We’re excited to introduce the revamped attendance module, offering schools a more streamlined and centralized way to manage attendance settings. With these updates, attendance configurations have been moved to the school level, allowing administrators to define attendance categories that apply across all curriculums, with unique attendance codes assigned for specific curriculums. Additionally, we have introduced enhanced options for marking homeroom attendance and calculating overall attendance percentages. Read this article to learn more about these updates.

We have moved attendance-related configurations from the programme/curriculum level to the school level for a more streamlined experience.

Under school-wide configurations on the admin portal, you will find a card for 'Attendance settings'.

On the landing page, you will see the following tabs in the left pane:

Let’s dive in to understand each of these settings in detail!

The Setup assistant page serves as a central hub, guiding you through the essential steps required to set up and customize the attendance module for your school.

Each step on this page represents a core area of the attendance setup, and you can directly manage these configurations by clicking on the respective buttons.

In this article, we’ll explore attendance-specific configurations. Refer to these articles for Timetable setup and Module settings.

Attendance categories have been redefined and are now treated as groups. These categories serve as classifications to track and report student presence or absence. Each category can have multiple attendance codes (formerly known as attendance categories) for marking attendance.

Attendance codes will be reflected in the attendance module within each class, allowing all educators and the homeroom advisor to mark attendance against them. These denote the attendance status of each student for a specific day or class.

To configure attendance categories and codes, follow these steps:

1. Navigate to the ‘Attendance categories’ tab under the Attendance settings.

2. To add a new category, click on the plus icon and select the ‘Create an attendance category’ option.

3. Define an attendance category by providing a title and description.

4. Within each category, create specific attendance codes using the plus icon(in the previous screen) or click on the ‘Create a code’ option.

5. Give a title to the attendance code, tag it to one of the attendance categories, and assign a colour and abbreviation to the code for easy identification.

6. By checking the ‘Present in campus’ option, you can mark the student as physically present in the school for the created attendance code. Click ‘Next’ to continue.

7. On the next screen, select the curriculum(s) it is applicable for. Additionally, you can assign an attendance value of up to 1 to the code individually for each curriculum. The values you assign here will directly impact the calculation of students' overall attendance. The overall presence will be calculated by multiplying the contribution of each code with their associated attendance values.

8. Next, choose whether or not you wish to send an email to the family when the student’s attendance is marked against this code. You can do this individually for each curriculum. Click ‘Save’ once you are done.

Once the attendance codes are created, all configurations will be clearly represented on the landing page. By clicking on the checkmark in the ‘Emails’ column, you can view and edit the curriculums for which these notifications are enabled.

When curriculums have different configurations for an attribute, such as different attendance values assigned for specific curriculums, the text ‘Multiple values’ will appear next to it. You can click on this text to view details. Use the pencil icon to make any changes as needed.

Furthermore, if you want to make changes to an attendance category, click on the three-dot menu to edit or delete it. The ‘Delete category’ option will only be enabled when there is no attendance marked against any of the codes within that category. When deleting an attendance category all the associated attendance codes will also be removed.

💡Please note that the first attendance category, with the default name - ‘Present’, cannot be deleted.

In case, you wish to modify or delete an existing attendance code, simply click on the 3-dots menu and make the necessary changes. You cannot delete a code if attendance has already been marked against it.

The attendance codes created here will be visible at the educator’s end. They can use appropriate codes while marking attendance for each student.

With the revamped attendance module, school administrators can now choose between daily, period-wise, or combined attendance marking for each curriculum. They can also set a start date for when attendance marking should begin and enable automatic marking of unmarked students to ensure complete records. Let’s understand these features one by one!

Under the ‘Attendance recording’ section, you can define the frequency of recording attendance for each curriculum. Click on the curriculum of your choice and use the first option to choose between daily attendance, period-based attendance, or both. When both are selected, the system activates a combined method of marking attendance.

The configuration chosen here will directly affect whether teachers record attendance once a day, once in each period, or both. This will also determine what the attendance dashboard looks like for teachers, students, and family members.

This method is suitable for schools that take attendance once per day, marking whether students are present or absent for the full day.

In this case, the homeroom adviser or class teacher will mark attendance once every day for their students.

