Setting up Multi-Day Attendance Code Categories​

Multi-day attendance is very useful in informing parents and guardians when a absence or tardy threshold has been reached. Some schools only count 1 attendance code and there are queries for these situations. Other schools include all codes of a type such as all absent codes, there are queries for that as well. But most often schools want to include some but not all codes of a specific type. 

1. A
2. AU
3. AE
4. ISS
5. OSS
6. FT

However when calculating multi-day attendance they only count A, AU, AE codes. Since it's more than 1 code we can't use the count by code options. Since there are some absent codes that count and others that don't we can simply use the all absent or all present codes options. Instead we use the code category option.

Will setting up additional code categories affect other operations?

No. Reports that are based on specific code categories may require specific codes to be in specific categories. Since we aren't touching those we aren't harming anything that uses other categories such as Tardy. Instead we make brand new categories just for this purpose which allows us to change which codes count as we see fit without affecting anything else.

Are there recommended categories?

Yes. We recommend setting up 2 categories per school, though you may set up more if you have more than 2 scenarios to account for. The 2 code categories are MD_Att and MD_Tar. We also recommend making them 29 and 30 in the sort order so they are always at the bottom of the list.

How are code categories created?

1. In PowerSchool switch to the school where the category will be created. These are not created at district level so you may need to do this multiple times for multiple schools.
2. Navigate to School > Attendance Code Categories
3. You will now see the code categories that are already set up for this school. Click New
4. Enter the information for the first code category
   1. Name = Multi-Day Attendance
   2. Code = MD_Att
   3. Description = Use this code in multi-day absence calculations
   4. Sort order for display: 29
5. Click Submit
6. You should now see your new category in the list. Repeat steps 3-5 for any other categories you may need.

Apply attendance codes to the new categories

Once the code categories are created you can now assign the appropriate codes to them. These can be altered anytime as you see fit and since they will only be used for 1 purpose altering them does not harm any other processes.

1. In PowerSchool switch to the school where the category will be created. These are not created at district level so you may need to do this multiple times for multiple schools.
2. Navigate to School > Attendance Codes
3. You will now see a list of attendance codes. Click on the first code you wish to assign to the new code category
4. Your new categories will be listed with checkboxes next to them. Check the box(es) for the categories this code should apply to
5. Click Submit
6. Repeat steps 3-5 for all other codes that should count in one of the categories

How are the new code categories used?

Several of our PowerQueries are set up to group by code category. With the new categories that are only used for attendance notifications we can tell the query to only export where the code category matches the designated value. This makes it so that the query only counts the codes you want it to count and ignores the others. Since you can change it by adding/removing the category from different codes anytime you need it also saves you having to edit the export each time a change is required. Simply editing a code's setup corrects the export.