Attendance History Configuration Page 

Administrative Functions  

Configuration Options  

Determining When the Update Attendance History Process is Running  

Email  

AHS Recalculations for a Single Student  


Attendance History Configuration Page 


Navigate to Attendance Accounting > Configurations > Attendance History Config. The Attendance History Configuration page lets you configure options for Attendance History (AHS table). Only admin users can open this page. In California, you can also open it from the Configure Attendance History Nightly Update link on the CALPADS Extracts page.



NOTE:  In order for the Attendance History Configuration page to properly function, it is necessary to have a Calendar (DAY) table at the District level. The Attendance History Configuration process will run for any school where a student has an Attendance Enrollment Record.


Administrative Functions  ↑


Maintaining clean and accurate enrollment data is essential for the Attendance History Configuration process to calculate AHS records correctly. Over time, underlying enrollment data can become out of sync, resulting in stale or orphaned enrollment tags. When this happens, affected students may show incorrect Days Enrolled, Days Present, or Days Absent totals, which can in turn cause inaccurate or incomplete information in the CALPADS STAS extract.


To keep this data clean, it is important to run the following Administrative Functions on a regular basis. Navigate to School Info > Functions > Administrative Functions. Run in the order listed below:


  1. Launch Fix ENR Process - Repairs and realigns student Attendance Enrollment (ENR) records.
  2. Force Cascading DEL Tags - Clears out orphaned or stale enrollment tags that would otherwise prevent records from processing correctly.
  3. Database Cleanup - Finalizes the cleanup so the data is in a consistent state.


Running these functions routinely helps ensure that the enrollment data feeding the Attendance History Configuration process stays accurate, which supports reliable AHS calculations and CALPADS STAS reporting.


NOTE:  When these functions are run together, they should be completed in the order listed above. Running them out of order, or skipping a step, may leave the underlying data in an inconsistent state. Because Database Cleanup is a long running process, allow each step to complete before starting the next.


Configuration Options  ↑


There are several options on this page.  

  • Calculate Attendance History Through Current Day? -  With the Calculate Attendance History Through Current Day option enabled, attendance history will be calculated through the current day the process is run instead of projecting attendance through the end of the school year, which is what occurs if this option is turned off. Aeries Software HIGHLY recommends enabling this option to make the attendance history data more meaningful and accurate.

When this option is selected, the Scheduled Process section appears. Choose the Days to run process and the Time; the defaults are Monday through Friday at 12:00 AM. Scheduled processes may begin up to 10 minutes after the scheduled time. When this option is cleared, Status shows Disabled and the nightly process does not run. To ensure accurate data, this process should be run daily.

  • Include Enrollment Totals in Nightly Attendance History processing? - When this option is selected, the STU.DE - Days Enrolled, STU.DP - Days Present and STU.DA - Days Absent totals are updated each time the process runs, both nightly and when you click Update All Schools Now.

  • Calculate Attendance Totals Based on Period Attendance? - This option calculates attendance totals from period attendance for the school you are logged into. To use it at another school, log in to that school and set the option there. More information:  EOY 3 STAS - Calculate Attendance Totals Based on Period Attendance.

  • Save button is required in order for the options to be applied. A Changes Saved message briefly appears.

  • Remote Present Codes (Texas only) - Enter the one-character Remote Asynchronous Present: code. It is used to count Remote Asynchronous and Remote Synchronous present days in Attendance History. California districts don’t see this section.


NOTE: The Calculate Attendance Totals Based on Period Attendance option was added to support changes due to COVID for the 2020/2021 school year. The option is no longer needed. Schools are automatically processed with period attendance totals when School Options has "Education Type" set to Alternative Ed (LOC.TY = 1) and the school uses period, positive attendance.  It is advised to check your setting and verify this option is disabled.


  • Process Date Range - A date range option has been added to allow the Attendance History to be calculated for a specific date range. Using a modified date range will impact the CALPADS STAS extract so it is critical to ensure that the appropriate dates are evaluated prior to submitting a STAS extract to CALPADS. After selecting the modified dates, the Update All Schools Now button must be selected in order to initiate the process for calculating the modified dates. This will trigger the process to immediately begin using the specified dates.
    • When dates have been modified, a red message will display indicating the AHS and AHD tables have been  processed using a specified date range. Calculations for a modified date range are a temporary, one-time run. If the nightly process is enabled, the next scheduled run recalculates the full year. If it isn’t enabled, click Update All Schools Now with the default dates to restore full-year totals. Until then, the red message also appears on the student’s Attendance History page.
    • It is not necessary to modify dates in order to immediately start the Update Attendance History config process.
    • Leaving the dates as-is will update the AHS table to include the first day of school to the current date. The From and To Dates must be populated with a value and cannot be left blank.

