1. Introduction
Attendance Tracker has been developed with several goals in mind:
- Allow the user to register attendance for any type of event in a quick and easy manner.
- Optimal integration with the Android operating system and mobile (tablet/phones) technologies such as:
- The touch screen
- Internet connection
- Device contact list
- Provide a clean and simple user-interface that is compliant with the Android design guidelines.
- Provide the user a simple overview in which the attendance can be viewed
- Provide the user a way to export the attendance of an event to external tools
1.1 Structure of the manual
This manual will follow the structure that exists in the app (each button on the main screen provides access to a set of features, each of these features will be described in a separate chapter of this manual. The main screen itself is explained in this introduction chapter. Concepts and terminology used within the app is explained in the following paragraph.
1.2 Concepts and terminology
In the following overview the most important concepts in Attendance Tracker are explained:Event - A regular meeting of a group of people during a period of time. Examples: a football team during 1 year, students during a school year etc. In case the participation changes we recommend to create a new event (e.g. football team 2013, football team 2014 etc.).
Participant - A person that participates to an event. Deleting/adding participants during an ongoing event is possible but not recommended since it will create mixed statistics (comparing the participation of participants when some of them are only in the event for a shorter period).
Instance - A date (and optionally) time on which the group of people (from the event) performed a meeting
Attendance - The status of a participant during an instance. This can be one of the following:
- In – the person is present
- Out – the person is not present (for a known reason)
- Unknown – the person is not present and the reason is unknown
- Sick – the person is sick
- Not set – the attendance has not yet been set
2. Main Screen
The main screen allows users to quickly navigate to the part of the app that is needed. The following four buttons are shown:
- Setup – Use this section to create, edit or delete events (and add participants to them).
- Attendance – Once at least 1 event has been created, this button becomes enabled. Use this section to create instance for an event and to register the attendance of participants during these instances.
- Metrics and Export – Once at least 1 instance for 1 event has been created this button becomes available. This section of the app can be used to watch or export overviews of the attendance for an event.
- Documentation – Opens the documentation section. This section contains the quick start quick, an about page and access to the (online) manual.
Next to the 4 main buttons, there is a configuation menu which can be opened by pressing the menu button on your device:
From the settings menu the following actions can be started:
- Feature unlocking - Use the feature unlock dialog to see which features are unlocked, and which features can still be purchased (e.g. extended limits, remove ads, remove limitations etc.)..
- Settings - Section to control several layout aspects and to set a default Google account (this account will be used for spreadsheet import actions)
- Backup and Restore - Section to create a backup of all app data. This backup can for example be used to transfer data to another device. A dedicated section (7) is available that explains how to create and restore backups.
- About - Section that shows general information about the app and contact details of the development team.
3. Setup section
The setup section allows to create, configure and delete events in the app.
3.1 Creating events
Create a new event by clicking on the add event button:
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| Location of the add event button |
The “create event” dialog shows in which the name for the event should be provided. After writing the name click the OK button to close the dialog and create the event.
The newly created event is shown (with the default event icon) in the event list. The event list shows for each event the number of instances and the number of participants.
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| Event list with 3 events. Nr of instances and nr of participants are shown for each event. |
From the event list, events can be renamed and/or deleted by a long press on an event. A dialog is shown with 3 options:
- rename event - allows to rename the event
- delete event - delete the event. Caution! this will also delete all instances and attendance history for this event!
- clone event - create a copy of the event, this copy will contain the selected participants, but no instances or attendance history.
3.2 Configuring events
To configure an event, select it in the event list. This will op en the event setup screen:
To configure the event, the following actions are available:
Change the event icon:
Click on the icon (top left), an icon chooser is shown in which an icon can be selected.
Change the event icon:
Click on the icon (top left), an icon chooser is shown in which an icon can be selected.
Part of the event icon selection screen.
A default set of icons is available, should you have the need for a new event type icon, please contact PetermanApps
Rename the event: Click on the rename action button:
The event rename dialog is shown. This dialog can be used to rename the event.
Add participants to the event: Click on the add participant action:
The following dialog will be shown:
There are multiple ways of adding participants to an event:
- Select a contact from the device (picture and name will be synced)
- Select all contacts of a device group (pictures and names will be synced)
- Create a new device contact.
- Create an app only contact
- Import from Google Spreadsheet (this will create app only contacts)
It is recommended to use device contacts/select group to add contacts to an events. The reason for this is that this offers the most efficiency: picture and names are synced with the contact information on the device and you can use the “share with” features to directly mail or text message these persons from the Attendance Tracker app. When a device contact is removed from the device, the contact in Attendance Tracker will become an “app only” contact, see below for more information on “app only” contacts.
