Attendance minimum settings required via Setup > System Preferences > Default School Preferences > Attendance tab.

• Calculate By = Minutes
• Track Time In/Out on Daily Attendance = Y
• Track Daily Tardies = Y
• Student “Check-In” Period-by-Period = Y
• Show Minutes Missed in Student Absence Summary = Y
• Check-in Default Attendance Code = [late in]
• Check-in Attendance Code Exemptions = [suspension]
• Check-in Default Attendance Code for Prior Periods = [absent] (either excused or unexcused based on district preference)
• Check-out Default Attendance Code = [early out]

Attendance > Attendance Setup > Codes > must have Present and Absent at minimum.

Periods must be set up via Setup > Periods.

• Start/End Times are required if using kiosks.
• The times should NOT have any overlap (ie. Period 1 → 7:20am-8:19am, Period 2 → 8:20am-9:19am).
  • Important: Overlap will result in too many minutes per day if the minutes are being calculated by timeframe (see optional setting below).
• The Length is required for attendance tracking. There are two ways to enter it:
  • Exact: Calculate the number of minutes between Start Time and End Time and put that in the Length. This is the standard setup. If using the exact period length, setup in the Lunches and Lunch Rules areas are required in order for the system to subtract those minutes from the total during the daily attendance jobs.
  • Overrides: If there are situations that require a different Length to be recorded than is within a timeframe, the desired amount can be entered there. For example:
    • If you do not want to use the Lunches setup option, you can remove the lunch times from the Period setup. For example, if lunch is during Period 4 and Period 4 meets from 10:30am-12:30pm, then the Length can be entered as 90 instead of 120 to account for a 30 minute lunch period.
    • If your district has a period that doesn’t count toward attendance calculations, but you want to track time in/out, the Length can be entered as 1 and the minute can be subtracted from another period.
  • Important: If using Length as an override option, you need to set System Preferences > Default School Preferences > Attendance > Use Period Length to calculate Attendance Minutes = Y.
  • Attendance will be calculated by taking a student’s check-in time, looking at the timeframe to figure out how many minutes the student was Present, then subtracting: (Length) - (Minutes Present) = (Minutes Absent) where any negative absence minutes will round up to 0. 
    • This means that a student checking in within the first 30 minutes at the beginning of the period or leaving within the last 30 minutes of the period will appear to be there the entire period. (It does not recognize when lunch is within the period.) 
    • Example: If Period 4 is 10:30am-12:30pm with a Length of 90 minutes, then these scenarios will happen -
      • Student A checks in at 10:50am > the system will see that the student was there 10:50am-12:30pm from the kiosk (100 minutes Present), so it will take (90 minutes Possible) - (100 minutes Present) = (-10 minutes Absent) > since there can’t be negative time absent, it will log 0 minutes Absent even though the student was 20 minutes late.
      • Student B checks in at 11:30am > the system will see that the student was there 11:30am-12:30pm (60 minutes Present), so it will take (90 minutes Possible) - (60 minutes Present) = (30 minutes Absent) > the system will log that the student was 30 minutes late even though they missed 60 minutes of the period.
      • Student C checks out at 12:00pm > the system will see that the student was there 10:30am-12:00pm (90 minutes), so it will take (90 minutes Possible) - (90 minutes Present) = (0 minutes Absent) > the system will log that the student was present the whole period even though they left 30 minutes early.

Calculate Attendance Minutes from Check In/Out

• Under Setup > Scheduled Jobs, make sure there is at least one job that runs all three Attendance Options (Update Attendance Period Minutes, Update Attendance Day Minutes, and Create Attendance Records), or at least three jobs that each run one of those options.
• This job should be a high priority and be run at a low-traffic time that does not have other jobs running at the same time. Always make sure that it is scheduled to run after the query-killer is done for the day. A good, common option is to do it at 9pm every day except Saturday/Sunday.

Recalculate Daily Attendance  

• Under Setup > Scheduled Jobs, this has to be run daily in order for the Daily Codes to be updated in the attendance_day table, which is what will show in the portals and on the Absence Summary view.
• It’s recommended to schedule this job to run after the Calculate Attendance Minutes from Check In/Out job. For example, if the Calculate Attendance Minutes job is scheduled for 10pm every day, then the Recalculate Daily Attendance could be scheduled for 11pm.

Manual Recalculations

• Using the Attendance > Attendance Setup > Recalculate Daily Attendance job can sometimes fix issues with the Absence Summary Code not matching any of the Period Codes.
• Using the Attendance > Attendance Setup > Recalculate Minutes will recalculate based on any minute edits done in the Administration screen or on a student’s Attendance Chart, but it will NOT plug in any kiosk entries (those have to be done via the Calculate Minutes by Check In/Out scheduled job).

