Attendance Preferences

On this page:

Use the Attendance Preferences page to specify general attendance preferences. Preferences may be set for each school within your district and are retained when the next year's term is created.

Enable Enter Attendance Link on Student Pages Menu

To enable the Enter Attendance link to appear in the student pages menu, you must select Meeting or Interval as one of the attendance recording methods and set it as the default attendance recording page. You can use the Enter Attendance link as a shortcut to the Edit Meeting Attendance page or the Edit Interval Attendance page.

Set General Attendance Preferences

On the start page, choose School in the main menu.
Click Preferences.
Select the Recording settings.
Set the Meeting Attendance Clock In / Clock Out Thresholds:
- If Clock In/Clock Out Attendance is enabled, you can use the Meeting Attendance Clock In/Clock Out Thresholds section to configure Tardy and Absent thresholds.
- If using Percentage, up to two decimals may be entered. If more than two decimals are entered, the value is rounded up or down depending on the value.
- If both thresholds are set to the same Threshold Type, the value entered for one threshold needs to take into account the value entered for the other threshold. When configured, attendance codes are suggested within the Clock in/Clock Out entry based upon the time missed on thresholds (minutes or percentage).
- If both thresholds are configured, Absent is evaluated first, and then Tardy. Thresholds are per school per year and copied to the next school year when the next year's term is created.
Select the Calculating and Reporting options.
Select the Daily Attendance Calculations options.
To have calculations performed nightly, enter information in the Consecutive Absences Notification section.
Select the Incident Actions options.
Click Submit.

Attendance Preferences Details

Recording Section

Field	Description
Attendance recording methods	Select the appropriate methods that apply (any combination of the four options is valid): Meeting to record attendance by meeting. Enable Clock In/Clock Out to clock a student in and out of school to calculate a student's absence amount based on actual minutes attended. For example, if a student is pulled out of school early (mid-period), you can clock the student out of school and have the partial number of minutes attended in the period count towards the student's minutes attended for the day. Daily to record attendance by day. Time to record attendance by entering a time value. Interval to record attendance according to a specified time interval. Interval Duration (in Minutes): Interval attendance is primarily intended for alternative education programs that require attendance to be taken every hour. When using Interval Attendance mode, the number of opportunities for which attendance can be recorded during a given class is determined by dividing the bell time for the class by the interval duration. For instance, if a class is 90 minutes long and the interval duration is 60 minutes, then there will be two opportunities provided to take attendance. The first is at the beginning of class and the second is after 60 minutes has gone by. The default for this field is 60 minutes. This setting affects which tabs appear on the Attendance page.
Meeting and daily attendance bridge	When using both Meeting and Daily attendance modes, this setting allows you to synchronize attendance records based on a bridge period. You can define a bridge period in each bell schedule. To create and synchronize Daily attendance records based on the bridge period, select One-Way. To keep the corresponding meeting attendance record synchronized whenever a change is made to a daily attendance record, select Two-Way. It is not necessary to bridge Meeting and Daily attendance. Daily attendance can be managed manually. However, bridging attendance does provide a convenient way of automatically creating and maintaining attendance when both attendance modes are in use. Bridging attendance only functions with sections and section enrollments, which reside in the same school.
Audit attendance records	Select to enable auditing of attendance. After an attendance record is initially created, PowerSchool keeps track of any change, its previous value, and who made the change.
Default attendance page	Choose the default attendance page to display when viewing student attendance. The items available vary based on the attendance recording methods you select. This setting affects which tab appears as the default tab on the Attendance page, as well as incident action attendance.
Disable Group by Track for Teacher Attendance	By default, this setting is enabled. When enabled, Group By Track appears on the Record Meeting Attendance [Section] page within the PowerSchool SIS Teacher portal, the PowerSchool SIS Substitute portal, and the PowerSchool SIS Admin portal. By default, Group By Track is Off. Teachers and admins can switch to On based on their needs. The user's setting preference is retained for each user. When set to On, students are grouped by the track to which they are assigned. If a student is not assigned to a track, they appear under the No Assigned Track section. Tracks can be assigned via Modify Info or by setting the Student Field Value for a selection of students.
Enable multiple character attendance codes	Select this option to allow users to create multiple-character attendance codes.
Prevent Attendance page submit if blank attendance is used (PowerTeacher)	Select this option to prevent teachers from submitting attendance in PowerTeacher if blank attendance is used.
Number of days teachers may alter attendance in PowerSchool Teacher or Schoology before the current date	Indicate how far back teachers can alter attendance in the PowerSchool SIS Teacher portal and Schoology. The default is set to 14 days. This setting does not apply to the PowerSchool SIS Admin portal.
Number of days teachers may alter attendance in PowerSchool Teacher or Schoology after the current date	Indicate how far forward teachers can alter attendance in the PowerSchool SIS Teacher portal and Schoology. The default is set to 7. This setting does not apply to the PowerSchool SIS Admin portal.
Show Saturday and Sunday on attendance views	Select to display Saturday and Sunday on attendance views. This is typically not needed unless you have in-session days on weekends where student attendance marks need to be displayed.
Start of Week	Indicate the day of the week that you want attendance and the bell schedule to start by choosing Sunday or Monday. If you did not select Show Saturday and Sunday, then the week will start on Monday regardless of the selected day.

