Attendance Reasons

To set up attendance categories for your school in Academics, go to Attendance to open the Attendance Hub. You should see an Attendance reasons link under Settings.

When you set up attendance for your school, you decide which types of absences and tardies faculty members can choose from in attendance menus. You can also create a virtual attendance category to mark students present for distance-learning or hybrid courses.

When selecting Attendance reason, the page opens in a list style format with all previously created reasons and displaying information like the category, school level, type, and more. Use the Filter to refine the search results or select the context menu next to a specific value to Edit, Delete, or mark it as Inactive.

Note: To change which users have the ability to take attendance, see Roles in Core. To change which users have the ability to view attendance for a student or class, see Attendance display in Academics.

Add reasons

Select + Add reasonto open a new page.
Enter a name under Category to find a specific entry, or select +New to create one.

Tip: Common Category names include Absent Excused, Absent Unexcused, Tardy Excused, and Tardy Unexcused.
If you select an existing Category, the list will display all current reasons applied, and you can select +Add reason to create a new one
Otherwise, for a new Category, enter the name and it will take you back to an empty list. Select +Add Reason, provide a name, set the Status to Active if you would like to make it available right away. Set it to Inactive if you plan to spend some more time setting it up before releasing it.

Tip: Common Reason names include Tardy With Excuse, College Visit, Doctor's Appointment, and Attended Virtually.
Use the following fields:
- School level: You can assign school levels to individual reasons.
- Status: Choose Active or Inactive to determine whether this Reason will be available for employees taking attendance.
- Faculty Access: Determines whether faculty members will be able to choose this Reason. You may choose to leave some Reasons only available to administrators.
- Type: Choose Absence, Tardy, or Virtual.
  
  Note: The Virtual attendance type is separate from the Present attendance type, but it functions in a similar way. When you select Virtual, the following settings are automatically applied to the Attendance Reason: Excused/Unexcused is set to N/A, Use in calculations is set to No, and Full Day / Half Day is set to N/A. These settings cannot be modified.
- Excused/Unexcused
- Use in calculations: Determines whether this field contributes to the Day Equivalency calculation.
- Full Day / Half Day: This feature is not fully functional yet. Your selection will not affect daily absence counts.
Select + Add reason as needed to add more.
When you are finished, select Save or Cancel to undo everything you've just added and go back.

Add a virtual attendance category

By default, every school has a single Present attendance type that can apply to any course. If you want to enable teachers to designate that a student attended class virtually, add a new attendance Category and create an attendance Reason with the Type marked Virtual.

Your school might choose to add a new Category (for example, “Virtual”) containing just one Reason (for example, “Attended Virtually”). Optionally, if you would like to add options for marking students absent or tardy from virtual classes, you can add more Reasons to the virtual attendance category and give them relevant names (“Virtual - Absent,” “Virtual - Tardy,” etc.).

Note: Virtual absences and virtual tardies are not their own attendance Types, so you will use the regular Absence and Tardy Types to create these Reasons.

Select + Add reason to open the modal.
Under Category, enter a name (for example, "Virtual").
Set the Status to Active if you would like to make this category available immediately.
Under Reason, enter a name (for example, "Attended Virtually"). This is the menu option that employees will see when they take attendance.
Set Faculty Access to Yes if you would like to make a Reason available for teachers to select when taking attendance.
Set the Type to Virtual.

Note: When you select Virtual, the following settings are automatically applied to the Attendance Reason: Excused/Unexcused is set to N/A, Use in calculations is set to No, and Full Day / Half Day is set to N/A. These settings cannot be modified.
Select Save.

Once your school has recorded attendance using a Virtual attendance type, you can generate a list of students attending virtually by using filters on the Class attendance list or Day attendance list. See the help topic Attendance Lists for more information.