Days and/or Rotation Days

• Depending on the district’s use of rotation days and calendar days, one or both of these fields must be populated in order to take attendance:
  • If the district uses rotation days that do not depend on the day of the week, then the Days column should have MTWHF selected to show that any day of the week is acceptable if the rotation day falls on it.
  • If the district ONLY uses days of the week, then Rotation Days does not have to be populated.

See Courses & Sections > Adding Sections and/or Master Schedule Report for more details.

Begin Period and End Period

• If a section meets in a single period, then the Begin Period and End Period fields should match (i.e. Period 1 - Period 1).
• If a section spans multiple periods, the Begin Period and End Period are notated here (i.e. Period 1 - Period 4).
• If there are periods in between when the section meets, the section should be split into two linked sections (i.e. if the section meets Period 1 - Period 2 but Advisory is between them or the section meets in Period 1 on A days and Period 2 on B days, it should be split).

See Courses & Sections > Adding Sections and/or Master Schedule Report for more details.

Calendar

• A Calendar must be populated in order for attendance to be taken.
• It is how the system recognizes what calendar dates are school days and which school days have a rotation.
• Calendars can be created/edited via Setup > Attendance Calendar.

See Courses & Sections > Adding Sections and/or Master Schedule Report for more details.

Bell Schedule

• If a section meets using a specific bell that never changes, then it can be selected here.
• If a section meets using multiple different bell schedules, then this column should remain N/A so that all bells will apply; for example, if the section needs to use the Default, Early Release, and Finals bell schedules, then leave this field blank

See Courses & Sections > Adding Sections and/or Master Schedule Report for more details.

Reporting School Override

• If the section is scheduled in one school within Focus but needs to be reported to the state through another school, then that school can be selected in this column 
• This override ONLY changes the school for that section in the Course state reporting extract. Attendance data collected for the section remains with the student at the school in which it is scheduled.
• Example: Students attend an alternative school program where the section is scheduled at ALTSCHL, however the state does not recognize that as an enrollment site. The section can be scheduled in ALTSCHL with a Reporting School Override of REGHIGH so that the students can remain in the separate alternative fileset in Focus, but the Course extract will show that the section, teacher, and students are reported through the state reportable school.

Instruction Method, Grading Scale, and Course History Term

• These are important for sections that get attendance through the virtual calculator.
• If the section is marked as Virtual, the Course History Term should match what length of time the students should receive attendance for (i.e. quarter, semester, full year).
• If the section is marked as Virtual, the Grading Scale needs to have something selected, such as unweighted, pass/fail, etc.
• If the student then receives a grade for a section marked Virtual that is also marked as Takes Attendance, the attendance will be added to the student at the end of the selected Course History Term.

See Courses & Sections > Adding Sections and/or Master Schedule Report for more details.

Exclude from ADA

• This field is used to remove any attendance taken during that section from both the Focus report (Average Daily Attendance) AND from the state reporting extract.
• A section can be marked as Takes Attendance and Exclude from ADA if the district wants to track time in/out but does not want to report the minutes.
• Any sections marked as Exclude from ADA will still be included in the Course extract unless Exclude from State Reporting is also selected.

Exclude from State Reporting

• This field was previously used for removing attendance data from the extract and from ADA, but it is now exclusively used to remove a course from the Course extract. 
• Attendance from any course marked as Exclude from State Reporting will be counted toward ADA and the state reporting extract unless the Exclude from ADA field is also marked.

Course Minutes Weekly

• This is used to calculate the teachers’ work hours for reporting. 
• It is not used for student attendance.

ESY

• Marking a section as ESY in the Master Schedule Report will mark all student attendance in that section as ESY; 
• If the attendance needs to be marked as ESY on a student-by-student basis, then Special Additional Attendance can be used instead

Student Info > State Reporting > Special Additional Attendance permissions will need to be given via Users > Profiles > Permission Type: Student Fields for whomever is responsible for entering information like:

• Homebound attendance
• Outplaced (Private/Public/State Separate for Special Education) attendance
• Remedial attendance: Any entries in Special Additional Attendance marked as Remedial = Y will be included in the state reporting extract as Remedial Hrs.
• ESY attendance: Any entries in Special Additional Attendance marked as ESY = Y will be included in the state reporting extract as Extended School Hrs.
• Any other non-state-reportable attendance that will be tracked in the logging field 
  • This is notated by the Exclude from State Reporting field, which will remove that entry from all extracts and the ADA report within Focus.
  • NOTE: The Exclude from State Reporting field under Special Additional Attendance WILL remove the attendance information from the ADA and extract data. This is a different field than the Exclude from State Reporting field found on the Master Schedule Report and Courses & Sections, which is used to exclude the course itself from reporting extracts.
• Below are some examples of how Special Additional Attendance can be used: