Track Seminar Attendance

Would you like to track who actually attended seminars that originated in Seminar Sign-up? Here are two ways, one easy and one more powerful way to track the attendance of your seminars in AccuTrack/AccuSQL:

First, let’s cover the easy way to track seminar attendance. Simply create an Activity with the same name as the Seminar.

In the set-up for the Activity, leave the Activity inactive until just before the activity occurs.

Once it is time for students to arrive for the Seminar, make the Activity active and Global.

Once all students have signed in, or it is too late for them to sign in, de-activate the Activity. Be especially sure to uncheck the Global setting.

This works well for stand-alone uses of AccuTrack/AccuSQL. In other words, there are no other labs in these particular set-ups within AccuTrack/AccuSQL. However, using the Global setting in a multi-lab set-up will cause that activity to be seen by student sign-in screens at every lab. It is also difficult to keep a student who did not register for the seminar from signing into the activity. This is because the global setting allows all students signing in to see this choice. So, for users with more than one lab or who need to restrict attendance, here is a more powerful way to track who attends Seminars.

Begin with the same instruction as the “easy way” by creating an Activity with the same exact title as the Seminar you have already created. This must be exact in every way and is case sensitive. Just before the event, create a report of the students registered for the seminar. From your System Administration screen choose Reports on the left menu.

From this menu, choose the Seminar Registration report under Seminar Registration.

Narrow down the time so that it only includes the seminar you wish to export. Be aware of anytime there are two seminars at the same time. If there are multiple seminars occurring at the same time, continue with this report and simply filter out the seminar from the results.

Now choose to export this report directly into Excel.

An Excel spreadsheet will open. Review the report checking that the title indeed matches the Activity title you created and that you see the proper students registered. This is where you would delete rows of data in the event there were two seminars scheduled at the same time. If it all looks good, save it as a text file. Now close the reports panel so you are back in the System Administration Panel.

Now let’s import this list of students as a registration import for the activity we created to match the seminar. From the left menu, choose Database.

From the Database panel, choose Import.

Using the tiny button to the left of the “File to Import” field, navigate to your saved text file with the registered students.

Now, using the drop down arrow next to the Target Table field, choose Student Registration.

Leave the Overwrite current registration choice BLANK.

Choose Next. Your screen should now look similar to the following. Be sure that you see columns properly separated.

Choose Next.

This will most likely be the first time you have used this import so the next screen will need some “training”. Even if you have imported other registration files, you need to make sure the columns are correctly mapped. Here is the screen BEFORE we map the columns:

Simply scroll through the columns to find the column that contains the “User id”. In the text file, that column is named “Input_id” and is usually column 13.

Click directly on the column heading and drag it to the left of the “user id” in the upper section.

Do the same for the Activity column which is the column named “Title” in your file and is usually column 7. These are the only two fields you need to map. Now choose Next.

Your next screen gives you some feedback about the import before it is actually executed. You should have green indicators which state the data have no issues.

Now choose the Finish button.

If your import is successful, it should look like this:

(The one “class Unknown” and the one “User Unknown” are expected because we left our headings in the file. If you have these or similar results, you can now click OK in the Import results screen to close it.)

If the import were not successful due to not having an exact match for the activity file, it will look like this:

Simply edit the activity title to match exactly with the seminar title and import again.

Once your import is successful, check to make sure you are restricting the student sign-in to registered students only. This is found in the Systems Administration panel under Sign-in Setup.

Choose the Setup button at the lower right part of this panel.

Choose the Activity Screen Option from this menu.

Make sure the box for “Only show registered activities in the Activities screen” is checked.

Now you can open your activity through the Sign-in Setup, Categories & Activities.

Choose the category in the left panel and then the activity in the right panel. Then click the Edit button.

Be sure to make the activity “Active” but do not choose the “Global” setting. The “Sign-in only” feature is optional.

Now, when students who are registered for the seminar sign-in, they will see the seminar title as a choice in the activities. Students who did not register for the seminar will not see the choice. Once all students have signed in, be sure to go back to the Sign-in Setup and inactivate the activity.

Congratulations! You have now created a seminar, enabled students to register for it and then used the seminar registrations report to convert the seminar registrations into the students’ registered activity selection list.

 

Laura Alvarez

Software Consultant

Engineerica Systems