Attendance Cycles

What are Attendance Cycles?

To put it simply, an attendance cycle names a period of time in you school.

For instance, your Q1 will be defined with a start date and end date.

This is a very important concept because many things in Genesis rely on these time frames.

If they are not accurate, then this could have strange effects on your data in genesis.

You can view/manage this via Setup>Districts>Attendance Cycles and/or Setup>Schools>Modify School>Attendance Cycles.

Where are they used?

Attendance Cycles are used though out Genesis.

The uses range from Marking Period drop downs on screens to calculating totals for attendance.

Here are a couple of examples:

• Class Attendance - When a teacher is taking class attendance, Genesis needs to know when we are during the school year. For instance, a teacher who teaches a Q2 course is not allowed to take attendance in Q3. If the dates are off for your semesters, then teachers may not have access to Class Attendance.
• Report Cards - Many report cards get attendance totals for the marking periods in the school. Genesis is able to calculate the totals based on the date ranges that you specify on your attendance cycles. If these dates are off, you assured to have incorrect totals on the report card.
• Gradebook - The tabs on your gradebook's spreadsheet screens are created based on your schools marking period cycles. By default, the text in the tabs is the marking code, such as MP1, MP2, etc. You can override the text in your gradebook's tabs by filling in the Gradebook Tab Description field. If this is left blank, the codes are used instead.

How do I use Attendance Cycles?

The only required attendance cycles are for your Marking Periods, Semesters and Months of the year.

You do not need every marking period and semester listed below but this is a list of the most frequently used cycles in Genesis.

It is important to note that all of these types of cycles can be automatically created for you.

See below for details.

Automatic Creation of Cycles

You can automatically create your cycles from the Setup.Schools.Params.Attendance Cycles screen by clicking on any of the 3 links located at the top of the list.

• Create Months
• Create Semesters
• Create Marking Period Cycles (Grading.Setup.Collections).

FAQ

Q: How do I make a change to an Attendance Cycle's Start and/or End Date?

A: Go to Setup>Schools>Click on the School>Attendance Cycles.  Here you will see a list of all of your attendance cycles.  

Click right on the attendance cycle code you want to modify:

You will be brought to a new screen that has a "Cycle Start Date" field and a "Cycle End Date" field.  

Change the dates here and click SAVE CHANGES.