A Faculty Guide to Seating Charts

Sure, it may be summer, but the return of school is always lurking around the corner. With a big change to Seating Charts earlier this year, what better time than now to review the basics of this Education management feature?Earlier this year we enabled faculty members to take attendance via customizable seating charts, responding to a popular feature request from our user community. With the fall term approaching, we thought now would be a good time to review the basics of setting up and using seating charts.

Let’s start with the setup. You need to be logged in as a school employee with at least one class, advisory group, or activity group for which you will be taking attendance. At the top left of the screen, make sure you are in the Faculty view.

To create a seating chart, do one of the following:

• Under Classes, select a class name.
• Under Groups, select an advisory group name.
• Under Groups, select an activity group name.

Select View seating chart. A new browser window will open. If you teach a class in multiple terms, a dropdown menu in the top right will allow you to toggle between terms.

Select Create seating chart.


Enter a Number of rows and Number of columns. The grid dimensions will automatically update when you click outside of the number entry fields.

By default, a FRONT label appears at the top of the chart. If you would like to change where the label appears, go to the Front label menu and select from the options Top, Bottom, Left, or Right. Note that none of these choices will affect the attendance records you take; these are just in place as a visual aid when you go to take attendance for a class with assigned seating.

The names and pictures of students enrolled in the class will appear under Unassigned students. Select and drag them into place on the grid. If a student has a Preferred Name, that name will appear on the seating chart. If a student does not have a Preferred Name on file, then the student's first name will display.

If a student has a Preferred Name, that name will appear on the seating chart. If a student does not have a Preferred Name on file, then the student's first name will display.

Select Save and close when you are finished.



Once you have created a seating chart, you can use it to take attendance. From the My Day menu, select Schedule & Performance. Under Schedule, find a class and select the chart icon beside it to open the seating chart in a pop-out window. If you teach a class in multiple terms, a dropdown menu in the top right will allow you to toggle between terms.



Beneath each student's name, select an attendance code. By default, every student is marked present. Any students who have not been assigned a place on the seating chart will automatically be marked present. Optionally, if you have marked a student anything other than Present, enter an attendance comment below the attendance code. Attendance comments are for internal use and will only be visible to the teacher and school administrators.

When you have finished taking attendance for the class, select Save and close.

For more information, check out the Seating Charts help topic. For more information on setting up and taking attendance, see the Attendance landing page and Attendance Setup Guide.