Absence Management Set Up
Staff:admin users can configure how absences are tracked, a list of reasons for absences, and who is required to approve specific absence reasons (e.g., User A approves all absences due to illness).
From the Absence Management Dashboard, you'll see the administrative options in the left sidebar.
Begin your initial setup of absence management by toggling the Settings option to 'Yes' if you want to track absences per learning event (vs. per day).
Navigate to Admin > Manage Absences.
Absence menu options will display on the left.
Pending Requests: Displays any pending learner requests that require approval.
Archived Requests: Stores requests that have been approved or rejected. Staff:admin have the ability to make changes to archived requests.
Pools: This is where you can configure timeframes and groups for tracking absences. For example, if your attendance policy requires that absences be tracked by event type you could make a pool per cohort for each event type.
Please be aware that when multiple pools exist per cohort, absences will report to multiple pools if you include the same event types in each pool.
Archived Pools: Stores pools that are no longer in use but are stored for tracking purposes.
Request Report: Generates a report related to all requests made (note that this will not necessarily show all absences, that information can be found in another report).
Attendance Report: Generates a report that summarizes attendance as recorded by learning event attendance tracking. Includes whether an absence was approved or not. Available as a CSV.
Reasons: This is where you can store a list of reasons for absences and define who must approve different reasons.
Settings: Allows you to select how you will track absences (e.g. by learning events, by days missed) and which learners to include.
Settings
Here you can set whether you will track absences by learning event or not.
If left to 'No' absences will be tracked by day instead of by specific event.
Select 'Yes' if you want to allow learners to view specific learning events included in the date range of their requested absence and select the specific events they will miss. Selecting 'Yes' will also let you optionally allow administrators to report on absences by learning events missed instead of total days missed.
Reasons
Reasons will be available to all learners when they are logging an absence. They are stored for the entire organization so it may be valuable to work with multiple stakeholders to define the list of reasons your organization will use.
Navigate to Admin > Manage Absences.
Absence menu options will display on the left. Click 'Reasons'.
Click 'New Reason'.
Provide a required title and optionally provide a description. Learners will see this when they log an absence to help them make sure they select the correct reason for their absence.
Set an approver for absences logged with this reason.
You can add approvers based on group:role permissions in Elentra (e.g. staff:admin) or you can add individuals (e.g. Beth Bluth).
If you set a group:role to be the approver, when a learner requests an absence they will be required to select a specific person from a list of users. This list will represent those user types who are course contacts for the courses the learner is enrolled in.
If you do choose to set group:role as approvers, the following user types can be setup to approve absence requests: staff:admin, staff:pcoor, staff:staff, faculty:director, faculty:faculty, and faculty:lecturer.
If you add multiple approvers the person listed earlier on the list will need to approve the absence before it gets sent to the second approver.
Click 'Cancel' beside a name or group:role to remove them as reviewers.
Click 'Save' to complete your reason. You will return to the list of reasons and your newly created reason should display.
Creating a Pool
This is where you can configure timeframes and groups for tracking absences. For example, if absences are tracked per event type you could make pools per cohort for each event type.
Be aware that there is currently no association between a pool and a course so you can not set up pools for specific courses (unless you create event types per course but that is not recommended). The current settings for pools include date range, event type and cohort. If the same event type is included in multiple pools for a cohort, it will get reported in both pools.
Navigate to Admin > Manage Absences.
Absence menu options will display on the left. Click 'Pools'.
Provide a title, description, allowed absences and set the date range and cohort.
If you have enabled tracking absences by event you will also have the ability to associated specific event types with each pool.
Setting up specific event types to be included in specific pools allows you to increase the granularity with which you monitor absences. Only absences for the indicated events will 'count' towards the pool total.
Click 'Save'.
When learners view their Absence dashboard they will see any pools created and affiliated with their cohort as well as their approved or rejected absences in each pool.
Note that there is not currently an administrative overview of all learners' total absences across all pools. (medtech:admin users could log in as a learner to get such a view.)
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