Setting your Options for Attendance

There are a few settings regarding attendance that can be customised.

SETTING ATTENDANCE OPTIONS

 1. Navigate to the Administration menu. If you have a wide-screen device this will already be visible on the left-hand side of your screen. If not, click on the Administration menu icon at the top left-hand side of your screen.

2. Under the heading Options select Basic Options

ATTENDANCE CODES ON THE DAILY ROLL FOR TEACHERS

Set this slider to 'Yes' if your Teaching Staff are permitted to choose an attendance code when marking the roll. 

If this is set to 'No', they will be able to mark only those students who are Present or write a note to explain absence if known. Those who are absent are left unmarked for the Administrator to process.

WEEKLY VIEW FOR TEACHERS WHEN MARKING THE ROLL

Set this slider to 'Yes' if your Teaching Staff are permitted to view and mark attendance using the Weekly View.  This is optional and staff can choose the view they prefer.

If this is set to 'No', they will see and mark students via the student profile view.

Note:  If this slider is not visible, then the Weekly View is not enabled for your school.  Contact the Hero Customer Support team to enable this option.

CUSTOMISING YOUR TIME PERIODS

Schools can change the name of their learning time frames to suit their school.  i.e. Periods, Blocks.  This will display on some Attendance Reports.

This should be set prior to attendance taking as changing retrospectively will affect your attendance reporting.

Note: If you wish to change the structure (ie, period start and end times) please contact the Hero helpdesk.

CUSTOMISING YOUR ABSENCE ALERT TIMEFRAMES

Note:  This setting relates to NZ MoE Schools only

Ministry of Education guidelines require that an alert be triggered for any unjustified absence of more than 40 consecutive half-days.   As per MOE specifications, the codes monitored are T, G, E and ?.

If you wish for additional alerts to be generated, you are able to enter up to 3 of these.  Alert timeframes are entered in 1/2 days.  i.e. your Attendance Officer may wish to be alerted after 6 1/2 days and again after 10 1/2 days.  Setting an alert to 0 half days will disable that alert.  Values above 40 will be ignored, as the 40 half-day alert includes students who have been unjustifiably absent for longer than 40 half-days.

This should be set prior to attendance taking as changing retrospectively will effect your attendance reporting.

Alerts are sent to your Attendance Officer via email. The email this is sent to will default to the school email address entered in your School Details option. Enter a different email address in the alert options to override this.

Your alert email will look like this:

Note: Only one email address can be entered into this field. If you would like these emails to be sent to multiple addresses, you will need to set up email forwarding within your email system, or ask your Google/Microsoft Administrator to create a group email that includes all relevant contacts. You can then enter this group email address into this field.

UNEXPLAINED ABSENCE & UNMARKED CLASS ALERTS

Note:  This setting relates to NZ MoE Schools only

The Ministry of Education require that alerts are generated for Unexplained Absences and Unmarked Classes.

You can configure how long after the start of each period these alerts will be generated, along with the email address to which these alerts will be sent.

Alerts are sent to the designated user via email.  Enter a different email address in the alert options to override this.

UNEXPLAINED ABSENCE ALERTS

Note:  This setting relates to New South Wales Schools only

The New South Wales Department of Education guidelines require that all unexplained absences are followed up with caregivers within a few days of the absence. 

Hero can automatically notify class teachers of absences which remain unexplained after a configurable number of days, as a reminder to follow up with absentees' caregivers.  Up to two alerts can be configured, with the number of weekdays since the absence ranging from one day to a week.

The class teacher will receive these on a daily basis (if unexplained absences exist).  Additional alerts can also be sent to your Attendance Officer.  Enter the Attendance Officer email address in the alert option to action this.  All alerts are sent via email.

If an email address is configured to receive whole-school alerts, a single combined alert will be sent each day, with the absentees broken down by class.  Your alert email will look like this:

SETTING AMP OPTIONS

Note:  This setting relates to NZ MoE Schools only

More information about AMP is available in the help article Attendance Management Plan (AMP) in Hero

Several options need to be set up to enhance the use Attendance Management Plans. Only staff with Administrator access can amend AMP options.

1. Navigate to the Administration menu. If you have a wide-screen device this will already be visible on the left-hand side of your screen. If not, click on the Administration menu icon at the top left-hand side of your screen.

2. Under the heading Options select Basic Options

3.  Scroll to Attendance Management Plan (AMP)

4.  Enter the email address of the staff member who is to receive a daily email notification of students who have changed thresholds in either direction.  

Save your change by clicking the Green Save icon. 

Note: The ability to enter multiple email addresses is under development.

5.  The MoE has developed a set of Response Activity Configuration categories. Within each category any staff member with Administrator access is able to add specific school-based responses. These are selected when adding a response entry to an individual student.

6.  Click ADD to create a new response action.  

7.  Click the Pencil icon to edit an existing response action.

8.  Click the Trash icon to delete an option.  (This will not affect any response that has used it previously)

UNEXPLAINED ABSENCE TEXT MESSAGING

Hero provides the ability to send texts to designated caregivers when a student is an unexplained absence. This function needs to be enabled in your school options. 

1. Navigate to the Administration menu. If you have a wide-screen device this will already be visible on the left-hand side of your screen. If not, click on the Administration menu icon at the top left-hand side of your screen.

2. Under the heading Options select Notifications.

3.  Scroll down to Text (SMS) Notifications.

4.  Set Enable Text (SMS) Notification to open up the ability for any form of text.

5.  Enter the email address that is to receive the replies from any texts sent. If left blank, this will default to the email address contained in the School Details tab of the Options section in the Administration Menu.

6.  Set Allow administrators to send SMS messages for absences to display the text messaging features in the Daily Roll.

7.  Enter the SMS message that will be received by caregivers when a text is sent. The {CHILD} field can be used to insert the student's first name. (Note caps.)