This method is ideal for schools that require attendance to be tracked for individual periods or classes.

In this case, attendance will be marked for students in every period by the teacher responsible for each class period.

💡Please note that for marking period-wise attendance, you will need to create schedules. Refer to this article to learn all about schedule creation. Furthermore, teachers must claim their teaching periods in each class to be able to mark period-wise attendance. Refer this article to learn more about it.

As an admin, you can enable a combined attendance marking method for a curriculum, allowing for comprehensive tracking of both daily and period-wise attendance. This method is useful for schools that want to maintain overall daily attendance while also recording attendance for each individual period throughout the day.

You can set up this method by selecting both Daily and Period-wise attendance options as shown below.

In the combined method for marking attendance, by default, both types of attendance (daily and period attendance) need to be marked separately by the educators. However, you may choose to use one of the periods as a homeroom period to link the attendance of that period to the daily attendance. Let’s understand both of these scenarios further:

In the combined method, if you choose not to link a homeroom period to represent daily attendance, both types of attendance (daily and period-wise) will need to be marked separately by educators. This means that teachers are responsible for marking attendance in each class period as well as the overall daily attendance (which may typically be marked by the homeroom teacher).

For example:

While the combined method can function without linking a homeroom period, you have the option to designate a homeroom period that links period attendance to daily attendance. In such a case, if attendance is marked in the homeroom period, it automatically updates the daily attendance (or vice versa).

To enable this option, click on the pencil icon in the ‘Homeroom period’ section as shown below. This option is only enabled when both of the attendance marking methods are selected.

In the pop-up, enable the Use homeroom period toggle and specify the period to represent daily attendance.

Once enabled, the homeroom period becomes the default period used for marking overall daily attendance. This means that if a student is marked present during the homeroom period, it will automatically update the daily attendance record (and vice versa, depending on the linking method).

As an admin, you can choose how attendance records from the homeroom period should affect daily attendance using the following options:

Attendance marked in the Homeroom period updates the daily attendance records, but not the other way round.

Let’s say, a student is marked as Late (L) for the homeroom period.

With the One-way sync enabled, the daily attendance record will also automatically reflect this status of Late(L) at the homeroom teacher’s end.

However, if the homeroom teacher makes any changes to the daily attendance (say, mark the student as Absent ), as shown below.

This change will not affect the Homeroom period attendance. The student will still be recorded as Late(L) in the homeroom period, even though they are marked Absent (A) in the daily attendance.

Attendance marked in either the homeroom period or daily attendance will automatically synchronize and update each other.

For example, if a student is marked absent in daily attendance by the homeroom teacher, as shown below.

With the Two-way sync enabled, the homeroom period will also reflect this absence, and vice versa.

This option allows you to specify the exact date from which teachers can start marking attendance for a particular curriculum. When you select the ‘Start marking attendance from’ field, a date picker will appear. You can choose the specific date from which attendance will be recorded.

💡Please note that any attendance records before the selected date will not be visible on the platform and will not be used in attendance calculations.

With this option, you can set a specific time at which unmarked students will automatically be marked present for the day. To enable it, use the toggle switch in the ‘Automatically mark unmarked students’ section. Once enabled, you can set the exact time of marking using the pencil icon.

The ‘Attendance calculation’ tab allows you to choose the most suitable method for calculating and displaying a student’s overall attendance based on your operational needs.

You can configure this individually for each curriculum. There are two settings for how attendance percentages are calculated and displayed:

This option allows administrators to select whether the attendance percentage should be calculated using Daily attendance or Period attendance. You can toggle between these two options depending on whether you want to calculate the overall percentage based on daily or period-wise records.

This setting controls how the overall attendance percentage is formatted and displayed. You can choose how many decimal points should be displayed for the percentage.

Additionally, you can choose whether to round scores or truncate scores, giving precise control over how attendance data is presented to users.

This section allows you to configure the permissions related to attendance and excusals for both teachers and family members. Here are the various settings:

Simply enable or disable these options for each curriculum according to your school’s preferences, as shown below.

These enhancements to the attendance module simplify day-to-day attendance management and improve overall record-keeping of the student’s attendance.

That's all for now. We will continue to innovate and improve to make your Toddle experience better each day!