In previous versions of the application the login/logout status of the Examiner or the online/offline indication may not be accurate on the Marshall screen or the Backend.

This has now been fixed and the application updates the information correctly and in a timely manner. Keep in mind that due to the changes on the Practique Server, there may be a delay (by default 10s, configurable) for the information to be distributed from the Practique Server to the applications. This delay was introduced in Practique Server 5.2.1 version in order to manage excessive load on the server.

Please refer to the Known issues page for the description of the issue.

The Practique application has been updated to minimise the possibility for the issue to occur.

Please refer to the Known issues page for description of the issue.

Handling of the visual feedback for examiner list has been fixed so that the Submitted (Green), Changed/Pending (Amber) colour coding is accurately provided to the examiners.

There were issues in that the Practique for iPad application did not handle the situation well when the Practique Server became overloaded with traffic or when the exam was large in size. The behaviours on the application ranged from users being unable to login and the exam list not updating. You can read about the details of the issues further on the linked Known Issues page.

Practique for iPad has been put under heavy testing for scenarios such as overloaded Practique Server as well as poor Wi-Fi scenario. Issues arising from when the application gets stuck or does not handle slow response from Practique server gracefully has been fixed.

Previously users were able to log in to already completed sessions due to the bug in validation of the credentials which did not take into account the status of the session.

This has been fixed and once the session is complete it is no longer possible for users to log in to that session.

When a written exam is big in size (60+ questions) and contains Images and HTML markup in question stems and options, there may be a situation when for some questions stems are not displayed after candidates are working with the application for a longer period of time. This is due to the memory consumption which rises over the time to the point when it causes the above issue.

Practique for iPad application has been updated to manage memory consumption much better to prevent the issue.

Bug in detection of the online/offline status prevented list of exams to be automatically updated when Wi-Fi connection is lost or intermittent.

This has now been fixed and application will automatically update the list of exams when it comes online as expected.

Fixed bug which occurred when a user is logged in, the exam is reset, the user then is presented with a block list and proceeds to press the home button. 

When a candidate is logged into the iPad, clicks on a station, marks the station as complete, returns to the list of stations and clicks on the same station he/she has just completed, a crash occurred. This was fixed by modifying the timing of internal processes in the system. 

Under certain technical constraints it is better to have various network services configured independently. This was not possible in the previous versions and the application has been updated to support such scenarios.

As the text of the message on the screen when updating was on two lines instead of one, the list of exams changed position when an update was in progress. This meant that the user would select the wrong session by mistake.

This has been fixed and the exam list does not change position anymore.

Practique Server version 5.2.0 introduce Resource captions which are now supported on Practique for iPad. Resource caption allows question authors to specify different text for the Resource for Candidates who interact with the Practique for iPad (Written & OSCE). Other user roles using Practique for iPad use (as before) Resource title.

This change allows you to upload a Resource, let's say Chest X-Ray, and provide detailed title for it in Practique "Chest X-Ray Normal hilar position" so that it is easily identifiable & searchable. However because such title could give a way information to Candidates you may provide Resource caption of "X-Ray" for example.

OSCE candidate user intrface has been updated for iOS10

When candidate accepts T&C this information is transferred to Practique server now. This means that should user switch iPads they don't need to accept T&C again.

Practique application attempts to refresh list of available exams to the iPad every time when it's started. Under certain conditions such as poor Wi-Fi this may fail. Previously the only way how to retry update for the exam list was to close application and open it again.

It is now possible to use Retry button also reason for the failure provided for troubleshooting.

Synchronisation changes in Practique for iOS in version 5.x.x introduced behaviours which caused issues during the OSCE exams, Written exams we're not affected due to the fact that Written exams do not synchronise one iPad dataset onto all other iPads as it is in case with OSCE. Nature of the issues would be not regular/deterministic and the rate of occurrence depends on the timing of the Examiner activity as well as size of the exam (especially multiple-concurrent exams).

Issues:

Issues has been fixed by separating the synchronisation of the data from the Practique Server (and reprioritising this activity) from the User initiated actions such as Start/Stop rounds. As well application now attempts to perform synchronisation after it finishes with User initiated messages and marks upload in order to make sure it is always up to date.

With introduction of Apple iOS 10 application was no longer able to record auto feedback for OSCE. When Examiner attempt to use Audio recording feature application would simply close.

This has now been fixed and Audio recording works as expected.

Despite exam has been setup with Randomise questions set to off questions have been randomised for students when running an exam on the iPad. There could be groups of students having the same order.

