Attendance through an API

Melanie Thompson

Greetings,

I am new to using API's. I was wondering if there is an API that I can use to scan a student ID badge and the information would then check a student as present for attendance. Can you point me in the correct direction? Thanks I appreciate the help.

Brian Gray

@Melanie Thompson -

I did some work on reading and interpreting attendance records during the pandemic for contact tracing. (Which students were in classes with a student who tested positive?) My response below is based on that work.

I think that the database doesn't actually record PRESENT for a student in a class meeting. PRESENT is a conclusion based on the lack of any other absence information for a student in a class meeting.

When attendance is entered in the LMS web interface, the ABSENT or TARDY information is entered. Other students are shown as PRESENT, but there is no corresponding entry in the database for PRESENT. Those students are assumed to be present because they were not reported as absent.

There is the Attendance by Section Update endpoint. You can use that to record an attendance excuse reason for students in a specific class meeting of a specific section. You can record the excuse reason value for PRESENT, but I think that just removes any previously recorded excuse reason for a student.

In the scenario you describe (scanning an ID card for students who are present), a program would have to know which students are supposed to be in the section, and know which students' ID cards were scanned (and therefore are present), and then report the non-scanned students as absent.

I am familiar with two Marketplace partners who do some attendance syncing with Blackbaud - Ruvna and Orah. Both work on the same approach - they know which students are enrolled in a section and when that section meets. Either the teacher uses the company's app to record absent students or student scan a bar code to record themselves as present. The app then updates the company's database - which in turn updates the Blackbaud database.

My school uses both Ruvna and Orah, but we don't use either company's attendance module. There are other Marketplace partners who offer something similar.

Melanie Thompson

Thank you for your answer. I was thinking I would create an activity or class that included all the upper school students so there would be an expectation of who should be in attendance. We are having them scan in but to an excel spreadsheet. I was hoping for a more seamless way to add attendance. Thanks.