For: School Admins
Platform: Web (School Product – Attendance)
Overview
Suggested Absence Reasons help you quickly review possible reasons for student absences based on messages from families.
These suggestions save time while helping you keep attendance records accurate.
In order to access this feature, your school or district must have purchased our Attendance Improvement Plus package.
Where Suggested Reasons Come From 📬
Suggested Absence Reasons are collected from the messages received from student contacts.
There are two types of reasons you may see:
Dark gray reasons → Pulled from your SIS
Reasons with a checkmark icon ✨ → Generated from messages with student contacts.
You can review these AI-generated suggestions and decide whether to accept or reject them.
❗ AI-generated information can include mistakes. Please be sure to always review thoroughly before accepting or rejecting a suggested absence reason.
How to Review Suggested Reasons 🧭
You can review suggestions in two places:
Option 1: From the “Take action” banner
Go to Attendance.
Look for the banner:
“Take action: Review absence reason suggestions.”Click Review now.
Option 2: From the student list
Go to Attendance.
Find a student with a suggested reason.
Click the 3-dot menu in the Actions column.
Select:
Accept suggested reason, or
Reject suggested reason
You can also click directly on a suggested reason to open the review window.
What Happens When You Accept a Suggested Reason? ✅
When you click Accept:
The suggestion is saved.
You can download accepted suggestions as a CSV file.
You can upload that file to your SIS.
📌 After your SIS processes the update:
The reason will appear in dark gray.
It will be included in your attendance trend data.
Does Accepting a Suggested Absence Reason Automatically Excuse the Absence? ❓
No. Selecting an AI-generated or suggested reason does not automatically move a student from: “Unexcused without reason” → “Excused.”
You must complete updates in your SIS for these changes to be added to your internal attendance tracking, and communicate these changes to TalkingPoints to ensure parity.
🎯 Generated absence reasons help you review and organize information, but these suggestions do not change a student's attendance category.
Why This Feature Helps 💡
Suggested Absence Reasons:
Highlight possible reasons from family communication
Reduce manual searching through message threads
Make it easier to update your SIS
Help prepare cleaner attendance data over time
This feature is designed to save you time while keeping you in control of your attendance data.