwise Fail” which would indicate Candidate Pass despite he should have Failed because non rounded comparison of the values is 32.11 >= 32.23 indicating Fail instead of Pass.

Changes & Resolution
Changes have been made to calculations for Candidate Pass/Fail so that non rounded values are always used for comparison. This ensures that Candidate Pass/Fail will be calculated accurately.

It would be impractical to display raw values (precision of 16 decimal places) for mark related values (pass mark, mean score, etc…) on screens such as Standard Settings and others. Therefore Practique now consistently displays these values mathematically rounded to two decimal places throughout the system. Keep in mind that the rounding of the values is solely for the purpose of display.

False positives/negatives
While the calculation of the Pass/Fail is now accurate there can still be confusion when checking the results due to the fact that in very rare occasion two students with the same score (will be displayed rounded with 2 decimal places precision) will have different Pass/Fail which is due to the rounding of the values for display, Pass/Fail is accurate.

This would happen for example in case of scores 32.112342 (A) and 32.114234 (B) with exam pass mark of 32.113123. In this case student A would Fail with displayed score of 32.11 and student B would Pass with score 32.11.

The chance of this happening are very slim as the difference in score vs rounded score is at this level of precision negligible.

List of Screens and Reports affected by changes described above

Screen changes

• • Set standard page 
    • Pass score
    • Download as CSV
  • Set standard - Candidates)
    • Score
    • Max score
  • View sessions - Candidates
    • Score
    • Max score
  • Set standard - Items - View marks 
    • Score
  • Set standard - Examiners
    • Mean score
  • Examiners - View (Examiner detail)
    • Total score

Report changes
Candidate feedback report:

• • Changed format of percentage values
  • Accurate Pass/Fail

Exam analysis report:

• • Changed format of percentage values
  • Minimum score
  • Maximum score
  • Median
  • Mode
  • Mean
  • Standard error of mean
  • Standard deviation
  • Cut score
  • Pass Score rounded
  • Cut Scores & SEM
    • Number formatting
    • Accurate Pass/Fail

Station cut score report:

• • Mean score
  • Cut score
  • Max score
  • Standard deviation

4.1.9 - 10th March 2016

New features

PRAC-878: Practique Server Status page

Status page provides means for IT services to monitor Practique Server status and status of it's sub services. Status page can be provided in various formats so that integration with different types of monitoring tools is possible. For full documentation please see Practique Server Monitoring.

Fixes

PRAC-887, PSD-199 & PRAC-878: Monitoring & Recovery of the Database server and iPad communication

Under certain circumstances (server restart, maintenance, etc...) it was possible that the underlying Practique Server Database connection has been lost while status indicator for WSI (top right corner of the screen) still indicated fully working state. This caused issue with communication between iPad and Server. Manifestation of the issue was that iPad indicated that it is waiting for Server to respond but it never received the response.

We have improved monitoring and auto-recovery for the Database server within Practique so that the WSI indicator does provide accurate information. Also we have incorporated auto-recovery in case that the problem with the database is temporary.

The same status indication is now provided by the Practique Server Status page.

PRAC-877: Written, Student logins for Practique for iPad has been truncated when containing both numbers and letters

Certain format of Candidate IDs has been transformed unexpectedly by Practique which caused problems for Candidates to log-in into Practique for iPad application. For example when Candidate has been imported with ID of 'XY1230Z' Practique would schedule such Candidate into the exam with iPad password of '1230' which would be unexpected.

This has now been fixed and Practique always uses Candidate ID field as iPad password, so 'XY1230Z' from above example.

Security

PRAC-890: Clickjacking protection enabled

We have enabled security feature for the application server protecting it from the Clickjacking attacks. Protection adds X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN HTTP header to the server response which can be used by supported browsers.

For more information about Clickjacking please see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clickjacking. For more information about implementation see documentation.

4.1.8 - 19th February 2016

Fixes

PRAC-843, PSD-176: OSCE, Candidate Feedback Reports did not reflect correctly pass/fail for the candidate under certain conditions

When exam results has been processed and Minimum items to pass settings has been set to value other then 0 on the Set Standard screen then Candidate Feedback Reports have been generated with false Pass for the Candidates who had been failed due to the Minimum items to pass settings. Results on the Set Standard & statistics for an exam have always been calculated correctly.