Calculating and Reporting Section

Field	Description
Calculation accuracy	Enter the number of decimal places to use when calculating attendance values.
Count Meeting attendance recorded at another school for students enrolled at this school	If a student is enrolled in a class at another school, and there is attendance associated with that class, select this option to include this attendance when calculating Average Daily Attendance (ADA).
Count these codes for period conversion	This setting determines what is counted and subsequently used as the value for looking up the day's attendance, specifically for Period conversion. Choose Presents if your school calculates attendance using the number of periods a student is present in a day. Choose Absences if your school calculates attendance using the number of periods a student is absent in a day.
Round or truncate	Indicate how you want the system to handle long decimals that exceed the maximum when calculating attendance.

Consecutive Absences Notification Section

Field	Description
Enable Notification	Select to enable the Consecutive Absences Notification. Once enabled, consecutive absences for in-session calendar days are automatically calculated as part of the nightly process. A notification appears on the Attendance pages identifying students who have been absent for an extended period of consecutive days (as indicated by the Notification Threshold).
Minimum Days Stored	Enter the minimum number of consecutive (in session calendar) days a student must be absent for a record to be generated in the ConsecutiveDaysAlert table. Defaults to 1.
Maximum Days Stored	Enter the number of in-session calendar days earlier than the current system date that will be searched per student for consecutive absences if the Minimum Days Stored value is met. Defaults to 20.
Notification Threshold	Enter the minimum number of consecutive (in session calendar) days a student must be absent to trigger the notification. The value must be between the Minimum Days Stored and Maximum Days Stored values. Defaults to 1.

Incident Actions Section

Field	Description
Enable Writing Attendance from Incident Actions	Select to enable incident action attendance.
Restrict Attendance Codes to Mapped Incident Action Codes	Select to restrict attendance codes to mapped incident action codes. If selected, only mapped attendance codes may be entered when taking attendance. If left blank, any attendance code may be entered when taking attendance. Only applicable if Enable Writing Attendance from Incident Actions is selected.

Set Quick Lookup Preferences

The Quick Lookup page displays absences, tardies, final grades, and citizenship codes for each student in the following areas of PowerSchool:

Quick Lookup page in the PowerSchool SIS Admin portal and the PowerSchool SIS Teacher portal
Grades and Attendance page in the PowerSchool SIS Student and Parent portal
PowerSchool SIS Admin Mobile

You can choose whether to count attendance for sections that meet multiple times per day as single or multiple instances. For example, if a student misses a class that meets during 2 periods per day, you can specify whether that student's Quick Lookup page displays a 1 or 2 for the number of absences for that class. This setting also affects how the number of absences appears in PowerTeacher Pro Gradebook.

On the start page, choose School in the main menu.
Click Quick Lookup Preferences.
Select Enabled Parent/Student to enable the display of final grades and citizenship codes in PowerSchool SIS Student and Parent portal and PowerSchool Mobile.
Select Enable Teacher to enable the display of final grades and citizenship codes in the PowerSchool SIS Teacher portal.
Select Enable Admin to enable the display of final grades and citizenship codes in the PowerSchool SIS administrator portal.
Indicate the Source of Data by choosing:
- Gradebook (Current) to display the final grade and/or citizenship codes that currently exist in the teacher's PowerTeacher Pro Gradebook
  Historical (Stored) to display the final grade and/or citizenship codes from the student's historical file or after the completion of a grading term. Store Codes that only exist as historical grades will always come from the historical file.
Select Count Multi-Period Meeting Attendance Once Per Day to count only one attendance instance for a class that meets more than once per day. Clear to count attendance for each period.
Select Show Citizenship Grade to display the citizenship grade on the Quick Lookup page.
Click Submit.