How to Change the Current Day Attendance Settings

Minimum version: BrightArrow Base 2 v23.01.31

The current day attendance settings allow schools to set up their own business logic for what attendance warrants a message each day so that notifications can be sent to the student and/or parent. 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 Daily - from Filter 1
BrightArrow Attendance Daily - from Filter 2
BrightArrow Attendance Meeting - from Filter 1
BrightArrow Attendance Meeting - from Filter 2

Getting to the filter settings

Navigate to System Management > Data > BrightArrow Settings

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

The filter options will slide in. Click on Lookup Rules
Lookup Rules contains the various settings that can change by school organized by topic. Click on Attendance
Find the Current Day Attendance Settings section

Use the "Include this school" toggle to include or exclude the school from the Current Day Attendance reminders as needed.
Turn ON the toggle to "Override the default current attendance settings for this school" to override the district settings

What are the options?

How many school days to wait: Normally people send attendance for that same day. Sometimes, such as during lockdown or when a school is virtual, there is a need to send attendance for a previous day. Here you can change if it's today's attendance or the previous in session day's attendance.

Default: Report the day of attendance -> Today's export is for today's attendance
Other Options:
- Report the 1st school day after attendance -> 1 in session day back. Will calculate the based on school in session, not calendar days
- Report the 2nd school day after attendance -> 2 in session days back
- Report the 3rd school day after attendance -> 3 in session days back

Label to use for periods: For meeting attendance we put the periods in [[field5]]. Would you like them listed as the period abbreviation or the period name?

Default: Period 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)

Attendance Codes: Comma separate the attendance codes to use for each filter.

Default: None > Nothing in the box means all codes
Other Options:
- absent -> Any code marked as an absent in the code's settings
- tardy-> Any code marked as a tardy in the code's settings
- A, T, any other attendance code -> Specify the specific codes to use
SPECIAL: Comma separate values to include more than 1 code
- ex: AU,tardy would mean if the attendance code is AU or is a tardy then include that attendance record

Min instances in one day needed before including: Meeting attendance only. For schools that only send when the student has more than one absences that day.

Default: 1 -> Any attendance that meets the other requirements is included
Other Options:
- 2-5 -> Only students who have at least this many attendance records that meet the other criteria are included. If they have fewer that day they are not included.

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

Why are there two sets of category filters?

Many schools have multiple situations within the same building such as sending certain codes for tardies and other codes for absences in separate messages. Or maybe one set of codes for daily attendance and another for meeting attendance. Having two sets of filters allows for schools who need more than one setup.

Why do some options not fall under filter 1 or filter 2?

These options apply to both and make it so you don't have to fill them out for both situations.

How does the PowerQuery know which filters to use?

There are two sets of filters and two attendance types (daily and meeting) giving four possible options. To make setting up the exports easy we created four PowerQueries, each one for 1 scenario.

If you want to use filter 1 settings for daily attendance use the PowerQuery BrightArrow Attendance Daily - from Filter 1
If you want to use filter 2 settings for daily attendance use the PowerQuery BrightArrow Attendance Daily - from Filter 2
If you want to use filter 1 settings for meeting attendance use the PowerQuery BrightArrow Attendance Meeting - from Filter 1
If you want to use filter 2 settings for meeting attendance use the PowerQuery BrightArrow Attendance Meeting - from Filter 2

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.