Candidate Feedback Report generator has been fixed to accurately reflect settings from the Set Standard screen.

 PRAC-863: OSCE, Options to customise Candidate Feedback Reports were not taken into account when generating the report

This issue only applies to reports generated for OSCE exams. Candidate Feedback Report provides customisation options to show or hide various information such as:

• • Include item breakdown
  • Include cohort average
  • Include number of questions
  • Include class average
  • Include questions overall

Unfortunately all options in italic have been ignored by the report generator and produced the same results regardless of the user selected settings. This is now fixed and report customisation works as expected.

4.1.7 - 26th January 2016

Fixes

PSD-112: Problems importing SBA questions using CSV and XLSX formats

• Unable to import CSV file on MS Windows platform
• Unable to import CSV/XLSX file when it contained multiple columns with the same Dimension
• Unable to import XLSX file when it contained empty rows (included in 4.1.4)

It is now possible to import CSV files on MS Windows platform without problems as well as XLSX files (correct format assumed).
Described problems here are connected to certain MS Windows platform and CSV/XLSX files with not entirely correct format.

4.1.6 - 26th January 2016

Fixes

PSD-130: OSCE Reporting: Station Cut Score graph has been improved:

• Cut score line is now rendered from the edge to edge of the graph
• Cut score value is displayed above the cut score line
• Borderline marker has been indicated in different colour from the Cut score line

PSD-83,PSD-143: OSCE: Edit mark screen has been improved in order to accomodate for longer examiner text feedback.

It is now possible to comfortably review the text feedback provided by examiners. Also the height of the text boxes is set to fit the text to minimise scrolling and put all content on screen.

4.1.5 - 20th January 2016

Fixes

PSD-170, PSD-152: Additional fix for the Special characters issue.

Previous fix introduced in 4.1.4 didn't solve the issue with special characters completely and throughout the system.

4.1.4 - 17th January 2016

Fixes

PSD-170, PSD-152: Inputing special characters such as Emoji, Currency symbols and other special characters result in Marksheet rejection by the Server and synchronisation errors on the iPads.

Changes has been made to the Marksheet processing on the Server to correctly accept input from iPads including special characters.

PSD-129: Fixed display of missing “Passing criteria” statement on the OSCE Candidate feedback report.

PSD-112: Fixed import of the Written exam SBA Items using Microsoft Excel (XLSX) format

It was not possible to import XLXS files if any of the columns in the source XLSX file were empty or the XLSX  file contained empty rows. Please refer to release notes for 4.1.6 for more details.

4.1.3 - 11th January 2016

Fixes

• PSD-129 OSCE: Updated Candidate feedback report to render properly (removing not necessary columns) when only "Include item breakdown" is selected.

4.1.2 - 6th January 2016

Fixes

• PSD-132: Reports / Candidate feedback (OSCE) - Removed duplicate candidate information (ID & Name) from the report so it's displayed only once

4.1.0 - 15th December 2015

New features & changes

• New Examiner and Candidate tagging & filtering (see Managing Candidates and Examiners documentation for more details)
  • Examiners and Candidates can now be organised into the groups using Blueprints
  • Candidate and Examiner selection and filtering has been updated to take advantage of the groups
• PSD-132: Reports / Candidate feedback - It is possible to hide 'cohort average', 'number of questions' and 'class average'
• Reports - removed option to generate PDF and permalinks from the 'old' reports - users should use exam overview page

Fixes

• Fixed initial synchronisation huge size when pushing Written exams to iPads
• PSD-132: Reports / Candidate feedback - Removed bulleting for station title under Feedback from Examiners
• Make sure that the Item maximum score is updated correctly when changes are made to Mark Scheme, Local or Global observation criteria
• Standard setting grade on the Edit marks screen has been made read only and is populated from the actual marks given to the candidate so it's not necessary to edit the information twice. Standard settings grade can be changed when editing individual marks for the candidate.
• Fixed circuit dropdown order throughout the system to be ordered ascending consistently by circuit number

4.0.9 - 11th November 2015

• Fixed problems importing marks into an exam

4.0.8 - 10th November 2015

• Fixed PRAC-623 Drag & Drop on view starting rooms not working properly
• Fixed PRAC-733 Station Cut score report - regression graph does not start from min value

Document change history