Attendance Alert

Overview

The on-ground attendance alert identifies students who have missed n number of course meetings for a particular active course section. This data is either provided by the SIS or by using SS&E's attendance tracking module.

• The alert will display the number of absences since the last alert displayed, i.e. the number of absences that have not yet been included in an alert
• Repeatable must be set to "True" in order for the alert to run more than once per student from "the beginning of time". For example, even if the alert ran once a few years ago, it will not run again unless repeatable=true.
• In order to prevent old/irrelevant alerts, attendance alerts will only trigger if an absence was created in SS&E or imported on the Transcript Course Attendance data feed for a student enrollment in the last three calendar days. Three days is the recommended setting configured as the default value in Application Administration during SS&E implementation. This will ensure that the absence that triggered the attendance alert is "recent".

Base Selection Criteria

1. The targeted person has a Student role.
2. The targeted student has current registrations/enrollments.
3. Synchronization with the LMS has occurred successfully for this registration in the last twelve hours.
4. The course section is "active" (the start date is before today and the end date is after today).

Which Course Sections are chosen for the Attendance Alert?

When running the attendance alert, the system always starts by gathering all of the current term course sections. Then, the system goes through the alert configuration settings to filter out and remove course sections based on the specified rules.

The flow of these rules looks like this:

1. Gather all current term course sections.
2. If there are included courses, remove all sections that are not for specifically included courses.
3. If there are excluded courses, remove all sections that are for specifically excluded courses.
4. If there are included locations, remove all sections that are not at the specifically included locations.
5. If there are excluded locations, remove all sections that are for the specifically excluded locations.
6. If there are included course sections, remove all sections that do not match the specifically included sections.
7. If there are excluded sections, remove all sections that match the specifically excluded sections.

Each rule after step 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, then the filtering for that rule is skipped.

Application Configuration 'absenceDaysAgoToCheck'

In order to send attendance alerts that are current and relevant, this application setting controls how far back the system will check for the existence of an absence on a Transcript Course record.

• By default, the 'absenceDaysAgoToCheck' recommended setting in SS&E Administration -> Application Configuration is set to 3 days.
• If the system does NOT find an absence within the past 'absenceDaysAgoToCheck' window, the Transcript Course (student enrollment) is NOT eligible for an attendance alert.
• This configuration prevents bad data entered into Transcript Course Attendance from sending 'bad' alerts; preventing historically old attendance (absence) records from triggering "old" attendance alerts in error.
  
• This will ensure that an absence that triggers an alert is recent.

How does the system count missed attendance when there are multiple Meeting Types associated with the same course section on the same day?

If there are multiple absences, or one present and one absent attendance record recorded for the same registration (Transcript Course Enrollment) on the same day, this is most likely appearing because the same course section has both a lecture and a lab meeting (i.e. different meeting types) occurring on the same day.

• When this happens, the attendance records on the student Courses tab in the current (registered) term will display ALL of the student's attendance records.
• However, when counting missed attendance, the attendance alert will only count the number of days of missed attendance/absences. 

Therefore, if there are multiple absences or one present/one absent attendance record from different meeting types on the same day, the system will only count this as one absence for attendance alerting. 
For example:

1. If the attendance alert is configured to trigger an alert after 2 days of absences, it will create an alert when it encounters 2 separate days of absences for a registration.
2. The system will NOT trigger an alert is the student only has two absences recorded on different meeting types on the same day.
3. If the student has one absent record on a day that has multiple meeting types, and the other meeting types recorded a present or tardy attendance status on the same day, this will count as one absence for attendance alerting.

Attendance Alert Fields

Details

Type

Alert type of this alert. Should always be set to  "Attendance".

Name

Name of the alert

Description

Internal, viewable only to the SS&E Administrator, description of the alert.

Active

Whether the alert is active. Active alerts display in SS&E and are able to be selected in the UI from the individual User Settings 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.

Security

Staff Roles

Roles that will receive alert notifications.

Only these roles can view and opt into being notified of this alert type. Opting in is done on each user's individual User Settings area.

Notification

Notify Students

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

• Students will be notified even if they do not have permission to access the alert.

Student Email Subject

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

Student Email Body

The body text for the email is 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

• ${coach.firstName} - Coach First Name

• ${coach.lastName} - Coach Last Name

• ${coach.fullName} - Coach Full Name

• ${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

• ${transcriptCourse.courseSection.course.code} - Course Code

• ${transcriptCourse.courseSection.course.name} - Course Name

• ${transcriptCourse.courseSection.section} - Course Section

• ${transcriptCourse.numberOfAbsences} - The number of absences for this enrollment

• ${numberOfAbsencesTotal} - Also displays the number of absences for this enrollment

• ${numberOfAbsences} - The number of absences for this enrollment since the last attendance alert

If you would like to optionally add content based on the existence of an advisor or coach, you can use if statements within the email body content.

• For example, the appropriate syntax to display a line of text when a coach exists for a student would be:

#if(${coach})

In addition, your Success Coach, ${coach.fullName}, has great study strategies and campus resources to support you.
#end

• In the example above, the text between the #if and #end will be printed when the student has a coach assigned. Otherwise the text will not be printed. The same can be completed for the advisor that is assigned by using similar logic:

#if(${advisor})
In addition, your Advisor, ${advisor.fullName}, can assist you with your schedule.
#end

Other

Rules

Rules identify the number of absences, based upon course credit value, that must occur before the attendance alert is created.

Attendance Alert Rules include a check box to optionally include "Excused Absences" when considering the number of absences that will trigger an alert.

• The system will compare the course section credits in the first attendance rule to the actual course section credits. If there is a course credit match, then only the first rule found will be used to compare the attendance alert configuration to the number of student absences. Any additional alert rule will not be used.
  • • To evaluate attendance alerting:
      1. The system gathers all course sections.
      2. The system will go through the alert rules in order of appearance and ONLY use the first rule that matches the course section credits.
      3. Once a match is found for the course section credits, only the number of absences on the first alert found will be used to trigger an attendance alert.
• The system evaluates attendance rules that include excused absences independently of attendance alert rules that do not consider excused absences.
  • • If the first rule excludes excused absences and another rule includes excused absences, both rules will be used to trigger attendance alerts.
    • If a student matches on both the excused and unexcused rule, they will only receive one attendance alert.

Attributes

Include Online Course Sections

Whether to include online course sections for this alert.

• Some institutions record online course section attendance in their SIS.
• This setting must be set to 'True' in order to alert on online course attendance. Otherwise, when set to 'False', online course sections are excluded from triggering Attendance Alerts.

Upper Limit Threshold

If a student has more absences in a course section (that have not yet been used to trigger an attendance alert) than this threshold number, an Attendance Alert will NOT be sent.

• If this threshold is set low, it means that if suddenly, for some reason, many attendance records are sent in all at once, and the number of attendance records that have not yet triggered an attendance alert is above this threshold number, an attendance alert will not be sent.

Person Types

This should always include "Student".

Repeatable True/False

If true, the alert can fire multiple times for a single registration, eg. student.

• If false, this alert may only run once per registration (student) within any time limit.

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 program will occur and all programs are eligible.

Excluded Programs

The programs to excluded from this alert.

Included Locations

The locations this alert will run for. If this value is empty, no filtering on locations will occur. This value maps to the location of the student.

Excluded Locations

The locations to exclude from this alert.