Release notes

Release 1.15.8

Release date: September 12th 2019

All users

•  Added a date of match/placement when confirming a placement or match.
• Made improvements to the process which grants access to messages and documents following a password reset.
• Removed the facility to enable organisations to pay monthly for a licence.
• Fixed a bug that prevented users from searching by profile reference (e.g. SMP12435) on the advanced search pages for adopters and children.
• Fixed a bug where enquiries were not automatically opening after 14 days when the opposite party had not responded.

Adopters

• Fixed a bug preventing adopters from marking an enquiry as ‘Incorrect – I am still family finding’
• Fixed a bug where not all practitioners where listed on the ‘discussion started’ section of an enquiry

Adoption practitioners

• Fixed a bug that allowed duplication of a child or family profiles in rare circumstances. 
• Fixed a bug that allowed practitioners to select a blank availability. 
• Fixed a bug where the hover-over help text for the ‘message practitioner’ button was in the incorrect location.
• Fixed a bug where not all practitioners where listed on the ‘discussion started’ section of an enquiry

Commissioning practitioners

• Made changes to the default printing permissions for documents, so the default printing permission allows other to print/save the document.

Adoption UK community

• Fixed a bug that prevented the automatic creation of a social profile on community registration.
• Fixed a bug where the user was not notified if the ‘community name’ was already in use.

Release 1.15.7

Release date: August 14th 2019

All users

• Changes to the user homepage for all users, including changing the username menu to ‘Account settings’
• Fixed a bug displaying code in user feed
• Fixed a bug with the geographical area select
• Ensured that practitioner links between children and families where updated when any changes were made to the primary organisation for children, families or practitioners. 

Adoption UK community

• Improved the Adoption UK community registration flow
• Improved messaging on the Adoption UK membership page
• Improved the ‘Chat’ interface, the content box now expands as you type
• Improved the alignment/design of the Adoption UK forums on mobile
• Improved the performance of the ‘Chat’ listing page
• All community users can now initiate chats with Adoption UK moderators, regardless of their Adoption UK membership status
• Ensured that users land on their post when posting to the Adoption UK forums
• Ensured that the topic and last activity are displayed on the ‘Latest posts’ page on mobile
• Ensured that content options are consistent across the creation of topic/posts on forums
• The police check consent has been removed from community only registration as it is not required to access the Adoption UK forums
• Fixed a bug preventing topics from being deleted
• Fixed a bug with the archived forum search
• Fixed a bug displaying the incorrect number of posts for a new topic
• Fixed a bug preventing email links from working
• Fixed a bug preventing attachments from displaying correctly

Adopters

• Improved the design of the translation required icon and hover over
• Fixed a bug with the ‘Include children from’ filter on the ‘Search children’ page

Practitioners involved in adoption

• Fixed a bug preventing children's profiles from being deleted 
• Fixed a bug with profile data exports where families with existing children were not appearing
• Improved the design of the translation required icon and hover over

Practitioners involved in commissioning

• Fixed a bug displaying matching discussions for commissioning only users
• Fixed a bug displaying matching cases for commissioning only users
  

Release 1.15.6

Release date: July 10th 2019

All users

• Improvements to accessibility across the site, including improvements to the skip link, keyboard only optimisation, improvements to validation and error reporting, and increased image contrast
• Changed the company phone number across the site to our new freephone number 0800 368 8549
• Disabled the ‘Add new photo’ button when photo limit has been reached for a profile
• Reinstated the grey background on a user dashboard to increase legibility of content
• Improvements to our admin processes and data retention
• Fixed a bug preventing users from commenting on certain Q&A topics

Adoption UK community

• All community users can now add an Adoption UK membership and initiate chats with other community users. Users were previously required to have a verified full community account in order to do this, this restriction has been removed. Community users can now chat with other users via the ‘Chat’ icon on the forums.

