Electronic Attendance Audit

Electronic Attendance Auditing is an optional feature that the LEA may use to meet the requirements of the state of Texas to be considered completely paperless. With the addition of this feature, you can print reports with audit information about the original entry and any changes to any attendance codes. It also has an audit report to note the date and time the teacher took attendance and whether or not 100% of the students were in attendance.

This feature is not automatically enabled. To enable the auditing process to complete the following steps:

1. From System > System Settings > Plugin Management Configuration, click Install in the top right corner.

2. To the right of Browse Plugins, click Browse.

3. In the Browse Plugins window, click Install beside Electronic Attendance Audit.

4. On the Installed Plugins page, check the box to enable the Electronic Attendance Audit plugin.

5. Click Enable on the window that slides out to agree to the District Responsibilities for the plugin.
   Note: If for some reason the LEA needs to disable auditing temporarily and not track audit records, they may come to the Plugin Management Dashboard and un-check the Enable/Disable box. Toggling this box turns on and off Electronic Auditing.

6. From District > Electronic Attendance Audit Setup, select the Time Zone that the LEA resides. This is particularly important when the server location (i.e. Hosted) is in a different time zone from the LEA. The audit reports will be date and time-stamped with the location where the attendance is taken.

7. Once Electronic Attendance Auditing is enabled from PowerTeacher the following procedures must be taken:

   1. The teacher clicks on the chair to take attendance for that section.

   2. If students are absent they will take attendance as always by adding the appropriate attendance code for that date and clicking Submit.

   3. If the attendance codes for all students for that date translate to Present, an additional step is required. They must check the box at the top right to let the system know that for Texas all students are considered present for this date and section. The click Submit.

   4. If all students are present and they have not added any attendance codes, they must check the box for All Students are Present prior to clicking Submit.

   5. In both cases where all attendance code fields are blank or all attendance codes selected translate to Present, if the teacher tries to click Submit without checking the All Students Present box, a message displays reminding them that this box must be check when no students have been marked absent. They click OK and either mark a student absent or check the All Students are Present box.

   6. Once this has been accomplished, an audit record is created. If students are marked with an absent code this creates the original audit record in the AU_ATTENDANCE table. If the section has no absences, a record is created in the ATTENDANCE_TAKEN table to indicate that they took attendance. An additional record is created in the S_TX_ATK_X table to audit the 100% Present status.

   7. If the teacher goes back and changes the attendance and a section change from 100% present to someone being absent this change creates an audit trail as well.

Reports added to support this feature are:

• Electronic Attendance Audit Report (TX66): version 1.0

• Electronic Attendance Audit Report (PowerTeacher Single User) (TX67): version 1.0

• Section Attendance Status (TX65): version 1.0

• Attendance All Present Audit Report (TX63): version 1.0.0

• Attendance All Present Audit Report (PowerTeacher Single User) (TX64): version 1.0.0

To access the updated Electronic Attendance Audit Report:

1. Log in to PowerSchool SIS.

2. Navigate to the State Reporting section.

3. Select "Electronic Attendance Audit Report" from the available reports for Texas.

Note

• The report loads runtime parameters directly from audit tables, removing dependency on the au_attendance table.

• The "IP Addresses" dropdown has been replaced with a text field, allowing users to enter multiple IP addresses separated by commas.

• The report output filters Grade Levels based on the specified start and end dates, instead of evaluating all grade levels.

• The "Select Period" parameter displays every period available for the selected school.

• The "Select Who Modified" parameter displays every user available for the selected school.

• The "Selected Changed From/To Attendance Code Values" parameters display all attendance codes available for the school.

• These changes are also reflected in the report available via the Teachers’ Portal.

Note:

• The "Enter IP Addresses" field accepts multiple addresses separated by commas (with or without spaces).