Define student Daily Attendance preferences

Define student daily attendance preferences for your district, intermediate organization an organization defined below the root organization, and then each school in your district.

You determine the codes you want to appear on each input page and basic attendance settings, such as the number of days of attendance history you want to view for students.

To define student daily attendance preferences:

1. Do one of the following:
   • For the district: Log on to the District view. Select District > Setup > Preferences.
   • For an intermediate organization: Log on to the Intermediate Organization view. Click the associated tab > Setup> Preferences.
   • For a school: Log on to the School view. Select School > Setup > Preferences.
2. Click the Category drop-down to select Daily Attendance. The Daily Attendance preferences page defaults to the Basic sub-tab. (Shown are district preferences, followed by school preferences.)

   

   

3. Use the table to select the daily attendance preferences for your district, intermediate organization, or school:

   Note: Some of these preferences only apply to the district. The order in which preferences appear also depends on the view you are logged on to.

   Field	Description
   General Pref for Daily side-tab in Staff View (District preferences)
   Allow partial absences	In the District Daily Attendance preferences, select this checkbox if your district allows partial absences. Example: A student can earn credit for attending school for a half-day.
   Show daily side-tab in Staff view	Select this checkbox if you want the Daily side-tab on the Attendance tab to appear in the Staff view. Users might not want this side-tab to appear if they take daily attendance in a homeroom or class that is assigned to them on the Class side-tab.
   Classroom input type	Do one of the following: Select Homeroom if your organization takes attendance by homeroom. Select Period if teachers in your organization enter daily attendance during a specific class period. Example: Assume your school (or a school in your organization, if setting preferences for your district or intermediate organization) does not have a homeroom period. Period 1 begins at 7:45 a.m. Therefore, the attendance records that teachers enter in their Period 1 classes become the daily attendance record for students.
   Recent attendance history cutoff (days)	Type the number of days of attendance records that you want to appear when a user selects Recent Attendance from the Filter menu on the Attendance tab, Daily History, Staff History, Class History sub-tabs.
   Post from school daily roster (also a school preference)	This field is disabled by default. When deselected, users can take attendance from the Daily Roster and save without necessarily creating a post record (School view, Attendance > Daily Roster > Students or Trends). Select this checkbox if you want a post record created whenever a user posts from the Daily Roster.
   Daily Attendance Input (School preferences)
   Show daily side-tab in Staff view	Select this checkbox if you want the Daily side-tab on the Attendance tab to appear in the Staff view. Users might not want this side-tab to appear if they take daily attendance in a homeroom or class that is assigned to them on the Class side-tab.
   Classroom input type	Do one of the following: Select Homeroom if your organization takes attendance by homeroom. Select Period if teachers in your organization enter daily attendance during a specific class period. Example: Assume your school (or a school in your organization, if setting preferences for your district or intermediate organization) does not have a homeroom period. Period 1 begins at 7:45 a.m. Therefore, the attendance records that teachers enter in their Period 1 classes become the daily attendance record for students.
   Classroom input period	If you or your district or intermediate organization administrator selected Period at the Classroom input type field, select the period during which teachers enter attendance. Note: The value you select applies to just this school.
   Classroom to daily post mode	When set to Post, Aspen updates the daily attendance record each time a teacher posts class attendance. (The Classroom input type preference must be set to Period.) When set to Post Once, Aspen does not update the daily attendance record with class attendance, if a daily attendance record already exists.
   General Pref for Daily side-tab in Staff View (School preferences)
   Recent attendance history cutoff (days)	Type the number of days of attendance records that you want to appear when a user selects Recent Attendance from the Filter menu on the Attendance tab, Daily History, Staff History, Class History sub-tabs.
   Allow daily attendance for past dates	In the School Daily Attendance preferences, select this checkbox if you want staff members to be able to take daily and classroom attendance for past dates. Notes: If this preference is enabled and a teacher takes class attendance: In the desktop version of Aspen, a pop-up asks whether they want to post to daily attendance. In Aspen Mobile, daily attendance is posted automatically. If this preference is not enabled, daily attendance cannot be posted when teachers take class attendance.
   Previous Day Limit	Type the number of previous days (from the current date in calendar days) users are allowed to edit and post attendance in the Staff view. To use a limit here, the Allow Daily attendance for past dates preference checkbox also needs to be selected. Note: To allow users to edit daily attendance for any previous date, leave this field blank.
   Post from school daily roster	Also a district preference. See above.
   Daily Roster Input Buttons Daily Office Input Buttons Staff View Input Buttons (District [Root Organization] and school preferences)
   Number of buttons	Type the number of code buttons you want to appear on each of the input pages in Aspen. The input page you use depends on the method of attendance input your school uses.
   Code	Click the drop-down to select the codes you want to appear on the pages, such as A,T, D and E.

4. For each code, select the Pop-up checkbox if you want users to enter detailed information on a new pop-up page after they click that code, such as below:

   

   Otherwise, deselect the Pop-up checkbox, and users just click the appropriate code for each student.

   

   Note: Aspen always displays the P (Present) code on daily attendance pages.

