Configure attendance options

The attendance tool helps districts and schools organize their attendance information. Once you set up your attendance policies, you can provide parents with a list of excused absences to choose from whether they are communicating by phone or email.

This article will show you how it works, starting with how your users see the attendance details and then how you can configure these settings the way that you would like. 

How students and parents view attendance

Once you configure the settings in this article, Parent and Student users can view and manage attendance in their Personal File account profile. 

• Students will see the Attendance tab on their Personal File.

• Parents can find their students' attendance by clicking into the Students tab on their Personal File profile window and then clicking on each student. Once clicking on the student, they will see the exact same view as their students see in the Personal File window. 
  
• Summary: Once in the Attendance tab, users receive a Summary of overall attendance.
• Details: Here, students and parents can enter certain criteria to populate specific date range or term attendance
• Attendance file: Clicking this button allows them to download a PDF version of their attendance based on the criteria set in Details. 

Parents can provide excused absence reasons over the phone

Messages XR Enterprise has a great absence reporting feature to enhance efficiency and ensure accurate attendance tracking in your district or school. Here's how it works:

• When parents receive an attendance call from your system, they have options that they can do to communicate the reason for the absence. Here's one example of how you can assign a digit to an absence reason if you choose: 
  • Press 1 if your child is sick
  • Press 2 for bereavement situations
  • Press 3 if your child is on a field trip
  • Press 4 for other reasons
• The system can switch to microphone mode, allowing the parent to verbally state the reason for a child's absence.
• Once the call is completed, a detailed report will be sent to the designated school secretary, including a breakdown of responses and clickable links to hear recorded reasons. 

Configure attendance settings 

You as the district administrator can configure the settings so that you provide a quick and easy way for your parents and families to communicate the reason for the absence. Here's how it works: 

• Navigate to Settings > Global Settings. Scroll down to Attendance.

• School: Select each school in the dropdown to configure its Attendance settings. 
• Excuses: Check the box next to the options you'd like to apply to this specific campus. 
  • Allow parents to excuse absences over the phone
  • Automatically email excuses to: Add an email address where the excuses will be emailed to.
  • Allow parents to record an excuse over the phone
  • Let the parent choose from a pre-defined list
    • Allow parents to choose from these excuses: Click Add to add excuses. 

Add excuses assigned to a digit

If you select the box "Allow parents to choose from these excuses" be sure to add the excuses that they will hear and need to select. 

• Click the Add button to add an excuse.
• Confirm the correct campus is displaying at the top.
• Decide if you want to Select a pre-populated excuse OR type custom excuses that your families will be given: 
  • Select excuse: Choose from the dropdown one built-in or pre-populated excuse
    • Add your excuses one by one, then you will see them populate below. 
    • Change the order of your excuses. 
    • Select "Let me type in my own excuse" so that families may enter an excuse that might not fit into the other categories. Then you will enter in a Custom excuse in the next field. 
      
  • Custom excuse: This is a great field for adding an event that many students may be going to so that families can call in on their behalf. A few examples may be: graduation practice, athletics events, or other special school-wide events going on. 
• Move Up/Move Down: Change the order of your excuses that populate. 
• Record Audio button: Click this button to upload a pre-recorded file in the format .wav or .aiff that will be read when the parent is given the opportunity to select the excuse for the absence.
• Click Save or Apply to and then select several schools to apply these settings in bulk to multiple schools at the same time.