How to Change the Attendance Not Taken Filters

Minimum version: BrightArrow Base 2 v9.2.1

The attendance not taken filters allow schools to set up their own business logic for which teachers to send reminders for attendance. The default settings can be set at the district level but each school can also set their own settings if they need something different. The recommendation is to set the default at the district that represents the most common settings and only change the individual buildings that need something different.

PowerQueries that use these filters

• BrightArrow Attendance Taken - from Filter

Getting to the filter settings

1. Navigate to System Management > Data > BrightArrow Settings


2. Click on Filters. If doing this from District Office (shown below), then select the filters in the row corresponding to the district or specific school you wish to alter.

3. The filter options will slide in. Click on Lookup Rules
4. Lookup Rules contains the various settings that can change by school, organized by topic. Click on Attendance
5. Find the Attendance Not Taken Reminder Settings section

6. Use the "Include this school" toggle to include or exclude the school from the Attendance Not Taken Reminders as needed. 
7. Click the drop-down arrow in the Attendance Not Taken Reminder Settings (Teachers) row to see additional options. 

What are the options?

Override the default attendance not taken for this school: Toggle on to customize settings for the specific school building. Toggle off to use the default/district-wide settings. Note that this option is not available if you're changing this for the District level because the district settings are the default. This option is available only when overriding the district-wide settings for a particular school building. 

Attendance Date: What date should the export be sending data for? Most of the time schools will want to send reminders for the current day's attendance but sometimes there are reasons to send the previous school day's attendance instead.

• Default: Current Day
• Other Options:
  • 1 Day Back -> 1 in session day back. Will calculate the based on school in session, not calendar days
  • 2 Days Back -> 2 in session days back. 

Classes to Include: Which periods should be included in the export? If you are only sending at the end of the day, then anything will do but if you are sending earlier you may only want to send for periods that have started or maybe you want to wait until the period has ended before including.

• Default: Periods that have started
• Other Options:
  • All Periods -> Include all periods regardless of when they meet that day
  • Periods that have ended -> Only include a period after the time has expired. In this method you can send an export 5 minutes into period 3 without including period 3, giving teachers longer to enter attendance.
  • Current Period Only -> Only check the periods that have started but not ended at the time the query runs. This means you do not need to name the period, if it's happening at the time of execution it's included and if it's not happening at that time then it's ignored. This is useful for schools who wish to only send one reminder per period+section even if the teacher doesn't fix it after the first reminder.
    • You will want to schedule the export for every period you want to report on in this scenario. That may be true for other scenarios too but absolutely is in this scenario.
  • Bridge Period Only ->

Label to use for periods: Would you like periods listed as the period abbreviation or the period name?

• Default: Periods Abbreviation -> The period abbreviation, same as parents see in the parent portal (ex: HR or P2)
• Other Options:
  • Period Name -> The long name of the period (ex: Homeroom or Period 2)
  • Course Name -> The name of the course that's meeting at that time. A single period can have any number of courses but only one will be in question per record (ex: during Period 2 the student is in Algebra class, so the course name is Algebra)

Exclude or Include Co-Teachers: Should co-teachers also get reminders or just the main teacher?

• Default: All assigned Teachers -> Main teacher plus all co-teachers
• Other Options:
  • Main teachers only -> Only the main teacher from the sections table, no co-teachers

Once you've made your changes, click the submit button at the bottom of the window to save them.

I do not wish to include certain classes

The query will automatically exclude any section that:

• Is not in session that day
• Does not have any students
• Section is marked Exclude from Attendance
• Course is marked Exclude from Attendance

I have a school that wants different settings from the rest of the district

If you have different schools needing different settings, you can do that as well. First set up the district default by changing the filters in the District row. That will become the default for all schools that are not being overridden. 

Once that is done, go to the school that needs different settings and click on Filters for that school. At the very top you will see "Default Settings From:". Change that to "Do not link" to be completely independent of the district settings. If another school already has the correct settings, you may also choose that school's abbreviation in the drop down and the two schools will be linked making one school use the other school's settings so you only need to make changes once. Note that the "Default Settings From" dropdown will apply the filters to all the options showing in the Filters window. If you only want to change the Attendance settings, this option is not needed. Instead, follow steps #2-7 as detailed above.