Overview

Occasionally class attendance records are not generated for classes that normally should take attendance. Teachers in the portal see their class is listed on the main page, but the Attendance button appears grayed out instead of the usual red or green. There are also no class attendance records visible in the class for that day. This article describes what to check to make sure class attendance is correctly configured for the class.

Track Class Attendance

One of the ways Veracross determines which classes should have attendance records generated is whether the “Track Class Attendance” flag is checked on a class. If a class should have class attendance taken, the “Track Class Attendance” flag must be checked. If it’s not checked, the class is not eligible to have class attendance taken. Class Attendance configuration should NOT be confused with Master Attendance configuration. If a class should ONLY be setup to take Master (a.k.a Daily) Attendance, then the “Track Class Attendance” flag should NOT be checked. If you have questions about this, please speak with your Veracross Account Manager.

To verify whether or not the flag is checked, run a Find Classes query and add in the field “Track Class Attendance”. If the box is not checked, simply check it off and update your query. You can also find the Track Class Attendance field on the ‘Other’ tab of the class and update the flag there.

After updating the flag, you can regenerate attendance for the day to have Veracross create class attendance records for the class that did not have attendance configured correctly. To add in missing class attendance records, select “Generate Attendance for Today” from the Action menu of the System homepage. As soon as this process is run, the attendance records should appear for students in the class and the teacher should now see a red attendance button for the class in their portal.

Meets Today

In addition to checking whether or not a class should take attendance at all, Veracross also checks which of those classes should take attendance on a given day. This is based on when the class has been scheduled to meet. If the class is not scheduled to meet today, attendance will not be generated for the students in the class. You can check the “Meets Today” status from a Find Classes query or from the Schedule tab of the class. Whether a class meets today is determined by two things: Class Status and Class Schedules.

Class Status

If Veracross does not think a class is meeting today, one problem could be with the Class Status. Only classes that have an ‘Active’ status could be meeting today; Future or Completed classes would never be meeting today.

The status of a class is automatically determined by the system based on the class Begin and End Dates. If today’s date falls within the range of the Begin and End Dates set on the class, the class will automatically be marked ‘Active’. Check the dates on the class either from a Find Classes query or from the Schedule tab of the class to confirm that these are set correctly.

Class Schedules

In addition to the Class Status, Class Schedules also determine if a class is meeting today. If no schedule is entered for a class, the “Meets Today” flag will say ‘No’ because Veracross does not know what day or block the class is scheduled to meet during.

Check the Schedule tab of the class to make sure there is a schedule entered for the class. If not, enter a schedule with the grading period, day(s) and block (or start/end time) the class is meeting during. These are required for the system to know when the class will be meeting. Once the class schedule is entered, update the class and run the “Generate Attendance for Today” procedure from the System drop down menu. This will re-calculate the “Meets Today” flag for the class and generate class attendance records if the “Meets Today” flag on the class now says ‘Yes’.

Group Events

Group events can determine whether or not class attendance (or Master Attendance) records are generated for the day.

Field Trips

If an entire class is scheduled to be out on a field trip, attendance will not be generated for that class for the day. Veracross uses Group Events to determine if any classes are on a field trip that day.

Any group event that is a “Field Trip” type will dismiss students from school. The students who should be dismissed are set via the “Primary Group” field and “Groups” tab on the event. Any classes/groups selected in these places will be excused for the field trip event. If an entire class group is selected for the field trip, class attendance for that class will not be generated.

If a “Leave Class” time is entered on the group event, the students will be dismissed as of that time. If no “Leave Class” time is entered, Veracross assumes the class is out for the entire day and no attendance is generated for classes that are linked to that Group Event. Learn more about setting up Group Events in Veracross.

No School Events

If a “No School” or “Holiday” event was created for today, Veracross does not expect any class or master attendance within the division to be meeting that day. It is important to NOT use the “Holiday” event type for holidays that do not excuse students from school (e.g. Valentine’s Day, St. Patrick’s Day, etc.)

These event types can be filtered to a specific school level, campus, or grade level so that the events do not impact all students. To filter, the user must use the School Level, Campus, or Grade Level drop-down fields. Note that using individual classifications instead of the drop-down fields will not have the intended effect, as the integration with attendance is specifically tied to the School Level, Campus, or Grade Level drop-down fields.

Early Dismissals

If an “Early Dismissal” event type is set on a group event, Veracross assumes that any classes that are normally scheduled to meet after the start time of the Early Dismissal event will NOT be meeting that day. If your school has all classes meet for an abbreviated length of time on early dismissal days, you may want to set up an Alternate Block Schedule day to use, or use an “All School” group event type and simply set the Description of the event to “Early Dismissal” so parents are aware there is an early dismissal that day.

If one of these Group Event types was set up to mistakenly excuse students from class, update the Group Event to reflect what is happening at school today and re-run the “Generate Attendance for Today” menu option from Action menu on the System homepage. This will cause Veracross re-calculate which students should be expected at school today as well as which classes are expected to meet and generate attendance based on this updated information.