Note: This feature is only available with a license of Qwickly Attendance Plus or Qwickly Attendance Pro (Absence Limit Reporting is only available in Qwickly Attendance Pro)
Users of Qwickly Attendance Plus and Pro have the option to set Absence Limit values, or thresholds that may be hit as students accrue absences in a course. Up to three Absence Limit values can be set for each course: a first limit, a second limit, and/or a third limit.
Enabling Absence Limits at the System Level
To turn on Absence Limit Settings, an administrator can navigate to the Qwickly Dashboard > Manage Attendance > Settings > Attendance > "Allow Absence Limits"
When turned on, an administrator will see additional options. First, an administrator can set limit value labels. Once created, these labels will appear for all instructors and will also appear in system-level reporting. If an administrator chooses not to utilize all three limits, they can leave the corresponding fields empty for the limits that are not needed.
Please note that an administrator will need to create limit labels in order for instructors to be able to edit Absence Limits at the course level (see the next section in this article).
Next, an administrator can Allow Instructors to edit Absence Limits at course level. If enabled, Absence Limits will be editable for instructors within their Attendance course settings. If left disabled, administrators can set Absence Limits for courses by file upload or through Manage Courses (the file upload process is explained more in-depth below):
An administrator can also Allow Instructors to edit Absence Limit labels at course level. If enabled, instructors will be able to set their own absence limit labels for each of their courses. The Absence Limit reports at the system level within Qwickly Attendance Pro will still use the system labels.
An administrator can also Enable email notifications to students who have reached Absence Limits. If enabled, an administrator will need to define email templates for each limit reached.
Absence Limit emails will be sent when each limit is reached and each additional time an absence is recorded for the student. An administrator can change this to only have the students receive each Absence Limit email once by selecting Send Absence Limit email notifications to students once
If an administrator wishes to require Absence Limit emails to be sent when a limit has been reached, they can enable the Automatically send Absence Limit email notifications to students setting. If left disabled, instructors will have the option to set Absence Limit email sending as true or false in their own course settings.
Administrators have the option to include one email address that will be BCC'ed to all Absence Limit emails sent in their institution by configuring the BCC Additional Email setting.
Please note that Absence Limit emails are sent when a student has met the absence limit. For example: if an absence limit is 8, a student will receive an email as soon as they hit their 8th absence in a course.
Furthermore, an administrator also has the option to Allow instructors to set their own Absence Limit email templates.
Show Student Absences in Take Attendance screen
When Absence Limits are enabled, it is recommended that the setting: Show Student Absences in Take Attendance screen is enabled, as this will allow instructors to view students who may have reached a limit. There are two ways an administrator ] can configure this:
Option 1: Administrators can set this at the system level as a default for all faculty by navigating to Manage Attendance > Settings > Preferences > "Show Student Absences in Take Attendance screen".
Option 2: Instructors can turn on the Show total absences on take attendance screen setting in the course to view the absences next to student names if this is set to "Optional" at the administrative level. Instructors should navigate to Attendance Settings and click on the Preferences tab. Under the heading, "View Preferences", check the box next to Show total absences on the take attendance screen.
When enabled, the following screenshot shows an example of what an instructor would see in their course's attendance: students with their absences listed next to their names (with a few students having reached the warning stage or final stage).
A first limit will appear in yellow and a second and third limit (meaning the limit has been reached) will be displayed in red.
Absence Limits in the Course Settings Screen
Instructors will be able to view Absence Limits options in their course settings screen under the Absence Limits tab.
If Absence Limit email notifications are turned on, instructors can select whether or not to automatically send students the specific emails for a limit that has been reached. If an instructor chooses to not send emails automatically, they will be able to send emails to users through the Emails Dashboard (explained below):
Emails Dashboard
When Absence Limit email notifications are enabled, instructors will see a new "Emails" page in their Qwickly Attendance navigation menu. This will bring them to an interface that will display if students have reached an absence limit and if they have been notified via email.
- If there is a green check mark, this means students have been notified of reaching a limit. Hovering over the checkmark will show the date and time they were last sent an email.
- If there is a yellow caution sign, this means students have reached a limit but have not been notified via email. Clicking on the yellow caution sign will allow the instructor to send an email to the student.
- The last column allows the instructor to send a quick, customizable, ad-hoc email to any student.
Course Reporting
Instructors will be able to see which users have reached certain absence limits in the course reporting page.
More System Administrator Options for Managing Absence Limits
File Upload for Setting Absence Limits Amounts
System Administrators can upload a file through the Qwickly Dashboard to set the Absence Limit amounts for their courses.
1. Create an Absence Limit File
The Absence Limit file upload should follow a specific format. The file should be a .csv or .txt type file. Each line should contain the following values:
course_value, first limit, second limit, third limit
Please note that the same amount can be used for both the first, second, and third limits if only one limit is desired.
Here is an example screenshot of a text file upload that sets the first and second absence limits:
2. Upload Absence Limit File
- Log into the Qwickly Dashboard > Manage Attendance > Tools > Absence Limits
- Once the file has been uploaded, press submit.
- Once the file has been submitted, it will be processed in a few minutes. You can check your Instance Logs for any updates on the status of the file upload.
Updating Absence Limit Values
If you need to update the Absence Limit values for one or more courses, you can take either of the following steps:
- You can update the limit values for the required course(s) in the original Absence Limits upload file and re-upload the whole file.
- You can create a new .txt file that contains the course(s) with their updated absence limits only and upload this smaller file. This file will need to follow the same format (defined above).
- You can also go to Manage Attendance > Manage > Courses and look up courses individually and modify their absence limit values from this screen
Check Values Set for Absence Limits Across Various Courses
System Administrators can check what values have been set for Absence Limits across their various courses by going to Manage Attendance > Manage > Courses. This view displays a list of courses for your selected instance and will display the absence limits saved for a particular course:
Absence Limit Reporting
System Administrators using Qwickly Attendance Pro can run reports on Absence Limits to check whether any students have reached a defined absence limit in the courses.
Administrators can run this report by going to:
Attendance Pro > Course Reporting > Absence Limit Report
OR
Attendance Pro > Student Reporting > Absence Limit Report
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