Following on from last summer's development on SOAR, we have made a number of further amendments to the system which were deployed successfully last week.
They include:
1) Amendments to the Appraisee timeline feature
We have refined the timeline feature for Appraisees so that it shows if/when they need to resubmit their appraisal forms.
At any given point you should only have one open appraisal (timeline); SOAR was designed to help you focus on one appraisal at a time. During the tidy up process we noticed a few old appraisals where they were not signed off for whatever reason and remains on the appraisees' timeline.
If you have more than one timeline/appraisal on your welcome page when you login, please contact the helpdesk in the first instance for further investigation and support.
2) Amendments to Primary and Secondary Care appraisal forms
We have had feedback from Secondary Care colleagues where they found the completion of Form 3 (the one long page in separate sections) cumbersome and cluttered. We also had informal feedback to consider incorporating reflection tools into the PDP processes. We have also had reported issues from some Primary Care users where the submitting of Forms 1-3 had crashed the PDF generator.
We have taken onboard all user feedback and proposed to the Revalidation Delivery Board Scotland that we merge the structure / layout of the Primary and Secondary Care appraisal forms 3 and 4. This was approved in October 2015 and funding was secured to undertake this project in November.
Forms 3 and 4 for both primary and secondary care are now the same in content and format/layout. (This will also save us future development time and cost.)
Forms 1 and 2 will remain different.
What's changed?
Please note we have NOT changed the content or questions of the appraisal forms, only the layout. All your previous data will remain as is on the system.
We hope you find the updates to the appraisal forms more intuitive to use.
If you would like to find out more or reaquaint yourself with how SOAR works, please join one of the scheduled WebEx demos.
3) Autosave function for Appraisers on Form 4
We have have an autosave function for Appraisers when drafting Form 4. This should address previously reported issues of losing text when internet connection goes idle.
However, this feature only works with supported versions of web browsers (i.e. it will not work with older versions of Internet Explorer where they are not supported by Microsoft).
The autosave works by autosaving every 30 seconds on the page. (In theory you would only lose 30 seconds worth of work if you lose internet connection or get timed out, etc.)
Please ensure you remember to save when you navigate away from the page.
4) Misc fixes and PEN testing
We have also fixed a number of reported issues in relation to the CPD log, MSF, and other minor bug fixes.
Additionally, SOAR was recently subjected to a Penetration Test (industry standard security testing) and there were no high or critical items found in the testing. There were a handful of mid and low level items which we have addressed as part of this deployment.
Should you run into any problems, please do not hesitate to contact the helpdesk for further assistance.
## Further IT development
There is a further development project planned which involves two lot of deployments: the first around mid-May, and the last in mid July. This work will be to support and facilitate the Recognition of Trainer year 2 processes. We will confirm a definitive deployment date nearer the time.
My thanks once again for your patience and continued feedback as we work through the IT development.
If you have a query about SOAR, please contact the helpdesk - SOAR@nes.scot.nhs.uk
Kind regards,
William Liu
Information Manager (Medical Appraisal)
This page was last updated on: 28/04/2021
