This article is designed to explain the key principles of Attendance Pro, helping to ensure you have all of the underpinning knowledge you need prior to launch. We recommend that all Attendance Officers read this as a refresher of good practice when managing attendance on Satchel One.

Once you've read this, we'd recommend exploring the following articles which detail the daily use of Attendance Pro:

Attendance Pro as a teacher

Attendance Pro as an Attendance Officer

Attendance Basic

If you have any questions about using Attendance Pro, please reach out using the blue chat bubble at the bottom right of your screen.

Please share any inactive Attendance codes

By default, all attendance codes will be available for staff in Satchel One, even if they are marked as 'inactive' in your MIS. If you have any codes you'd like to be omitted from Satchel One, please let us know prior to your launch, otherwise this will cause writeback failures.

Custom codes (Wonde schools only)

There are also some additional points to consider if your school is using Attendance Pro with Wonde.

⚠️ IMPORTANT: We cannot permit the launch of Attendance Pro until we have confirmation that custom codes have been approved. If custom codes are not used at the school and this is not relevant to you, please confirm this in writing.

Understand how changes to Timetable can affect Attendance Pro

It's important to avoid making timetable changes during the day wherever possible. Because timetable changes made on SIMS do not import into Satchel One instantly (please see the Data Import Schedule for more information), if the timetable has been changed on your MIS but not reflected in Satchel One yet, you will be trying to mark attendance for a student who is no longer in that lesson, and the writeback will fail.

For schools using Attendance Pro on Satchel One, a school-wide adoption is essential in order to avoid data conflicts and confusion.

When a register is taken in Satchel One, it will write back to your MIS almost instantly, ensuring that you have accurate data in both locations. However, when a register is taken in your MIS, it will only import this data back into Satchel One at very specific times of the day: 7am, 9am, 1pm, 2pm, 4pm.

This means that if you were to take a register on your MIS at 10am, it would not appear in Satchel One until 1pm, leaving 3 hours where the register would appear blank in Satchel One.

The risk is that, during this time, staff could mark the seemingly missing register in Satchel One and thereby overwrite the mark that was originally logged in your MIS.
Wherever you most recently updated the attendance mark, that is what will override any previous recordings.

To summarise, it's crucial that all registers are marked in Satchel One in order to preserve data integrity and for all features to function as expected.

You may be using third party software e.g. SIMS InTouch / SchoolComms / Truancy Call / WeDuc to communicate with parents / guardians about student absence. If parent / guardian responses are received through your third party software and then written directly into your MIS, this will cause data conflicts when using Satchel’s Attendance Pro.

This is because Satchel One only imports data from your MIS at specific times (7am, 9am, 1pm, 2pm, 4pm), therefore any marks logged in the MIS in between these times would not appear in Satchel One until the next import time. A teacher taking their register on Satchel One would see a blank space, which they may then fill with a new mark, overwriting the mark originally entered in the MIS.

Example:

Therefore it is imperative that any parent / guardian responses received through any third party software are manually logged directly into Satchel One, not written back to the MIS.

This can be done quickly and easily via the ‘Daily Absences’ or ‘Students’ tabs in the Attendance area.

Similarly, if using Inventry to record and update student attendance throughout the day, these marks can be viewed in Inventry but must not be written back to your MIS. Instead, they can be collected in Inventry and then manually written into Satchel One in order to maintain accurate records throughout the day.

By logging all marks in Satchel One directly, you ensure that staff have real time Attendance data at their fingertips and this is all written back to your MIS almost instantly.

The only time it's necessary to take a register in your MIS is if you're marking attendance for a future date; this is because in Satchel One attendance can only be taken for today or historical dates.

If marking a register for the future in your MIS, you can rest assured that this will import across to Satchel One when the date in question arrives. The register in Satchel will already have the mark saved and accounted for as it was prepopulated in your MIS and there will be no data conflict.

Linking a lesson to a registration session

You may have set up lessons and sessions in your MIS that are linked, so when you mark a register for one, it automatically copies across and populates the other register i.e. Period 1 populates AM reg / Period 5 populates PM reg.

At present, if you mark a register for a linked lesson in Satchel One, it will not automatically copy across and populate the other lesson / session within Satchel.

It will, however, write this mark back to your MIS as expected and, once there, it will copy across to the other as expected, provided you have established the correct setup in your MIS.

💡 IMPORTANT: It's important to remember that Satchel does not receive attendance data from your MIS instantly, therefore your linked lesson will appear blank in Satchel One until the next MIS import time (please see the Data Import Schedule for more information). At this point, you should see your linked lesson / session populated as expected ✔️

Double lessons

The 'Copy lessons to marks' in SIMS cannot be actioned via Attendance Pro (this is a SIMS rule which is only triggered when marks are applied directly into SIMS), meaning that if you have double lessons within your timetable, staff will need to register each lesson individually.

Attendance Pro will sync with the core Timetable only; adjustments made outside of this structure (i.e. SIMS Cover App / alternative curriculum via Nova T-6) will not be reflected in Satchel One.