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Minor updates and code changes occur every day. Only significant or noteworthy updates are shown here. Updates shown with a gold background are (or were at the time) only available to Advanced HOPS members.
| Time Date | System Updates |
|---|---|
| Update 948 3 January 2023 | Special HOPS Advanced Trial Period - Spring 2023 HOPSlet - To be Advanced or not to be Advanced... If "that is a question" for your railway or organisation then you need contemplate it no longer. From mid-January to Easter 2023 all Advanced HOPS features will be available for you, at no additional cost, to trial out. Please distribute this to other managers so they are aware of the trial and its potential benefits for your railway to be obtained from the special period and from Advanced HOPS. Joining Advanced HOPS brings two key benefits: 1. A much more robust level of support. There is a support ticket system in HOPS for questions about how the system works, how to configure the system to meet an objective, or if you find any bugs (hopefully not too often!). There is a HOPS office normally manned 9-4 ish plus Danny is normally available by mobile for anything urgent. Enquiries are treated with a high priority, and certainly higher than those organisations not in Advanced HOPS (where we generally only deal with bug reports). You also gain a much louder voice in the discussion of the future development of the system. https://www.hops.org.uk/hops_support.php 2. Access to more advanced program features which have been programmed since 2016, developed using funds raised from Advanced HOPS. Everything that is programmed in Advanced HOPS is made available to everyone in Advanced HOPS, regardless of who it was programmed for, so it works very well as a co-operative of best-practice. Advanced HOPS features include; - Asset Management Module - Risk Assessment Module - Near Miss / Incident Register - Employees Module - Accommodation Booking System - Group Bookings - News Stories - Support Tickets In addition there is enhanced functionality in the areas of; - Organisation Staff List - Department Notice Board - Files on Competence Elements - Timetables - Finance - Rostering - HOPS Comms messaging - Function Logs The Special Advanced HOPS Trial Period starts on Sunday 8 January and lasts until Saturday 15 April. Once the trial starts there will not be any immediate difference apparent, but the gold permissions for the advanced tools will become available to be allocated as you wish. This ensures you retain control over the deployment of additional features. We advise that HOPS Admins should initially give themselves all the permissions to maximise the benefits of the trial period. We will keep in contact with you during the Special Period to help you exploit maximum benefit from the Advanced HOPS tools. The permissions will automatically switch off at the end of the trial period (unless of course you move to permanent Advanced HOPS in the meantime). How to take part in the Special Advanced HOPS Trial Period: In the first instance contact john.thorndycraft@heritage-ops.org.uk to let us know your interest and have a discussion with us about your requirements. We will arrange for Advanced HOPS to be enabled for the Special Period and advise the relevant price for your organisation to become a permanent Advanced HOPS subscriber based on your current or projected usage, should you wish to do so at the end of the trial. If, at the end of the trial, you decide not to continue with Advanced HOPS, there will not be any cost commitments. Please contact John Thorndycraft at john.thorndycraft@heritage-ops.org.uk to join the Special Trial! |
| Update 920 12 October 2022 | As previously advertised in Update 833... Regrettably we can no longer hold the postage cost at its 2018 price (55p) and unfortunately have to raise this to 61p. This covers the cost of postage, envelopes and time and is still less than the off-the-shelf cost of a second class stamp alone. It is also less than if the price had risen in line with inflation since 2018. We hope you agree it continues to represent good value for money. The new postage cost will be applied from the start of the 2023 crop of ID cards. Note that it is now possible to significantly reduce ID Card costs by displaying them in the Raildays app instead of in physical form. See Update 913. |
| Update 892 30 August 2022 | DATA RETENTION IN HOPS HOPS is again looking at the policy for data retention and deletion in HOPS. This consultation replaces the 2019 consultation on the same matter. * Overview Up to now HOPS has generally been considered not old enough to be storing data for which there was no outstanding lawful basis on which to store it, but as HOPS is now over ten years old that is no longer the case. Some data is easier than others to think about retention/deletion. Some is 'nice to have', some is required for useful analysis, and some is vital to maintain for insurance etc purposes (where the record-keeping period can be 40 years or more). Removing old data also helps maintain best use of system-resources and avoids HOPS becoming 'bogged down'. All data must have a lawful basis for being stored (GDPR), so we must act reasonably in how long we store data for, especially after the person to whom it applies no longer works for the organisation. All data stored in HOPS is stored on the legal basis of 'legitimate interest' - ie it's all necessary data for the client organisations to store to run their businesses - it is not stored under the legal basis of 'consent' and therefore the subject user cannot withdraw their consent. It is legitimate for businesses to store information about their former staff for a reasonable period of time, particularly to protect the company against subsequent legal, insurance or employment claims. The previous consultation on this matter listed many types of data and became swamped in discussions and was ultimately lost to Covid disruption. To resurrect the discussion, this consultation describes a planned change to the retention period for three initial types of data that it hopefully might be easier to reach agreement on: turn history, roster availability and user login data. All three of these are large in volume so of benefit to all HOPS users to resolve. Please see the consultation document here: http://www.heritage-ops.org.uk/public_docs/HOPS_Data_Retention_2022.pdf |
