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School-level feature — managed within your school portal at yourschool.deandesk.com.
The Attendance tracker in DeanDesk lets instructors record and review student presence for each class session. Attendance data is stored per course, visible to instructors and admins, and feeds into student reports and end-of-course records. Open a course and click the Attendance tab. The attendance view shows all scheduled sessions for the course as rows and all enrolled students as columns. Each cell represents one student’s status for one session.

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Marking attendance for a session

1

Open the Attendance tab

Navigate to the course and click Attendance.
2

Find the session

Locate the session you want to mark — sessions are listed by date. Click the row to expand it, or click directly on a cell.
3

Set each student's status

For each student, tap their status to cycle through the four states — Present → Tardy → Excused → Absent:Tardy is shown in purple with a clock icon throughout the attendance views.
4

Save

Attendance saves automatically as you mark each status. There is no separate save button.
Use the Mark All Present button at the top of a session row to mark every student present at once, then adjust the students who were absent or tardy individually. This is faster for most sessions.

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Viewing attendance records per student

To review a single student’s attendance history across all sessions:
1

Open the Attendance tab

Navigate to the course and click Attendance.
2

Click the student's name

Click the student’s name in the column header. This opens the Student Attendance Viewer, which shows a summary of that student’s status for every session in the course.
The Student Attendance Viewer displays:
  • A session-by-session breakdown of the student’s attendance status
  • A summary count of Present, Tardy, Excused, and Absent sessions
  • The student’s overall attendance rate as a percentage

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How the attendance rate is calculated

The attendance rate counts Tardy as attended:
Attendance rate = (Present + Tardy) ÷ total marked sessions
Tardy also appears everywhere attendance is summarized — the summary cards and per-student tables, ” present, tardy” session summaries, a purple Tardy series in the admin attendance trend chart, a Tardy chip in the parent Children Progress widget, and a Tardy column in printed attendance tables.
Because tardy sessions now count toward the attendance rate, percentages may differ from what was previously reported for the same records.

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Automatic attendance from video calls

If a class meets over a DeanDesk video call, attendance can be recorded automatically from each student’s time in the call — no roll call needed.

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Ending class and finalizing attendance

Teachers and admins hosting a call see a red End class button next to the Live indicator. Clicking it opens a confirmation dialog — “End class and finalize attendance?” — explaining that the call session will end and student attendance will be calculated from their time in the call. On confirming, the host lands on the course attendance page with the session’s records filled in. Time in call is tracked automatically for all participants throughout the session.

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How statuses are assigned

Each course’s call sessions follow an attendance policy:
  • Grace period (default 10 minutes) — students who join after the grace period are marked Tardy.
  • Minimum attendance percent (default 75%) — the share of the session a student must be connected to be counted as attending.
  • Brief disconnections don’t split attendance — a short drop-off or reconnect doesn’t reset a student’s attended time.
For each student, the record captures when they first joined, when they last left, their total attended time, the session duration, their attendance percentage, how many times they joined, and the reason behind the status — met the requirement, joined late, insufficient duration, or did not join.

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Automatic vs. manual records

Records created from a call are marked with the video-call source, while roll-call entries are marked manual. Teachers can still edit any automatically recorded status — an edited record is marked manually overridden, and the teacher’s edit takes precedence over the automatic calculation.

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Attendance history and patterns

The Attendance tab shows the full history for a course at a glance. Use the following approaches to identify patterns:
  • Sort by student: Look down a student’s column to see streaks of absences or consistent lateness.
  • Sort by session: Look across a session row to identify sessions with unusually high absenteeism.
  • Filter by status: Use the Filter dropdown to show only absent or tardy records, making problem patterns easier to spot.
If you notice a student with frequent absences, you can reach out directly using DeanDesk’s messaging tools or post a course announcement to remind all students of attendance expectations.

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Admin attendance dashboard

While the course Attendance tab is scoped to a single course, administrators can monitor attendance across the whole school from the Attendance Dashboard. Go to Admin Dashboard → Operations → User Attendance.

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School-wide overview

The School-Wide Overview section aggregates attendance data for all students over a date range you choose — set a Start date and number of Days (up to 90), or use the Preset menu for Last 7 days, Last 30 days, or Last 90 days. It shows:
  • Summary cards for the overall Attendance Rate, Present, Tardy, Excused, and Unexcused counts
  • An Attendance Trend chart plotting the daily totals over the selected period

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Student lookup

Below the overview, use Student Lookup to review one student’s attendance across all their courses:
1

Search for the student

Enter a name or email in the search field and click Search, then select the student from the results.
2

Set the date range

Use the Start Date and Days fields to choose the period to review (up to 90 days).
3

Review the results

The dashboard shows the student’s Attendance Rate, Present, Tardy, Excused, and Unexcused counts, an Attendance Trends chart, and a Daily Breakdown table with Date, Present, Tardy, Excused, Unexcused, Total, and Rate columns.
In the Daily Breakdown table, each day’s rate is color-coded — green at 90% or above, amber from 70–89%, and red below 70% — so problem days stand out at a glance.

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How attendance data flows into reports

Attendance records feed into two downstream areas:
  1. Student reports: Admin-level student reports include attendance summaries per course. Go to Admin Dashboard → Reports → Student Reports to view or export these. See Student Reports for details.
  2. Student Information System (SIS): Attendance data is accessible in each student’s record under Student Records, giving advisors and administrators a full picture of engagement across all courses.

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Best practices for accurate records

  • Mark attendance at the start of each session while the class is still assembled, rather than reconstructing it afterward.
  • Use Excused for documented absences rather than leaving the cell blank. An empty cell and an excused absence are treated differently in reports.
  • Review the previous session before class to catch any cells you may have left unmarked.
  • Communicate your policy clearly: Let students know how attendance is tracked and what each status means, so there are no surprises when they view their records.
Cells left blank are treated as unmarked — they do not count as present or absent in attendance summaries. Always mark a status for every student in every session to ensure accurate records.