  • Update All Schools Now - When using the Update All Schools Now button, this is a long running process. The process must be completed before the CALPADS STAS extract is run, otherwise, the STAS extract could contain inaccurate/incomplete information. This process has been optimized for a faster completion process. Users will receive an email when the Update All Schools Now button is used. The page will also display the Started and Completed timestamp of the last time the process was successfully run.

    • When the Update All Schools Now button is selected, the button will immediately become disabled until the process completes. 

    • A red message will indicate that an email will be received when the process completes. If the process is already running, the message The Update Attendance History Process is already running. Please wait. appears instead.


  • Date Timestamp for Process Started and Completed - When the process has been started, either using the Update All Schools Now button or via the scheduled nightly process, the page will display with a Started time and a Completed Time. These values are stored in the DPT table.

    • Started: After the process has been started and the page is refreshed or reloaded, the date timestamp will display on the page for the Date and Time the process Started according to the DPT value in UpdateAttendanceHistory_LastRun. If only a Started Time displays without a Completed time, then the process is currently running.

    • Completed: When the process is fully completed, the date timestamp will display on the page for the Date and Time the process Completed. This timestamp will only display when the page has been reloaded and the Completed timestamp has been populated in DPT - UpdateAttendanceHistory_LastCompleted.

    • Process Fails: In the event that the process fails to complete, the 'Completed' timestamp will not be logged in DPT. As a result, the page will not display with any Started or Completed date timestamp. If the process was kicked off using the Update All Schools Now button, an email will be sent indicating the reason the process failed.

    • Completed with Warnings: If the process finishes but one or more schools could not be processed, the page shows Started: and Completed with Warnings: with the date, time and the list of failed schools. In California, the CALPADS Extracts page also shows The Update Attendance History Process completed with warnings with the date and failed schools. Re-run Update All Schools Now before creating a STAS extract.


NOTE: Users should avoid creating CALPADS STAS extract files until the Attendance History Configuration process is no longer running. In California, the CALPADS Extracts page shows whether the process is running, completed, or completed with warnings. See EOY 3 CALPADS STAS File - Attendance History.



NOTE:  The Attendance History Configuration process recalculates totals for every student at every school that has attendance. Only records whose totals changed are updated, and Attendance History records that no longer have matching enrollment are removed.


Determining When the Update Attendance History Process is Running  ↑


When a user opens the Attendance History Configuration page and the Update All Schools Now button is greyed out and disabled, this indicates that the process is currently running. The message banner will display on the screen indicating the date and time the process last Started.



NOTE: If the process is currently running (either manually or scheduled), the Update All Schools Now button will be disabled.


When the Update Attendance History process fully completes, the Completed date and time will also be displayed, indicating the process is no longer running. It will be necessary to reload the page in order to see the status change from Started to Completed.



NOTE: If the Attendance History Configuration page is stuck on "Processing", clearing out the DPT values for these records may be necessary in order to clear the error so that the process can be restarted. The following queries can be run but should be used with caution:

  • CHANGE DPT CD TO " " IF NM = "UpdateAttendanceHistory_LastRunGuid"
  • CHANGE DPT CD TO " " IF NM = "UpdateAttendanceHistory_LastRun"
  • CHANGE DPT CD TO " " IF NM = "UpdateAttendanceHistory_LastCompleted"

If clearing these fields does not allow the Attendance History Configuration to reprocess successfully, refer to the guidance on the 'Troubleshooting Attendance History" document.


Email  ↑

An email will be sent to the user when the process completes. This is only triggered when the manual process is generated using the Update All Schools Now button.



AHS Recalculations for a Single Student  ↑


There are several places within the system that will trigger the AHS record to get updated for a single student automatically instead of schoolwide as described on the Attendance History Configuration page above. These processes described below will trigger the AHS data to be created or recalculated for a single student automatically. During this update process, the AHS record for the student will get deleted, and a new one will get created. If no AHS record exists, one will be created.


For example:

  • Updating a student's attendance record from the Student Attendance page.
  • Submitting attendance for a student from the Classroom Attendance page by an administrator or user
  • Submitting attendance for a student from the Attendance page when logged as a teacher or teacher emulation
  • Creating Attendance Enrollment records: i.e. Activating a new student, inactivating a student, program changes.


NOTE: Changing attendance data throughout the day can impact the results of the data extracted in the STAS extract file. It is important for the LEA to determine the best time to create the STAS extract file to ensure that AHS records have been processed completely. The most accurate time to run a STAS extract is either at the beginning of the day, after the Update Attendance History nightly process has completed or at the end of the day to account for any attendance changes, newly assigned SSIDs, new school enrollments, program changes, etc. Following this process helps maintain the utmost accuracy in attendance data being submitted to CALPADS in the STAS extract file. For more information related to STAS, see Student Absence Summary (STAS) Extract.