We’re excited that you’re using the Attendance Improvement Plus (AIP) feature with TalkingPoints Connector (TPC)! To power actionable daily attendance messaging, TalkingPoints needs a specific attendance Data Export from your SIS. Follow the steps below to get started.
Attendance Data Export Requirements
TalkingPoints aligns to the latest Ed-Fi Data Standard for attendance data. Partners must provide daily attendance data, or StudentSchoolAttendanceEvent data according to the Ed-Fi standard—not section/period attendance.
The file must include the following required fields:
school_id
student_id
attendance_event_date (date of absence)
attendance_event_category (e.g., Excused Absence, Unexcused Absence)
attendance_event_reason (e.g., Sick, Doctor Appointment)
We also recommend including the following fields:
attendance_event_duration (e.g., 0.5 for half-day)
attendance_event_description (for internal notes, not shown to users)
📌 Reminder: Tardies are not currently counted or incorporated into absence counts in AIP.
Formatting Guidelines
Submit the data as a .csv file.
Provide one row per student per day.
Values for attendance_event_category must be mappable to these four accepted values, and should capture the student’s overall attendance status for the given school day:
Excused Absence (will be captured as an absence by TalkingPoints)
Unexcused Absence (will be captured as an absence by TalkingPoints)
Tardy (will NOT currently be captured as an absence by TalkingPoints)
Excused Present (will NOT currently be captured as an absence by TalkingPoints)
Note: Students without an absence record for a school day are assumed present but will appear with a “—” in the dashboard to indicate no data was received.
How TalkingPoints Receives Your Files
TalkingPoints has two ways of ingesting data into TalkingPoints Connector: API or SFTP. At this time, only PowerSchool partners are able to send their attendance data via API. For any other SIS, the file will be received via scheduled SFTP.
PowerSchool partners: You will receive a custom plugin to enable our team to connect to your SIS and access the data we need to enable the Attendance feature. TalkingPoints Connector API Integration Guide
Any other SIS partner: Once your attendance file is configured and contains the fields above, you will schedule your SIS to send these CSV files on a regular cadence in a batched format to the TalkingPointsConnector SFTP server. See this article for more information: TalkingPoints Connector SFTP Integration Guide
📌 Example Attendance Data File
school_id | student_id | Attendance_ event_date | Attendance_event_ category | Attendance_event_ duration | Attendance_ event_reason | Attendance_event_ description |
123 | 1552 | 2023-11-26 | Unexcused Absence | 0.35 | Family Matter | Unexcused Absent - Do Not Call |
123 | 7139 | 2023-11-18 | Unexcused Absence | 1 | Sick | Excused - student has fever |
123 | 5823 | 2023-11-26 | Excused Absence | 0.11 | Doctor Appointment | Doctor’s note provided by family |
File Scheduling Tips
We recommend scheduling at least two Attendance data files to send to TalkingPoints Connector per school day.
❗ Important! The attendance data files must have the same exact file name in order to be ingested into TalkingPoints properly. File names are case sensitive so ensure the case and spelling are consistent across all daily attendance data exports.
If all schools complete attendance by the same time on a daily basis, then the first attendance data file should be scheduled to be sent shortly after that time (i.e. 10 am local time). Data from this export can be used to facilitate daily parent/guardian attendance notifications so it is important to choose a time with this function in mind.
If schools within your district complete attendance at different times, you can schedule separate jobs for different groupings of schools. If that is the case, please send at least 2 files for each grouping. Each group's files should have a distinct name that is used for all of its data files (“attendance_elementary.csv”, “attendance_middle.csv”, etc).
The second and subsequent attendance data file(s) should be scheduled to be sent from your SIS as often as you wish to update your attendance data throughout the day, to reflect any attendance adjustments or arrival of students after the first data file was sent. The file names should match the format above and reflect the exact groupings of the first attendance files, so that attendance data updates accurately within AIP.
If your SIS supports it and it serves a purpose for your school community, more than two attendance files can be scheduled to enable more frequent updates to your attendance data and dashboard in AIP.
Before you can send your attendance files to us, you must have established a connection to TalkingPoints via API or to our SFTP server. Reach out to the Implementation team at implementations@talkingpts.org if you need assistance setting this up.