Overview

Veracross understands attendance in two categories: master attendance and class attendance. Schools opt to track either master or class, or a combination of the two attendance management options.

Master Attendance

Master attendance is the student’s attendance status for the entire school day. Once it is set it will become the student’s default attendance status for all his/her subsequent classes for the day (if the school tracks class attendance). Master attendance is defined by the school, but is configured by Veracross, usually at the time of Implementation.

Master Attendance Generation

Master attendance is generated for students if the following things are true:

• the attendance date is between the start date and the end date of any grading period besides the ALL grading period
• the person must either:
  • have the Student role or
  • have the Program Student role and be enrolled in at least one class with the "Academic" course type 
• the grade level must meet on the attendance date's day of the week
• the attendance date must be on or after the student's enrollment date

Classes do not need to be meeting for master attendance to generate if all of the above statements are true.

Master Attendance Classes

Master attendance classes are dynamically configured by Veracross to set attendance taken for the class in Portals as master attendance instead of class attendance. These classes are usually a homeroom/advisory class or the first period/block of the day.

To determine which classes should be master attendance classes, schools should communicate the set of logic behind that determination to their account manager. This logic is used to populate the “Meets Today” field on the class record with the appropriate value for that day. This is a cached field that is refreshed nightly during the generate attendance process. Through this process, all classes that should meet today are evaluated — and depending upon configuration — the field is set accordingly. If the field is set to “Yes, Master Attendance Taken”, then the teacher is presented with the master attendance interface instead of the class attendance interface. When attendance is taken via the master attendance interface, the selected status is applied to both the student's master attendance and to their class attendance for that class.

Because schools cannot directly see the master attendance class logic in Veracross, there are school level specific queries to help determine whether the correct classes are designated to take master attendance on a given day:

• Today’s Master Attendance Classes lists classes that take master attendance for the current day.
  •  located in the “Today” section of the Attendance homepage.
  • Lower School // Middle School // Upper School
• Master Attendance Classesallows users to select a specific date in the function field parameters so they can view the master attendance classes for a date in the future.
  • located in the “Reports” section of the Attendance homepage.
  • Lower School // Middle School // Upper School
  • Note: you cannot use the Portals date navigation for this purpose — since part of the logic depends on the “Meets Today” field — which is reset each night for the upcoming day. 

Class Attendance

Class attendance is the student’s attendance status for a single class period during the day. A student will receive a class attendance record for each class that has been configured to track class attendance. Class attendance is usually taken by the teacher through the Attendance tab in the Teacher Portal. From the Teacher Portal, teachers are able to view the attendance status for their students for the day and manage any exceptions as necessary (e.g. student is tardy).

Tracking Class Attendance

The default configuration for tracking class attendance in Veracross is to allow each class to track attendance. Tracking class attendance is specified from the Other tab on a class record. Toggle the “Track Class Attendance” field to “yes” for all classes that should maintain class attendance records in addition to master attendance records. Schools can manage exceptions to this default configuration by finding the classes for which they do not wish to track class attendance and unchecking the “Track Class Attendance” checkbox. Additionally, schools can also manage the class attendance’s status impact on master attendance using the “Trigger Imperfect Attendace” toggle field. If this field is set to “yes,” a change in the class attendance will trigger the master attendance to change to “imperfect class attendance” (see below for more details). If schools do not wish the class attendance status to affect master attendance, set this field to “no.” In most cases, this should be done for after-school classes or athletic teams whose attendance shouldn’t impact master attendance.

If a class has been configured to track attendance, a class attendance record will be created for all students enrolled in the class. This record is accessible from both the Attendance tab on the Class record and on the student’s record from the Attendance summary tab.

Locking Attendance

To prevent attendance records from being changed in the Teacher Portal, Axiom users can lock a specific class attendance or master attendance record from a student’s Attendance detail record. Master attendance is locked using the “lock attendance” toggle under the Status section on the Attendance Detail. Class attendance is locked using the “lock attendance” checkbox in the specific class row on the Attendance Detail. Locked attendance is reflected in the Teacher Portal by the lock icon.

Historical Attendance

Master and class attendance are tracked historically and may be accessed at any time using the “Find Master Attendance” or “Find Class Attendance” queries from the Attendance homepage in Axiom. Historical attendance records may be changed as needed from Axiom and by teachers from the Teacher Portal. Only attendance records with a status that is not present are stored long-term. Master Attendance is purged after 60 days if the student is marked as present and has no additional notes added to the record.

Occurrences That May Affect Master or Class Attendance Status Changes

• Event Types
  Certain event types impact students’ attendance statuses. Event types such as athletic events or field trips will change all impacted students attendance status to “not expected.” Event types such as no school or holiday are configured to not generate attendance records for that day. Learn more about how events impact student attendance.
• Imperfect Class Attendance
  Imperfect Class Attendance results when there is a discrepancy between the Master Attendance status set for that day and the Class Attendance status for one or more class periods. A common example of this is when a student is present for the day (master), but shows up late to a class (tardy). When this occurs, the students master attendance status will switch to “imperfect class attendance” and their class attendance status will remain whatever it was set at (tardy, absent, etc.). Learn more about managing Imperfect Class Attendance in Axiom.