This has now been fixed and questions are no longer randomised if exam is set to not randomised questions. 

When internet connection has been lost or very poor iPad would switch to off-line mode. In this mode examiners continue marking and iPad accumulates marks until network connectivity is restored. At this point iPad should sent marks which as been accumulated in off-line automatically to server without user intervention, which did not happen.

This has now been fixed and iPad correctly determines online and offline situations and automatically dispatches marks to server without user intervention. Users can continue working with the application. Marks are also automatcially dispatched to the server when application is opened and there are some marks pending.

This is also valid when application crashes or is completely switched off (swipe up) by users.

When there was poor Wi-Fi network users had problems when opening/closing application. With especially poor Wi-Fi there was a situation when application attempted to re-connect but due to poor Wi-Fi there was a timing issue which resulted in a crash.

Application has been now updated to handle re-connections while on poor Wi-Fi better and it does not crash when quickly closing/opening the application.

When there are more than 6 exams pushed to devices it would not be possible to select exams listed at the bottom of the exam list.

This has now been fixed in such a way that the list of exams is now scrollable and user can scroll down to to reach and select exams at the bottom of the list.

Under some circumstances (especially on iPad Mini 1G, iOS 9.3.5) there was an issue with questions with HTML formatting in question stems where stem may have got cutoff instead of displayed as whole text (eg. one line of the stem would be visible). This issue has not been reproducible on newer hardware & iOS 10 combination.

As a workaround for the issue users had to rotate the device from landscape to portrait orientation or vice versa to "reveal" text which has been cut off.

This issue is now resolved and it is no longer to reproducible on following hardware/iOS: iPad Mini 1G/9.5.3, iPad Pro/10.2.1, iPad Air 2/10.2, iPad 2/9.5.3).

When users were working with the application while the exam is reseted on the Practique server the application would suddenly close and iPad home screen should be shown.

This is now fixed and application does not close but users are automatically logged out from current exam and presented Exam list.

Practique 5.0.0 introduces (both o iPad and Backend) possibility to run multiple concurrent sessions or/or multiple concurrent exams on the iPad. Practique application previously supported only one exam to be active on the iPad. Application only synchronised only one exam and allowed Candidates & Examiners to only interact with current exam.

Multiple concurrent sessions

It is now possible to start more than one session on the Practique server. This is very useful in case that it is expected to run whole exam off-line and therefore starting & stopping sessions would not be possible or inconvenient.

Another use case for having more than one active session would be an exam which is held in different geographical locations. Each session would in this case represent session in particular location (eg. Hospital Session 1).

Multiple concurrent exams

It is now possible to Publish to device more than one exam. This feature is especially useful in case the exam is held in different geographical locations or simply when there is more than one exam taking place at one time.

In both cases Practique application

Please note that the application now synchronise Exam data when user selects the exam which they wish to login. This is different behaviour from from the previous versions where application simply automatically synchronise one single active exam automatically when opened. In this version of application user needs first to select Exam/Session combination to initiate synchronisation for the selected exam.

Practique application has been updated to support latest versions of iOS9 & iOS10. Application will be actively tested and supported only on these versions of iOS.

Fixed problems with Single Application Mode iOS 10

Practique application opts out from Slide Over and Split View (please refer to About Multitasking on your iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for more details) to retain previous behaviour on iOS 10

Application Information device IP address fixed on iOS 10

Application 3rd party dependencies has been updated for iOS 10

Practique application automatically uploads diagnostic log files to Practique server in background without any interaction required from the users. In order to make this process more transparent and provide means to extract required diagnostic information even in case where there is no network connectivity, these diagnostic log files are accessible via iTunes File sharing (see About File Sharing on iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch for more details).

These diagnostic log files are used by Support team to troubleshoot when you encounter issues with the iPad application and you may be asked to provide these files to the Support team.

Implementation of server certificate pinning for HTTPS transfers

Implement Server certificate pinning for WebSocket connections between iPad & Server

Under certain exam conditions when there is large amount of examiners participating in exam 50+ there may occur issue with iPad application mark persistence which results in loss of marks. Issue is very rare and may not manifest during the exam at all or occurs for very few stations (<=2) during the exam.

Symptoms & Impact

Issue can be detected by observing marshal screen and identifying examiners which are indicated as online but do not have any marks submitted for several examination rounds despite the fact that their iPad (when physically checked by the marshal) is online and marksheets have been submitted by the examiner (green bars on the examiner screen). When detecting the issue make sure that iPad is on-line not to confuse the issue with normal off-line mode of the iPad.