| Update 864 9 May 2022 | Volunteer Attendance Mileage Cost Prediction: Report 42 in System > Reports & Export lists everyone's post code. As this is about cost, it will be skewed by the number of turns each person has done. I have added a post code field to reports 72 and 73, so that you can get a figure for the year if you wanted, and I have also added three new reports which show the number of turns in the period 2019-2022 done by each post code: 79 counts it up for complete post codes (eg (TQ9 5DB) 80 counts it up by the first part of the post code (eg TQ9) 81 counts it up by the letters only (eg TQ) You can copy and paste or export as CSV it from there into Excel for analysis. |
| Update 853 18 March 2022 | HOPS Subscription fees will rise by 2% on 1 August 2022, but will be discounted back down again for organisations that pay bills via the direct debit system. HOPS fees were last raised in 2019, and were held in 2020 and 2021. We hope you will agree that HOPS still represents good value for money, and that the development and increase in HOPS functionality and services is significantly more than 2% since 2019. If there are any concerns or issues regarding this please contact us. |
| Update 822 28 October 2021 | It is now possible to switch off the 'Appointed by' and 'Appointed Date' fields when a person is appointed to a role. This is appropriate for 'perfect roles' - ie those where ALL competence data is in elements and NONE is in the role. (This is the stage that all data will need to get to in the future in order for the competence management system to be re-written into New HOPS.) The setting is per-department, and is to be found in the department > green 'Competence' menu at the top > Competence Structure > Matrix Settings > Edit. For clarity, we are NOT suggesting that the dates on which people are assessed and who by are no longer recorded, just that they should be recorded on the element for each assessment that took place, rather than on the role. ---- The 'Appointed By' and 'Appointed Date' fields were left over from the 'Assessor' and 'Assessment Date' fields when competence was stored in roles, in the days before Competence Elements (introduced in 2016). Where data was stored in these fields previously, and subsequently copied into elements in the Element Migration programme, all the previous assessor and assessment date details will have been copied into the element. The fields were left in place to ensure that organisations still maintaining competence information in roles could use them, until the point at which all competence data was converted into elements. However, they have caused a lot of confusion as to what their remaining relevance is for perfect roles - which is no relevance at all - so now there is the option to remove them. Please do switch them off for departments where all the roles are perfect roles. You can see which roles are perfect (ie all competence records in elements) in HOPS Admin > Perfect Roles List. The status of the Appointed By and Appointed Date fields is also now shown on the Perfect Roles List. |
| Update 620 30 October 2019 | Some new facilities have been added to facilitate the renewal of ID Cards. These are the initial plans, and, as always, feedback is welcome to shape the development of the system. It is envisaged that three processes will take place to renew ID cards: 1 - Department Confirmation. Each department will 'confirm' who still works for them, ie who they are agreeing has a genuine case for a renewed card. This is intended to be done by the manager of the department, using a new page called Department Confirmation. Permission 354 required. For each person in the list, the manager will choose 'Yes, this person is still in the department', 'No, remove this person from the department' [the person will be removed from the dept in HOPS], or 'No action'. The 'No action' option is designed to allow the list to be dealt with in stages, useful for especially long lists. If your department staff list is long, we recommend processing it in stages in case you get caught out by your HOPS sessions timing out while you're working your way down the list. The confirmation page also shows how many turns the person has done in the department in the last 12 months. For rostered departments, this will help manage the 'minimum turn' commitment, etc. For non-rostered departments this field isn't relevant. 