Adopters

• Clarified our data retention policy in messaging displayed to adopters when deleting profiles
• Added an option to edit the ‘Approval panel date’
• Fixed a bug displaying a practitioner-only link on the alert settings page
• Fixed a bug preventing adopters from selecting ‘Preference for single child’ in the ‘Sibling group size’ field
• Fixed a bug displaying field with no content on adopter profiles
• Fixed a bug preventing a returning adopter from setting an approval status

Practitioners involved in adoption

• Adopter practitioners within agencies with a default level of access can now set the level of access for adopters in stages, if their organisation has this feature enabled
• Improved banner messages when sending messages to practitioners within your own agency
• Improved the process of generating family finding activity reports
• Added the full name of adopters in the case listing when creating a new profile
• Added an option to edit the ‘Approval panel date’ for adopter profiles
• Fixed a bug on the adoption sufficiency dashboard
• Fixed a bug with the generation of profile exports
• Fixed a bug preventing the information regarding children living with pets from displaying on the full profile
• Fixed a bug preventing users from selecting ‘Preference for single child’ in the ‘Sibling group size’ field on an adopter profile
• Fixed a bug displaying field with no content on adopter profiles
• Fixed a bug displaying a closed discussion as open on the ‘Interest and discussions’ page
• Fixed a bug preventing practitioners from resending alerts relating to child matching profiles
• Fixed a bug displaying mandatory fields, when creating an adopter profile, without a required icon
• Fixed a bug sending obsolete emails to adopter practitioners

Practitioners involved in commissioning

• Added the full name of foster carers in the case listing when creating a new profile
• Fixed a bug preventing the creation of a universal placement request profile
• Fixed a bug preventing the creation of a residential home profile
• Fixed a bug displaying mandatory fields, when creating a foster carer profile, without a required icon
  

Release 1.15.5

Release date: May 22nd 2019

All users

• Improvements to our profile alert generation process
• Improvements to the profile data export process
• Fixed a bug with events in LA/agency area portals
• Fixed a bug displaying incorrect information in LA/agency area portals

Commissioning practitioners

• Added the ability to share a discussion without a case with another practitioner at your organisation
• Added infinite existing placements request document slots to child commissioning profiles
• Improvements to the ‘Profile activity’ page for child commissioning profiles, giving you more information about which organisations have seen the profile and their current interest status
• Fixed a bug displaying an incorrect number of discussions on the ‘Profile activity’ page for child commissioning profiles
• Fixed a bug preventing some users from printing placement requests forms for child commissioning profiles
• Fixed a bug with the filters on the ‘Search foster carers’ page

Placement providers

• Added a ‘Print’ button to child commissioning profiles for practitioners
• Fixed a bug displaying the ‘Required placement location’ incorrectly on a child commissioning profile

Adoption UK community

• Added a ‘Latest posts’ page to the Adoption UK forums
• Fixed a bug preventing some users from accessing the ‘Play date finder’
• Fixed a bug displaying usernames to certain users in the forum
• Fixed a bug preventing users from posting links in the Adoption UK forums
• Fixed a bug displaying topics in the incorrect order within a forum
• Fixed a bug with pagination on topics
• Fixed a bug preventing public forum only users from replying to ‘Chat’ messages
  

Release 1.15.4

Release date: May 1st 2019

Adoption UK community

• Public forum only users can now view/edit their community name and situation, by visiting the ‘My profile’ option in the Adoption UK menu
• Fixed a bug displaying the incorrect ‘Last activity’ for a forum/topic
• Fixed a bug displaying the incorrect profile photo for users on the Adoption UK home feed
• Fixed a bug displaying an incorrect banner on the Adoption UK archived forum

Adoption Register Wales

• Profiles within Adoption Register Wales are now required to complete all English/Welsh language translations before the profile can be made available to practitioners on Link Maker
• Fixed a number of bugs with required translations

Commissioning practitioners

• Fixed a bug preventing commissioning practitioners from accessing their ‘Alert settings’ page

Placement providers

• Fixed a bug preventing users from editing the ‘Existing child’ details for residential home profiles
• Fixed a bug with optional fields on the ‘Incoming referrals’ report generation page
• Fixed a bug preventing users from entering a regular work schedule on foster carer profiles
  

