zOld - Setting up Current Day Attendance Exports - Daily Attendance - Manual Method

The current day attendance export is used when a school would like to send automated messages when a student is absent and/or tardy. Exports are set up at district office and the same file can be used to import to many different buildings if needed. There are 2 basic current day attendance exports, meeting and daily. Because daily attendance is recorded differently than meeting attendance they require different exports. Here we will talk about setting up daily attendance exports.

My Teachers only take daily attendance

Actually your teachers DON'T take daily attendance, they take meeting attendance once per day. Daily attendance refers to a specific type of attendance and teachers can't enter it from PowerTeacher. If the teachers are entering the attendance it's meeting attendance, even if it only happens once per day. If this is the case for you please refer to the Meeting Attendance version of this article for accurate instructions for setting up your export.

Setting up Daily Attendance exports

The export should be set up in DEM from District Office. For information on getting to DEM read Getting to Data Export Manager (DEM)

1. Category = Additional Data Sets
2. Export From = BrightArrow Attendance Daily - Default
   1. BrightArrow Attendance Daily (w/o the - Default) may be used if you have something custom in your attendance
3. Fields -> Select the fields in this specific order
   1. School_Abbreviation
   2. Student_Number
   3. StudentPers_Guid
   4. StudentFName
   5. StudentLName
   6. Grade_Level
   7. Att_Code
   8. Att_Date
   9. Absent_or_Tardy -> Returns blank, Absent, Tardy for all records. 
   10. Server_Date -> Date/time in Seattle WA at the time of export. Used when needing to verify the information was exported today
   11. Transaction_Date -> Date/time the attendance was last updated. 
   12. Optional: SchoolDay_Plus1/2/3 -> These fields calculate 1, 2 or 3 in session days into the future compared to the att_date. Used if you need to send attendance for previous in session days so you can say things like send attendance where today is the 2nd in session day since the att_date
4. Click Next
   
5. First filter
   1. Filter By: Att_Date
      *Replace with SchoolDay_Plus1/2/3 if using sending for past attendance
   2. Value: = From Date of Export - 0 (this is saying the date is the same as the export date)
6. Additional Optional Filters
   1. Att_Code = UA (or A, or 2A, etc) -> Only use if 1 and only 1 attendance code is to ever be used
   2. Absent_or_Tardy #   -> used when you have at least 1 absent and at least 1 tardy code you'd like to use, excludes present attendance that isn't tardy
   3. Absent_or_Tardy = Tardy -> Send any tardy code
   4. Absent_or_Tardy = Absent -> Send any absent code
7. Click Next
   Note: Before the next section becomes editable the entire template must run. This is not a quick process and the larger your district the longer this will take.
   
8. Export File Name = attendance_daily.txt
9. Line Delimiter = CR/LF
10. Character Set = UTF-8
11. Click Save Template
    
12. Name = BrightArrow - Attendance Daily
13. Click Save as New
    
14. Switch to the My Templates tab
15. Find the row for the new template and click the calendar button to schedule this template. If you do not see the calendar button or the Scheduled System Templates tab you don't have permission to schedule exports. For more information on that read Enabling DEM Scheduling
    
16. Days to Execute = Mon, Tue, Wed, Thu, Fri. These should match your normal school days. If your school is Sunday - Thursday then adjust accordingly.
17. When to Execute = pick a time 5 to 10 minutes before you want the message to go out. There needs to be some processing time for PowerSchool to generate the file and send it to us. If you want the message to go at 10:10am then export at 10:00am.
18. Send Output To = BrightArrow
19. Email Completion Report To (optional) = your email or an email to keep a record of if the export and file transfer was successful or if it failed. 
20. Click Save
    
21. Repeat 14-20 for as many times as you need to schedule this template. The template is set up district wide so you can schedule the exports for different times for different schools. Just let us know which time to import which school and we'll handle the rest.
22. If you scheduled the export multiple times you may want to go into the scheduled copy of the template and re-save with the time replacing the word (Copy). If you do use 24hr clock instead of 12 so that it sorts correctly in the list.
23. Your export will go at the scheduled time and day(s). To send a copy now so that we can get started setting up the import of the file you can click the Send Now button which looks like the Play button from DVD player
    
24. Let us know that the file is ready so that we can set up your import