Attendance Record Issue

Justine Levesque

I am wondering if anyone is experiencing this same issue. Blackbaud has not been able to replicate this issue and so we closed the case but my Attendance Manager is continuing to have this issue.

She records a students attendance as Field Trip or External Activity if they are away from class. And then the next day the attendance has been changed to Attended class. It is only happening with our students marked as Boarding students in the system.

We do not have it enabled to allow teachers to edit attendance after class has ended.

Michael Clark

@Justine Levesque Are you possibly integrating with another system for attendance? I'm wondering if another system might be overriding what's in Blackbaud.

Justine Levesque

@Michael Clark We do have an integration with Orah but my understanding is the integration is not bidirectional. Attendance information isn't passed from Orah to Blackbaud. And I checked the records in Orah for this student she was marked as away in Orah, but the record was overwritten in Blackbaud to Attended today so it wouldn't match what is in Orah either way.

Lisa Tulchin

@Justine Levesque
We think all of that day's attendance notes for middle and high school students in that class are overwritten when the teacher clicks on “All Present” for a class later on in the day. You could have a coach or dorm person clicking on All Present in the evenings. Yes, it's the easiest way to take attendance if everyone is there, but it overwrites other notes written that day. I sent out an email this morning to warn teachers this morning because many people were complaining. We are a Pk-12 school, so we can't disable the “All Present” button. It would be nice if it just marked the student present for the class that they are in and not overwrite other class' attendance notes. It overwrites attendance notes written by the nurse, field trips, early release, etc. Any one have other solutions?

David Gillespie

@Lisa Tulchin
The behavior you describe - just marking the student present for the class they are in - does happen if you have attendance set to record “per period”. If the attendance of record is set from another block, though, perhaps it affects other times. You also have to make sure blocks aren't exactly adjacent - one block's start time equal to the previous block's end time - but many people have passing time that separates them so that isn't an issue.

We record “per period” and we have never had one teacher's attendance override another's.

Justine Levesque

@Lisa Tulchin This would explain why it would overwrite for one period. But the issue we're having is that all pre-recorded absences for multiple days are being overwritten, and for all classes. Every teacher would have to go in and mark ‘All Present’. It's not impossible this happened but unlikely.

It is also isolated to only our boarding students. So while 10 students were on a trip for example only the 1 boarding student's attendance is overwritten and the 9 other students' attendance codes stay as entered.

Lisa Tulchin

@Justine Levesque For us it the All Present button is overwriting notes for multiple periods in a day. Our HS and MS periods are distinct with travel time between them. My users say it started this year, was not really an issue last year, and there have been no significant changes in set up. They noticed that it was getting bad in January. We're now doing IB Testing and teachers are going nuts.

We no longer have Boarding students, do they take attendance in the afternoon or evenings for the Boarders?

Kari Skolik

@Justine Levesque
Can you run a Day or Class attendance list and select the column “Last Edited on” and Last Edited by" to see who might be changing the attendance (if anyone)?

Justine Levesque

Just wanted to post on here in case any one is interested in the resolution. It was an issue with Orah. We were not configured to pass information from Orah to Blackbaud, but their system was sending Pass and Roll record updates regardless which was overwriting the attendance entered in Blackbaud.

They identified this issue and had their developers implement a fix. I am testing to confirm that the fix is working, but seems to have resolved it.