2 - Confirming the User's Details are Correct This is intended to be conducted by the user themselves. It is envisaged each organisation will send their staff an email explaining that it's time to renew ID cards, and sending the following link to do so: https://www.heritage-ops.org.uk/user_details_edit.php?p=renew This is a link to the user details editing page, with some additional text connected to the renewal of ID cards. At the bottom of the page is a confirmation tick box that the user needs to tick to confirm their details are all checked and accurate. The ticking of the box saves today's date as the 'last checked' date for the user. 3 - Card Generation New cards will still need to be 'generated' (key word). A third tab has been added to HOPS > ID Cards > Generate ID Cards. The new tab is called 'Renewal'. This page lists all staff, and shows how whether any departments have 'confirmed' the person still works for them, and when it was last confirmed the user's details were accurate. If the person's details were last checked within the last three months, and the are confirmed to belong to at least one department, the 'Renew' tick box will automatically be ticked. It is possible to tick a person who isn't ticked by default, or untick a person who HOPS has ticked. The page loads with suggestions, but anything can be changed. There will then be a 'Generate' button on the page [Currently hidden]. This will generate the cards in the normal way, and they'll sit and wait in the Generated list to be Processed. [Until the 'Generate' button is enabled on this page, the renewals can't proceed further that this stage. The 'Generate' button will be along soon...!] Card renewals will be sent to users approx 2 weeks before their current card expires. (This ensures users don't immediately start using their new card and give the remaining time on their old card to another person to obtain any commercial advantages etc.) NOTES The 'last checked' date on a user's details can also be set via a manager editing the person's details on their behalf via Community > Staff List or Department > Dept Staff List. Department confirmation is reset every August. Any confirmations carried out before August won't count for a renewal at the end of the year. As all cards expire at or near the end of the year, confirmation and renewal would take place in the winter. Please don't start to 'renew' cards within the overlap period of your card expiries, otherwise your new cards will expire at the same time as your current ones! (Ie, if cards expire at the end of January 2020 with a three-month overlap, any cards renewed in October 2019 would only be valid until the end of January 2020. Cards renewed (or generated in any way) from 1 November 2019 would be valid to end of January 2021. If this doesn't make sense please contact us before proceeding. Even though the page is headed 'Renewal', it would work just as well for someone who doesn't already have a card, so it's no problem if you generate a "renewal" for someone who doesn't already have a card, it'll just work in the normal way. If any organisation wants to have renewals carried out on paper, ie for offline users, please let us know. As always, if there are any comments, please let us know. |
| Update 603 7 July 2019 | ** NON-BACK-COMPATIBLE CHANGE ** Asset Management System A new permission 347 has been added. This permission regulates who can assign defects to each owner. At present, all defect owners appear in the drop-down list when creating or editing a defect. From 21 July 2019, users will only be able to assign defects to owners for which they have permission 347. Action required: Please allocate permission 347 to the groups you require to be able to assign defects to owners (ie, everyone with permission 280 probably needs at least one permission 347. If no action is taken, no users will have 347, and users will not be able to allocate a defect to an owner. If you have any queries regarding this change, please contact your HOPS Admin. HOPS Admins, please contact HOPS HQ. |
| Update 532 7 February 2019 | Options relating to the expiry date of ID Cards has been added to the element configuration details. Cards can currently be set to expire at the end of December, January, February or March. An overlap-period is allowed, whereby cards issued that would have a very short life are valid to the following-but-one expiry month. This can be set to 1, 2 or 3 months. For example, if cards expire in March, and the overlap period is set to 3 months: - Cards issued in November 2018 will be valid to March 2019. - Cards issued in December 2018 will be valid to March 2019. - Cards issued in January 2019 will be valid to March 2020. - Cards issued in February 2019 will be valid to March 2020. - Cards issued in March 2019 will be valid to March 2020. - Cards issued in April 2019 will be valid to March 2020. etc The date on which cards will expire is shown in the card generation pages. |
| Update 513 21 December 2018 | The HOPS Office is now closed for Christmas, it will re-open on Wednesday 2 January. In case of any problems please raise a ticket as normal, or contact Danny Scroggins by mobile (especially if urgent). Thank you to everyone for another great year of HOPS - definitely the best year so far! HOPS enters its tenth year in 2019! |
| Update 433 14 January 2017 | The HOPS Introduction Course will be held on 6 May 2017, and the HOPS Masterclass will be held on 7 May. Both days at Kidderminster Railway Museum. (Kidderminster SVR station, adjacent to the main line station). Everyone is welcome to attend either or both as you wish. It is recommended to bring laptops and 'play along'. Please could I ask you to now confirm whether you will be attending, which day(s), and how many people will be in your group. Saturday 6th May - HOPS Introduction Course. Intended for organisations that don't yet use HOPS, or are just starting out. 10am-4pm. Covering HOPS background, configuration settings, department settings, permissions, competence, rosters, etc. Sunday 7th May - HOPS Masterclass. Intended for organisations that already use HOPS and want to get into more detail and advanced features. This is also a good opportunity to meet and mingle with HOPS Admins from other organisations and discuss tips and tricks. I am aware that some people's travel plans lend themselves to not too long a day in order to allow travel in one day, and some people's travel plans lend themselves to staying overnight and a long day of HOPS to gain the maximum benefit for the long journey. To enable travel within a day, the main part of the masterclass day will be 10am-4pm. For those who wish to have a longer day, there will be an optional HOPS Surgery between 9 and 10am and between 4 and 5pm. At the HOPS Surgery you can raise your specific local queries, questions and discussion and I'll do my best to answer. It will also be a good opportunity to 'share with pride/pain' with other HOPS Admins, and learn from others' work. 9am - 10am: HOPS surgery for those who wish to start early. 