Attendance Tracking and Notifications

Georgia state reports use Attendance Tracking and Notification (ATN) for the Student Record-Enrollment report to calculate Unexcused Absences. Notification Letters are not required for any FTE or Student Record reporting. PowerSchool has provided "seeded" ATN definitions for Georgia, meaning the basic ATN setup is complete and districts need to verify the setup.

At the District Office, follow these steps to verify the setup:

Start Page > District Setup > Attendance Tracking and Notification > Tracking Methods
1. Check Attendance Tracking Methods. One Tracking Method must exist with a name of Percent, and having a Threshold of 50.
2. If Percent does not exist, then create the Percent Tracking Method using the New button. Set the Threshold to 50.
Start Page > District Setup > Attendance Tracking and Notification > Unexcused Levels
1. Check Unexcused Levels. One Unexcused Level must exist for Unexcused Absences; the seeded value is a level named Unexcused.
2. Check the Unexcused Level values (click the Unexcused link). The Tracking Method must be Percent and Trigger 1 is usually set to a value of 1.
3. If an Unexcused Level does not exist, then create an Unexcused Level using the New button. Set the Tracking Method to Percent and Trigger 1 to a value of 1.
Start Page > District Setup > Attendance Tracking and Notification > Update Calculation Year
1. Check Update Calculation Year value. The Current Value should match the current school year Term.
2. If the Current Value is incorrect, follow the page directions to update the values.

At each school, follow these steps to verify the setup:

Start Page > School Setup > Attendance Code Categories
1. Verify a Category named Unexcused exists.
2. If Unexcused does not exist, then create the Unexcused Attendance Code Category using the New button.
  Note: The name Unexcused is not required, but the name chosen is used later with Attendance Codes and Unexcused Tracking Categories.Start Page > School Setup > Attendance Codes
Check each Attendance Code that should be counted as an unexcused absence.
1. Verify that the box for the Code Category of Unexcused is checked.
  Note: It is recommended to verify each Attendance Code so only the correct attendance codes are marked as Unexcused. For example, OSS does not count as an unexcused absence.
Start Page > School Setup > Attendance Tracking and Notification > Attendance Mode Setup
1. Verify the correct Tracking Mode is defined for the school. For example, MPTD-Meeting Period To Day, or CDTC-Daily Code To Day
2. If the Tracking Mode is incorrect, click the link and delete the record.
3. Create the correct Tracking Mode using the New button and selecting the correct Attendance Mode Value.
4. Verify the Year displayed is current school year Term. (This was set in step 3 of the District setup above.)
Start Page > School Setup > Attendance Tracking and Notification > Unexcused Tracking Setup
1. Verify the Att Category is the Attendance Code Category set in step 1, usually Unexcused.
2. Verify the Status is Absent.
3. If the Att Category or Status is incorrect, click the link and delete the record.
4. Create a new Tracking Category using the New button and selecting the Attendance Code Category to be used for Unexcused. Set the status to Absent.

After the district and school setups are verified, take the following steps:

OPTIONAL: At the school level, Start Page > Special Functions > Attendance Functions > Refresh Premier Attendance Views Data
This function is required when you want to include attendance values for the current day in ATN calculations. The Refresh Premier Attendance Views Data report runs as part of the nightly process, so attendance throughout the school year is included in the view. This report is optional and is used to include today's attendance in calculations. It must be run at each school where you want to update the attendance views.
At the district office, Start Page > Reports > System Reports > Refresh Attendance Tracking Data report. This report refreshes attendance tracking and notification records in the PowerSchool database. The report run page displays "Date Last Run: Completed on:" as a helpful clue to know when the report last did the attendance tracking calculations.
State Page > Reports > Reports (State Reports) > Student Enrollment-F01
Provide the Beginning Date of the Reporting Period and the Last Date of the Reporting Period.

The Student Record-Enrollment extract contains an Unexcused Absence count for students who have been unexcused more than 50% of their school day.

Regarding those getting blank ATN View extracts, a "blank report" is different than a report with only headers displayed and no students. If the report has headers, but no student detail, then no students qualified. If the View extract is zero bytes then there is a data problem, probably directly related to student information. The ATN development team has created code that will trap and display specific data issues and provide a method for the report to process anyway. Not all conditions have been given errors or warnings, but future releases of ATN will improve errant condition checking.

Meanwhile, known conditions that can cause blank reports are issues such as students with overlapping enrollments, students enrolled in more than one school at a time, students with entry or exit dates outside the date range of the school's Years and Terms, students enrolled in a non-school, schools that have duplicate FTEs defined, invalid semester dates, duplicate attendance conversions, and generally duplicate records of any type. Also, you must have ReportWorks Developer set up correctly.

You can check the DALX log file and find the part of the file with the time that you ran/finished the Refresh report – that might provide more information on the error. You can send this section of the DALX file to PowerSchool Support for analysis when you open a case.

Another helpful resource is the ATN Cheat Sheet .

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