Attendance and Comment Field

Feature Requests
1

Hi Ross,

Are there any plans to add a
  • comment field for the principal of a school apart from a teacher? 
  • away to mark teachers attendance/absence from school? and when they are on vacation, study leave sick leave etc?

2

Hi Ross,

Any way we can take students attendance by class. Presently attendance can be taken by form group and person.
Regards,
Behruz

3

Ross,

Any feedback for the above requests?

4

Willpro, Behruz,

I guess you are referring to the Reporting module in our Extend section? If so, this is produced by Rapid36, and so I suggest you contact that company via their website (http://rapid36.com/) to see if they can add this feature.

As they are a commercial operation, my guess is that they will charge you for this, which seems reasonable given they are providing a base module for free.

I am tagging Rapid36’s CEO, Andy Statham (@andystat here, so he should get alerted to this thread.

Thanks,

Ross

5

Hi Ross,

Thanks for your reply but I was actually seeking  just as how  students are marked present/late etc.if there is any chance of noting teachers in the system being late,absence or on vacation/study leave etc as well?

6

Willpro,

At current this is not possible. I am looking to improve functionality of the Staff module in v12, but this will most likely include some Professional Development and Teaching Feedback functionality. I could put staff attendance into the v13 list if you are interesting.

Thanks,

Ross

7

Thanks Ross, that will be good.

8

Willpro,

OK, it is in as item 2 in the v13 Todo: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1acvT15qAMcdHDum_lPb_JAiQeqAduH4UQFEmZfs4Pak/edit#gid=0

Thanks,

Ross

9

Willpro, unfortunately we are out of time for v13, and have not had the resources to implement your requested feature. We have added this to the v14 board: https://trello.com/c/bM9qPbLp.

10

Hi Willpro (or anyone else who might be interested in this feature),

I’m re-opening this post since I’ve picked it off our Trello board for the new version. A lot has changed since the last post here so I’d like to verify a few things first:

  • Where would you like to see this option appear? I would suspect the People > Attendance page?
  • Which role would the staff using this feature take at the school? Would they be administrative users of the system or perhaps office staff. This wouldn't change the functionality but, in my eyes, might change the naming conventions used or the overall "look" of the feature.
  • While it would certainly be possible to follow the same format as the current People > Attendance page, I think we could simplify this a bit. Perhaps a calendar where you could click/drag to select specific date ranges to define them as holidays/sick leave etc?
  • Are there any export options you'd like to see on the system? In my line of work, iCal is a popular export because it's supported by lots of applications but I could see CSVs being of use too. Anything else?

I think that about covers it. I’ll be watching this post so if anyone can let me know of their own personal requirements, that would be awesome!

I’ll draw up some wireframes for something a little more “pictorial”.

Thanks!

Jim

11

Hi Jim,

The People > Staff page may be a good place for the feature, it’s possibly closer in functionality to staff records & HR than the daily student attendance process. Rather than logging every staff member present/absent for each day, they’re generally assumed present unless marked otherwise.

Some thoughts based on what I know of our school’s needs (It’d be great to hear from other schools to see where these may overlap or differ):

  • For each absence, specify a date/range, person, reason, and comment
  • As a bonus, it'd be great to optionally record a person as a substitute (and generate reports on this later)
  • Define the reasons for the types of absences as a setting (examples: sick/paid leave/personal day/compassionate leave/maternity/etc)
  • A report to quickly lookup who's offsite school-wide for a particular day, defaulting to the current day
  • A report to view the total absence types listed by person over a date range
  • A sub-page under Staff Profiles to view absences for that person (if the user has appropriate permissions)
 

Thanks for taking this on, give a shout with any questions & best of luck!

12

Thanks Sandra, that’s some really good feedback. Any other schools wishing to let me know of their needs for the section, I’ll bear them in mind while I work on the other parts.

13

I think Sandra covered most of what i would like to see as well.