Should the issue occur examiners are allowed to submit marks for whole session onto their iPads. Marks would be appearing as submitted but Practique server would not receive any marks for that examiner/station. Once examiner does log-out or application is closed the marks would be lost. When examiner does login again to the exam he would be presented with the list of candidates where only first candidate would indicate marks being submitted and the rest of the candidates would miss the submitted marks.

Fix & Prevention

Application now provides means both in user interface as well as internally to avoid any loss of marks.

Internal measures include making sure that the marks are saved to the filesystem (log file) when Examiner submits the marksheet before attempting to send or save marks to database in order to minimise possibility of any side effects preventing marks to be saved due to influence of problems in different parts of the infrastructure. Log files are also exposed to the IT teams which can extract log file and provide it to the Support team for marks recovery.

Measures from the user perspective include visual warning when such situation should occur and providing means for the user to recover from the situation and continue their marking without any impact on the marks or their marking.

Should your exam have a high number of stations this is a recommended update.

Under certain conditions rows on the Marshal Schedule screen could disappear when scrolling up and down. The issue is not consistent and may be difficult to reproduce, however it should be possible to reproduce when:

Should this issue occur it would be in both portrait and landscape orientations. It manifests by the rows disappearing at random and appearing again as user slowly scrolls up/down.

At the moment only one customer has reported the issue. However we confirm it is a valid issue which has been introduced in version 4.1.0 and has possibly been escalated by recent iOS 9.3.x updates (not confirmed).

Issue does not lead to any data loss but it is an inconvenience for Marshals and workaround is to navigate back to the Circuit Overview screen and back to the Round Schedule screen which will display correctly although does not prevent the issue from occurring again.

Marshal Schedule screen has been reviewed and fixed. Scrolling on those screens works as expected and rows do not change order or disappear in any way.

When marksheet with required answers contained CSP question which has been marked validation of the marksheet has been correctly disabled so that it can be submitted incomplete. However when the CSP question has been deselected the validation of required answers as not be re-enabled resulting in situation when Examiner may have submit incomplete marksheet.

This has been fixed and validation is re-enabled when any/all CSP questions are deselected.

When user uses ‘Finish & Logout’ feature iPad application now informs server that the user finished his exam so that this information can be accurately displayed on the View Logins screen.

When user did not use ‘Finish & Logout’ feature but just logged out while the SAM is enabled users iPad remains in the SAM even after the exam is finished by the exam team.

This is now fixed and user's iPads are correctly unlocked from SAM.

When exam team stops Session on the Practique server SAM needs to be unlocked for any Student who is using the iPad application otherwise students will end up with locked iPads. This has not been the case due to the bug in the iPad application.

iPad application has been updated to make sure that the SAM is disabled properly when Session is stopped on the Practique Server.

Practique for iPad contained bug which caused application to not disable SAM mode when user's allocated time for an exam expired.

This has now been fixed and user is correctly logged out and SAM disabled.

It is possible to create mark sheet question (of type Discrete) which uses schema without any answers defined. This is used (as a workaround) to add an arbitrary text row to the mark sheet. Because such a question is just an ordinary question on the mark sheet editor it is possible make it mandatory - Practique will not stop users from doing so. This will however create marksheet which is not possible to submit on the iPads because iPad will require an answer for such a question.

iPad mark sheet validation has been updated so that it ignores questions (of type Discrete) which do not have any answers defined to protect against this situation.

When device was rotated while on the last or first question of the exam then subsequent navigation to previous/next question resulted in question text not being completely visible or the space for the question text became too large.

Question rendering has been fixed to reliably resize question text to fit screen size and resize reliably after device is rotated.

We have identified possible scenario when marks could potentially be corrupted during input on the iPad device. Scenario is very rare and has been observed with 1/100 frequency and does depend on the setup of the concrete exam/marksheet as well as actions of the examiner and realtime exam status changes.
Steps taken to mitigate the issue:

Marksheet code updated to minimise influence of the Examiner actions and Exam status changes

Added diagnostic information logging to verify issues does not occur again

This was due to the fact that the IP address of the device cannot be determined. Application Details now opens and IP address is reported as "Unknown".

This now works as expected and single tap de-selectes previously selected option.
In case User filled in the Marksheet and navigated to the Schedule screen and back to Marksheet where they wanted to de-select previously selected answer they would need to tap twice for the intended change to take effect. This issue only impacted situations where users had filled marks and navigated back to the Marksheet not when they were filling in the Marksheet in one session.