First Week Attendance Alert

Updated January 25, 2024 16:25

Watermark Support

Overview

The first week attendance alert is one of the most important alerts within SS&E. It identifies students who have not attended any meetings during the first week of each class in a new term so that outreach can be performed by success professionals.

The First Week Attendance alert is based off each individual Course Section Start Date.
The First Week Attendance alert will only run if at least one student in the course section has an attendance record with a status of Present, Tardy, or Empty.
- - The alert will be triggered for a student that has no attendance records in the time period, or if all attendance statuses in the time period match what is defined in the First Week Attendance alert configuration "Attendance Status" value(s).
The alert runs at 5:00 AM n days after the course section start date, where n is set in the First Week Attendance alert configuration on the "Number of Days Past Term Start Date to Run".
- - Note: The label uses "term start date" however the individual course section start date is the start date that is used. Please click here for more information.
By design, first-week attendance alert messages are sent by SS&E System to the student's institutional (primary) email address and do not display within the student's SS&E Messages Inbox.
Each success team member will receive notification about first-week attendance alerts in their daily digest and/or on their Caseload activity feed (since the daily digest is limited in size).
To view the first-week attendance alert message recipients, view the message report in Messaging Administration, filter by the sender "SS&E System" and check the 5 am messages.
In addition, first-week attendance alert recipients display in Person Alerts Administration.
- - To view all current term first-week attendance alerts enter the created start date as the first day of the new term or the first day + n.

Base Selection Criteria

The alert only runs on a person that has the Student role.
The student has at least one current enrollment/course registration record.
Synchronization with the LMS has occurred successfully for this student registration in the last twelve hours.
The course section is "active" (eg. the start date is before today and the end date is after today).

Troubleshooting

For help troubleshooting first week attendance alerts, click here.

How are Course Sections Chosen for the First Week Attendance Alert

When running the First Week Attendance alert, we start by gathering all of the current term course sections, and then go through a filtering process based on the alert settings configured at each individual intuition. The flow of these steps are as follows:

Gather all current term course sections.
If there are included courses, remove all sections that are not for specifically included courses.
If there are excluded courses, remove all sections that are for specifically excluded courses.
If there are included locations, remove all sections that are not at the specifically included locations.
If there are excluded locations, remove all sections that are for the specifically excluded locations.
If there are included course sections, remove all sections that do not match the specifically included sections.
If there are excluded sections, remove all sections that match the specifically excluded sections.

Each rule after 1 applies only if at least one item is specified in the rule (i.e. at least 1 included course section will cause rule 6 to execute). If no rule is defined, the filtering for that rule is skipped.

When triggered, the alert will be added to the student's profile and emails will be sent to the student and appropriate staff.

Alert Fields

Type

Alert type of this alert. Will be "First Week Attendance".

Name

Name of the alert

Description

Internal, administrator only, description of the alert.

Active

Whether the alert is active. An active alert is shown in SS&E and is able to be selected on the Settings screen by users in order to receive notifications of this alert type.

Staff UI Text

The template text will be used on the news feed, in the daily digest email, and on the student's profile. This text is copied from the default text setup for this alert type.

Staff Roles

The roles that can view and opt into being notified of the alert. This is done in a user's Settings area.

Attendance Status

All institutions must select "Absent" to trigger the first-week attendance alert on absences.

If needed, additional attendance statuses can be selected to trigger the first week attendance alert.
In addition, if a student has no attendance status recorded in the first week alert time period, an alert will fire for that student!

For our North Carolina Community College Partners only, this alert will track "Absent" and "No-Entry" statuses therefore both variables must be included here for these institutions.

By design, the first-week attendance alert will only run if at least one student in the course section has an attendance record with a status of Present, Tardy, or Empty.

Notify Students

Whether to notify the student, by email, when the alert is created.

Student Email Subject

The subject text for the email to be sent to the student

Student Email Body

The body text for the email to be sent to the student. The following variables may be used in the body of the email text:

${advisor.firstName} - Advisor First Name
${advisor.lastName} - Advisor Last Name
${advisor.fullName} - Advisor Full Name
${advisor.emailAddress} - Advisor Email Address
${coach.firstName} - Coach First Name
${coach.lastName} - Coach Last Name
${coach.fullName} - Coach Full Name
${coach.emailAddress} - Coach Email Address
${instructor.firstName} - Instructor First Name
${instructor.lastName} - Instructor Last Name
${instructor.fullName} - Instructor Full Name
${instructor.emailAddress} - Instructor Email Address
${student.firstName} - Student First Name
${student.lastName} - Student Last Name
${student.fullName} - Student Full Name
${student.emailAddress} - Student Email Address
${transcriptCourse.courseSection.course.code} - Course Code
${transcriptCourse.courseSection.course.name} - Course Name
${transcriptCourse.courseSection.section} - Course Section
${transcriptCourse.numberOfAbsences} - Number of absences in course for student

Number of Days Past Term Start Date to Run

The number of days past the start date of the course section when this alert will run.

NOTE: The label references term start date however each individual course section start date is used.

For example, if a term starts on the 15th of the month and this setting is set to 5, first week attendance alerts will run on the morning of the 20th ONLY if the course section start date is also on the first day of the new term and a student missed all of the first week course section meetings, and attendance was entered for at least one student.
If a course section's start date is on the second day of the new term, eg. the 16th of the month, then the first week attendance alert would run for students that did not attend any meetings during the first week of the course section on the morning of the 21rst (16+5=21), etc.

In addition, the First Week Attendance alert may send later than expected if instructors are not entering attendance in a timely manner.

For example, if attendance is entered past the "n number of days past course section first meeting", the first week attendance alert will run only once, on or after n days past the first class meeting.

Include Online Course Sections

Whether to include online course sections in the first week attendance alert. Some institutions will record attendance of online courses in their SIS, which this alert uses as the base for its data.

Included Tags

The tags this alert will run for. If this is empty, no filtering on tags will occur.

Excluded Tags

The tags to exclude from this alert.

Included Courses

The courses this alert will run for. If this value is empty, no filtering on courses will occur.

Excluded Courses

The courses to exclude from this alert.

Included Course Sections

The course sections this alert will run for. If this is empty, no filtering on course sections will occur.

Excluded Course Sections

The course sections to exclude from this alert.

Included Programs

The programs this alert will run for. If this is empty, no filtering by the program will occur and all programs are eligible.

Excluded Programs

The programs to be excluded from this alert.

Included Course Locations

The course section locations this alert will run for. If this value is empty, no filtering on course section locations will occur. This value maps to the location of the course section identified in the SIS.

Excluded Course Locations

The course section locations to exclude from this alert.