   Note: If your district or school enables the Attendance activity tracking preference, a pop-up might appear on attendance pages to collect information about the absence, even if you do not select this checkbox.

5. Click the Advanced sub-tab. (Shown are district preferences, followed by school preferences.)

   

   

6. Use the table to enter information in the fields:

   Field	Description
   Attendance Cycle and Pattern (District [Root Organization] preferences)
   Code view pattern	Enter the pattern in which you want to view codes when taking attendance. This applies to the order codes appear in and how codes are displayed. Enter a | between the codes. Example: Enter A:A|T:T|D:D|E:E| for the following to display:  -Absent to display first as A -Tardy to display second as T -Dismissed to display third as D -Excused to display fourth as E Note: Teachers can hover over these codes on the Scores page for a description. Add a delimiter, such as a space or semi-colon, between codes for easier viewing. Example: D:D|;|T:T|;|A:A|;|O1|;|O2|;|E:E| appears in Gradebook as: D;A with this hover text: D - Dismissed;A - Absent
   Attendance cycle locking	Leave this field blank. It is currently not used.
   Weekend Attendance (School preferences)
   Saturday attendance	Select this checkbox to give users the ability to post attendance on a Saturday.
   Sunday attendance	Select this checkbox to give users the ability to post attendance on a Sunday.
   Second Daily Attendance (School preferences)
   Second daily attendance	Select this checkbox so that school attendance managers and teachers can collect daily attendance for a second time during the school day. Example: You might want to use this feature if your school requires students to attend either morning or afternoon classes, and a daily attendance record must be recorded for both time periods. Note: Aspen does not support second daily attendance with attendance activity tracking. You can enable this preference or the Attendance activity tracking preference, but you should not enable both.
   AM portion absent	If you selected the “Second daily attendance” preference, type the portion of the day that a student is considered absent by Aspen if he or she is absent from the AM daily attendance collection. The portion is always out of a total of 1.0. The AM portion absent must be greater than 0 and less than 1.
   Classroom input type	Do one of the following: Select Homeroom if you want teachers or attendance managers in your school to take second daily attendance by homeroom. Select Period if you want teachers or attendance managers in your school to take second daily attendance during a specific class period. For example, you might want staff members to always take second daily attendance during the first period after lunch.
   Classroom input period	If you selected Period from the “Classroom input type” preference, click the drop-down to select the period in which staff members enter second daily attendance.
   Push AM/PM from Class office	Enable this field to push daily attendance for AM and/or PM to the respective class attendance periods from the Class Attendance Office Input page. When this and the Second daily attendance preference are enabled, a new column, Daily Code (PM), appears on the Class Attendance Office Input page (School view, Attendance > Class Office).
   Attendance Activity Tracking (District [Root Organization] and school preferences)
   Attendance activity tracking	Organizations that want to track student and daily class attendance activity with the Attendance Activity Tracking system table will enable this preference. It is disabled by default. Hierarchically, organizations can select the organization level that controls whether daily and class attendance will be tracked at the Attendance activity owner field. Example: A district (root organization) enables this field and selects itself at Attendance activity owner. Then student attendance activity is tracked at all organization levels. If a district (root organization) does not enable this preference and sets itself as the Attendance activity owner, this feature is disabled (read-only) in all intermediate organization and school views. Note: In Aspen, once an intermediate organization or school saves a preference in its own view, the root organization's setting for that preference is overridden. Example: A district (root organization) enables this field, and selects the intermediate organization at Attendance activity owner. Attendance activity tracking is now enabled by default at all organization levels, but can be changed by the intermediate organization. The intermediate organization deselects this field in its own view, and sets School as the owner. Attendance activity tracking is now disabled by default in all schools under that intermediate organization – but each school has the option to enable it. Note: Aspen does not support attendance activity tracking with second daily attendance. You can enable this preference or the Second daily attendance preference, but you should not enable both.
   Attendance activity tracking Owner	Click the drop-down, and select which organization level controls whether daily and class attendance will be tracked. Example: The intermediate organization enables Attendance activity tracking and sets itself as the owner. This means that attendance activity tracking is honored at the intermediate organization level and for all of its schools. The intermediate organization's schools cannot change the setting of the Attendance activity tracking preference. If the root organization sets itself as the Attendance activity owner, the intermediate organizations and schools cannot change this or the Attendance activity tracking setting. (They are read-only.)
   Restrict [edit] link in staff view	Select this checkbox to have Aspen replace the [edit] link on attendance input pages in the Staff view with a [view] link. When a staff member clicks [view], a read-only pop-up appears, preventing them from editing the class and daily attendance codes in the pop-up. If the district (root organization) enables the Attendance activity tracking preference and the Attendance activity owner is set to the district (root organization), then this preference is honored at all organization levels. If the intermediate organization enables the Attendance activity tracking preference, then this preference will be honored at the intermediate organization level and all of its schools. If this preference is enabled by the district (root organization), then it is also enabled for the school. However, if the Attendance activity tracking preference is enabled and the Attendance activity owner is set to School, then the school can select or deselect this preference.

7. Click Save.