10am - 4pm: The main part of the day for everyone. Training session on HOPS features. 4pm - 5pm: HOPS surgery for those who wish to stay later. Note that the features in discussion on Masterclass day will include those only available in the Support Licence Scheme. If you are not part of the Scheme but are considering joining then then access to the features will be arranged for you for the day. Several people have fed back requests for topics they would like to see discussed, please still feel free to do so if you haven't already. I will formulate these into an agenda and circulate nearer the date. Light refreshments will be provided (tea, coffee, biscuits, sandwiches at lunch time, etc). |
| Update 430 6 January 2017 | As HOPS has been around for a few years now (in fact 2017 is HOPS's ninth year!) the list of 'Past' base timetables for each organisation might be starting to get a bit long. To tidy this up a bit I have introduced a new field for each base timetable called 'Suite' where the annual suite of timetables to which this timetable belongs can be selected. The timetables in the tabbed lists will then be grouped together in suites. |
| Update 422 22 December 2016 | A new version of the HOPS competence profile profile pages has now been released. The previous version had become extremely busy, and feedback indicated that it was becoming over-complicated, so hopefully this will help present the information in a clearer format. In this new version, the overview competence profile gives a list of positions and elements and the person's competence, but clicking the position name now leads to all the rest of the details of each competence. I hope you find it an improvement. Screen shots: 2016-12-22_competence_profile/1.png" target="_blank"> |
| Update 330 30 July 2016 |  A tick-boxes function is now available in the operations calendar to allow the adding and removing of timetables and modifiers to many days in one operation.The facility is available to users with permission 14 (Edit Operations Calendar) and is available in the columnar view (only). This will hopefully help with your 2017 preparations! Please let me know if you find any problems. Thanks Danny S. |
| Update 219 7 August 2013 | Following the success of the recent HOPS demonstration meeting attended by the Severn Valley, Avon Valley and Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways, we are pleased to announce that we will be holding two further demonstration meetings on SUNDAY 15 SEPTEMBER and FRIDAY 18 OCTOBER, in Didcot, Oxfordshire. This is open to all railways, whether already using HOPS, wishing to learn more, or just wondering what HOPS can do for you. This should hopefully be ideally timed for you to be able to set up and implement what you wish to achieve in time for the 2014 running season. Two sessions are planned on each of the days, 10am-1pm and 2pm-5pm, both sessions will include demonstrations of existing HOPS functions, question and answers on "how to do....", and anything else you wish to discuss. If you intend to visit on these meetings please could you let Alex know which session and roughly how many people, and we'll make sure we get the tea and biscuits in! (Alex's email: alex.seal@heritage-ops.org.uk) |
| Update 201 24 March 2013 | A new function has been completed for administrating group bookings. New permission 101 applies and the new 'Group Bookings Admin' option is in the Commercial menu. Like the Purchase Order functions, this is initially a beta release version, so please feel free to have a play and see what you think! |
| Update 115 24 January 2012 | Some new options have been added to where to go after editing a date in the operations calendar. In addition to 'Edit Tomorrrow', there is now also 'Edit next Sat', 'Edit next Sun', and 'Edit next Sat/Sun'. This should make it slightly easier to input a whole year's timetable for railways that only operate at weekends without having to keep going back to the calendar and click the next weekend each time. (Apologies that this would probably have been more useful a month ago, before everyone put their 2012 calendars in!) |
| Update 106 4 October 2011 | I have implemented validity dates for timetables. This is to allow the creation of 'next' year's timetables, without clogging up the current list of timetables and confusing everyone (ie, by having 'Blue 2011' and 'Blue 2012', etc. I haven't done it specific to a year, because otherwise it would get confusing as each railway has it's own idea of what a 'year' is, and sometimes they overlap! So I have allowed each timetable to either be valid for 'all' dates, or 'from' and 'to' specific dates. Only timetables that are currently valid will be shown to users in the list of timetables, users with edit privileges will have options to show past and future timetables. When assigning a timetable to a date in the operations calendar, only timetables that will be valid on that date can be selected. |