Creating a new device contact does only open the interface to create a new contact, it does not directly add the contact to the event (this should be done using the “select a device contact” action).
app only contacts are to be used when you have the need to register attendance for a person that is not a device contact. Note that you can only set a name for app only contacts. It is possible to link a “app only” contact to an existing device contact, this will update the name and picture of the “app only” contact to the name and picture of the selected device contact.
To manage app only contacts, long press an app-only contact. The following menu will be shown:
When using the import from Google Spreadsheets, a Google dialog is shown that will aks persmission to access the Goolge docs of the main user of the devices. In case this permission is granted, a list of all available spreadsheets is shown. Select a spreadsheet (if more than 1 worksheet is available in the spreadsheet, select the right worksheet). Aftert this the list of participants in the worksheet is shown. Confirm to import the shown contacts into the event.
Note: the participant names should be listed in a single column in the worksheet.
To manage app only contacts, long press an app-only contact. The following menu will be shown:
Clicking on the "Edit details" opens the following page in which detailled information for the contact can be stored:
When using the import from Google Spreadsheets, a Google dialog is shown that will aks persmission to access the Goolge docs of the main user of the devices. In case this permission is granted, a list of all available spreadsheets is shown. Select a spreadsheet (if more than 1 worksheet is available in the spreadsheet, select the right worksheet). Aftert this the list of participants in the worksheet is shown. Confirm to import the shown contacts into the event.
Note: the participant names should be listed in a single column in the worksheet.
Delete the event: Click the delete event icon.
Be warned: this action will remove the event and all related instances and attendance information. Be careful when using this!
Be warned: this action will remove the event and all related instances and attendance information. Be careful when using this!
4. Attendance Section
The attendance section is used to perfom the actual registering of the attendance of participants. The attendance section is opened by clickin on the Attendance button on the main screen:
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| Clicking the Attendance button |
A list that shows all events that have been created is shown. Select the event for which the attendance should be noted:
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| Selecting the event |
After the selection, all instances of this event are displayed in the instances list:
The instance list contains 3 action buttons:
- Add instance
- Setup
- Share
The setup action button allows to modify how instances are created and shown by default:
Instance sorting preference: defines how the instances are shown in the list, by default the newest instance is shown on top of the list. De-selecting this checkbox will shown the olders instance on top of the list.
Show times preference: when selected it becomes possible to set a time for instances. This feature has been designed to enable multiple instances on the same date.
Default status in preference: when selected, all attendance of participants will be set to status IN on creation of a new instance.
Participants sorting: when selected, participants will be ordered on their last name. By default participants are sorted on their full name.
4.1 Marking attendance
After selecting an instance, all participants will be shown in the following list:
For each participant, no status is selected by default. By clicking on the icons shown below, the status for each participant can be set:
Using the notes button, more information can be added to the attendance status:
Edit notes button
Clicking on the notes button opens a dedicated editor. In this editor a message can be typed and a "Late" checkbox can be marked:
Notes editor
When the Late option has been marked, or when a text has been entered into the text field, the notes button will show the information icon:
Clicking on the button re-opens the notes editor.
5. Documentation Section
Work in progress, to be done.
6. Metrics
No manual available yet.
7. Backup and Restore
7.1 Creating backups
To make a backup of all application data navigate to the backup and restore section. This can be done by pressing the menu button on the main application screen and selecting the "Backup and Restore" item.
The following screen will show:
The Backup and Restore section
To create a backup click the "Create Backup" button. Depending on the amount of data this might take some time. Once finished a backup (*.atb) file will show in the list of backups (bottom section of the screen).
The backup files (*.atb) are by default located in the Download directory of your device.
To delete, restore or share a backup, long click on the *.atb file on which you want to perform the action. The following dialog will show:
Backup actions
- The restore action is explained in the next chapter (7.2 Restoring backups).
- The "Share file" action can for example be used to mail the backup to a mail adress or to store the file in Google Drive or Microsoft SkyDrive.
- The "Delete" action will remove the file from the device.
7.2 Restoring backups
Before restoring a backup the application needs to be cleaned of all data. This can be achived by pressing the "Clear app data" button. Note that this will cause all data in the app to be removed! This action cannot be undone.
Once the app is cleared of any data, a backup may be restored. To do so, select the "Restore" action in the context menu of a backup file. Depending on the size of the backup this might take some time.
During a restore action, the participants that were Google Contacts will be matched by name with the contacts on the new device on which the backup is restored. In case there is no contact available that has the same name, a contact will be automatically become a "app local" contact (see section 3.2. for more information regarding app-local contacts).
