Sisra Analytics: How do I create Attendance Bands as a filter? (Admin)

Overview

This article explains two ways to group student data into attendance bands (rather than including individual values), enabling you to use them as filters:

Group attendance in Excel.
Filter Aliases in Sisra Analytics.

In the examples below, attendance values are categorised into 3 groups (84% or Below, 85-95%, and 96% or Above), however, use the same approach for additional groups or different filters.

When grouping attendance percentages or other numerical values, avoid using formulas like 90<x<95 with a letter after <. Such text can trigger security flags on systems, as they are often used in hacking attempts. causing errors. Instead, use values such as 90 to 95% or <90%, and >95%. Do this each time you’re importing a new student data file.

Prerequisites

You must be an administrator.

Instructions

Select a tab below to view the different ways to create attendance band groups to use when filtering:

Follow these steps for each student data file you import into Sisra Analytics:
1. Open your data in Excel to manually group your attendance data.
2. Sort your spreadsheet by the Attendance percentage column.
3. Create a new column next to this called, for example, Attendance Group.
4. Create your groups by entering the name of the group into the Attendance Group column and copy it down for the appropriate students who have met the criteria:
5. Save the file.
6. In Sisra Analytics, import the data held in the file. When importing, select the Attendance Group column against your Attendance filter on the Column Mapping page.
You must repeat these steps each time you import a student data file into Sisra Analytics.
To use filter aliases to group Attendance values together:
1. In Sisra Analytics, enter each Attendance figure manually and assign it to the appropriate filter alias (for further guidance, see Sisra Analytics: Student Data Profile - Creating Filter Aliases & Tags (Admin)):
  
  You only have to do this once for your school.
2. Open your data in Excel.
3. Use the ROUND formula in Excel to round your Attendance values to whole values.
  
  Do not import / upload decimalised percentages. This impacts publishing times, report performance, and requires individual filter aliases for each decimal.
4. Save the file.
5. In Sisra Analytics, import the data held in the file by selecting the Attendance Group column against your Attendance filter on the Column Mapping page.