Release 1.15.3

Release date: April 29th 2019

Adoption UK community

• We have added a number of emoji’s that you can now use when posting in the Adoption UK community forums
• Adoption UK community forum threads are now displayed in the order of newest to oldest last activity
• We’ve made some improvements to the ‘Full community features’ upgrade page for public forum only users
• Fixed a bug displaying the ‘Chat’ button on public forum only profiles
• Fixed a bug displaying profile photos to public forum only users
• Fixed a bug preventing verified adopters from accessing the ‘Chat’ page
• Fixed a bug displaying the incorrect ‘Last activity’ date for forums/threads

Practitioners from Scottish agencies

• Fixed a bug preventing practitioners from Scottish agencies from seeing families outside of Scotland
  

Release 1.15.2

Release date: April 24th 2019

All users

• Fixed a bug with announcements displaying for incorrect user types
  

Adopters

Link Maker is working in partnership with Adoption UK to provide Adoption UK community features that are now live on the site. These features are an expansion of our current community features for adopters.

The newly branded Adoption UK community features include an extensive community forum moderated by the Adoption UK team, and the continued ability to advertise play dates and chat with other verified adopters.

We hope that this partnership will increase the number of community users and therefore expand the insight and resources shared within the community on Link Maker.

• Fixed a bug on the ‘Finding children’ and ‘Interest & discussions’ pages for families
• Fixed a bug preventing families from creating an account

Adoption UK community and community users

• We have added a ‘View archive’ button to the internal Adoption UK public forum page, this will open a view of the Adoption UK forum archive in a new window
• We have made the LA/agency contact name/email an optional field when registering for access to the full Adoption UK community features
• Fixed a bug preventing users from replying to topics
• Fixed a bug preventing existing community users from accessing the community chat
• Fixed a bug on the Adoption UK home description
• Fixed a bug displaying the incorrect banner message on the Adoption UK archive
• Fixed a bug preventing users from adding their Adoption UK membership details  

Release 1.15.1

Release date: March 7th 2019

All users

• Fixed a bug preventing users from commenting on a Q&A post.
• Fixed a bug preventing users from using Chat.

Adopters

• Fixed a bug that was displaying an incorrect message for adopters in the approval process on the settings page, relating to their profile being hidden.

Practitioners involved in adoption 

• Fixed a bug that was limiting the characters entered on the personality section of a sibling group adoption profile.
• Fixed a bug preventing family profiles appearing on the search page when their availability was set to consortium, RAA or a national register.

• Fixed a bug preventing users from commenting on a Q&A post.
• Fixed a bug preventing users from using Chat.

Release 1.15.0

Release date: March 6th 2019

All users

We are continuing to improve the accessibility of the site to a WCAG 2.1 AA standard. Our improvements include:

• A ‘Skip to content’ button on all pagesUse of accessible colours across the site
• Enhanced keyboard focus
• Accessible versions of graphical information
• New accessible forms

Adopters and practitioners involved in adoption

• All practitioners can now edit the profiles of adopters within their agency; adopters can also still edit their own profiles. The ability for an adopter to grant profile editing permissions to one user at a time has been removed.

Adoption Register Wales

Link Maker now provides the online platform for Adoption Register Wales, enabling social workers and adopters in Welsh agencies to work together to identify matches for children efficiently and securely. This includes the following features:

• Branded Adoption Register Wales pages for users in Welsh agencies, including a resource board and forum
• Site language option of either Welsh or English
• Email communications sent to users in both Welsh and English
• Process for practitioners in Welsh agencies to create a dual language profiles in Welsh and English
  

Release 1.14.6

Release date: February 12th 2019

All practitioners

• Added the functionality to select a postcode district as an exclusion zone.

Practitioners involved in adoption

• Added a new field to child adoption profiles, allowing practitioners to indicate when a child is in the care of a different local authority. This information is only viewable by practitioners within your la/agency or regional adoption agency.  
• Added a new field to child adoption profiles, allowing practitioners to record the date a child first entered care. This information is only viewable by practitioners within your la/agency or regional adoption agency.  
• An adopter profile, without a profile photo, can now be made available internally within your organisation or regional adoption agency. You are still unable to make the profile available to social workers everywhere until a photo has been added.