Self-Service Attendance

Owned by Robert Lenk
Last updated: Jun 18, 2024
5 min read

About Student Self Service Attendance

Campus Cafe provides a separate mobile-friendly module for students to report attendance. Students accessing the module are presented with a list of their classes meeting that day and provided the ability to clock in and clock out of each class. The instructor must then confirm the student-entered data before the attendance is added to the student's record.

Before you begin

You must have dates set in Registration Control (Registrar > Registration Control) for Faculty Schedule View Date and Student Schedule General View Date for each semester, in order for students and faculty to take attendance in Self Service.

Understanding Self Service Attendance

  • Self service attendance is recorded by the student through a browser. No app is required.

  • Students and instructors must log in using a special web address (URL).

  • Classes must have start and end dates for the class to appear in self service.

  • Classes must have start and end times for students to record attendance. Students may not check in or out of asynchronous classes. Instructors, however, may record hours attended for asynchronous classes.

  • The class meeting dates displayed in self service are dependent on Course Dates Creation process being run. The process runs automatically nightly. 

  • When students clock in, the system automatically assigns the current time as the clock in time. If students clock in after a class has ended, the clock in time will be recorded as the class end time.

  • Time in and time outs are recorded in the time zone the server is configured for. Only one time zone is supported.

Configure Self Service Attendance

Configure Private Key

  1. Contact Campus Cafe for a private key

  2. Wait until Campus Cafe confirms installation of the key prior to proceeding

Configure Login Page

  1. Navigate to Admin > Adjustable Text Maintenance

  2. Locate LOGIN_PAGE

  3. Next to LOGIN_PAGE click the pencil

  4. In the Value box replace <form name="LoginForm" action="login" method="post" _lpchecked="1"> with <form name="LoginForm" action="login?~~rtl~~" method="post" _lpchecked="1">

  5. Click Save

  6. Refresh the cache by navigating to Admin > Refresh Data Cache > reload data

Default Attendance Status

For students who explicitly do not clock in, Campus Cafe can be configured to mark them as present or absent when the instructor accepts attendance.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Custom Control Maintenance

  2. Locate ProgramID ATTEND_CLK

  3. Next to ATTEND_CLK click the pencil icon

  4. In the Parameter Value 1 box enter absent if the status for students who did not clock in should be absent. Otherwise, enter present if the default status for students who did not clock in should be present.

  5. Click Save

For schools with both credit and clock hour classes, the default attendance status can be set differently for clock hour classes.

Clock Hour Course:

For default attendance status, a course is considered to be a clock hour course if the students enrolled in the course, are assigned a current degree major that is flagged as Clock Hour. 

  1. Navigate to Admin > Custom Control

  2. Locate ProgramID ATTEND_CLK

  3. Next to ATTEND_CLK click the pencil icon

  4. In the Parameter Value 3 box enter absent if the status for students who did not clock in should be absent. Otherwise, enter present if the default status for students who did not clock in should be present.

  5. Click Save

Clock In/Out Timeframe

Students may clock into and out of a class during the class. Campus Cafe may be configured to allow students to clock in earlier than the class start time or later than the class end time. Students who fail to explicitly clock out will automatically be clocked out at the class end time.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Custom Control

  2.  Locate ProgramID ATTEND_CLK

  3. Next to ATTEND_CLK click the pencil icon

  4. In the Parameter Value 2 box enter the number of minutes the student can clock out prior to the start of class. This will be the same number of minutes the student can clock out after the end of class

  5. Click Save

Time Zones

Course schedule times and attendance times are stored in Campus Cafe in the time zone of the course.

For schools that offer courses in multiple time zones, Campus Cafe allows you to associate a course to a time zone using the course's site (updateable using the course finder). Course sites are mapped to time zones. Course site mapping to a time zone only needs to be done for sites that are in a different time zone as your Campus Cafe application.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Custom Control

  2.  Locate ProgramID TIME_ZONE_COURSE_SITE

  3. Next to TIME_ZONE_COURSE_SITE click the pencil icon

  4. In the Parameter Value 1 box enter the course site + || + time zone. Example of mapping course site 4 to the central time zone: 4||America/Chicago

    1. A list of valid time zone values can be found at List of tz database time zones

  5. You can enter up to 10 mappings, 1 mapping for each Parameter Value 1 through 10

  6. Click Save

Geofencing

Campus Cafe Self-Service attendance offers an optional geofencing option if students must be in a specific location in order to report their attendance in a course.  This feature uses longitude and latitude set in Custom Control Maintenance to set the geofencing location.  Once set, students will only be able to report their attendance when they are in that location.  The default for these controls is set to No Geofencing.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Custom Control

  2. Locate GEOFENCE

  3. In GEOFENCE 1-1 enter the latitude used to determine the geofence location for in the mobile attendance website. Seq. Number 1 is used for Course Site 1.  For additional Course Sites, use the sequence number associated with that site.

  4. In GEOFENCE 1-2 enter the longitude used to determine the geofence location for in the mobile attendance website

  5. In GEOFENCE 1-3 enter the diameter in miles used to determine the geofence location for the mobile attendance website

  6. Once you have mapped the geofence locations click Save.

  7. Run the Refresh Data Cache for the changes to be reflected in the system (Admin > Refresh Data Cache > reload data)

Course Schedule 

A course schedule is set using the course finder. After changing the days and times a course meets, the Course Dates Creation job is run to build out the course schedule for all dates. Campus Cafe can be configured to automatically update the course schedule for all dates automatically when changes are saved in the course finder.

  1. Navigate to Admin > Custom Control

  2.  Locate ProgramID ATTEND_CLK

  3. Next to ATTEND_CLK click the pencil icon

  4. In the Parameter Value 4 box enter Y. This will automatically update course dates as days/times changes are made.

  5. Click Save

Student Self Service Attendance & Clock In/Out

Students must submit attendance through the special web address below. Attendance cannot be submitted through the traditional login.

  1. In a browser navigate to https://***-web.scansoftware.com/cafeweb/mobile/ where *** represents your school code

  2. Sign in

  3. Click or tap the class to clock in our out (only classes underway or within the allowable window may be selected)

  4. Click Submit (students may clock in and out of the same class meeting multiple times)

Instructor Accepts Attendance

  1. For institutions not utilizing single-sign-on, in a browser navigate to https://***-web.scansoftware.com/cafeweb/mobile/ where *** represents your school code

  2. Sign in 

  3. Select the class to review and confirm attendance

  4. To edit an individual student record, click or tap the student's name

  5. To confirm attendance for entire class click Accept