Adding attendance for a gathering

Before adding attendance data, you'll first need to add your various gatherings and set up the metricsets and metrics of interest that you'll collect data for over time. See our related support article on Adding and managing attendance gatherings.

Adding attendance (people tracking disabled)

Working within the Attendance section of the module, click Add attendance.

On the Add attendance pop-up, select the Gathering and the attendance Date using the date picker. Optionally, add any Notes relevant to the data for the date being added. Note the option to record that a gathering Didn't Meet - dates when a gathering didn't meet are not plotted on attendance graphs.

For gatherings where people tracking is enabled, the Metricsets are initially collapsed. If you prefer to record people tracking data first, click Next to record the register of attendance for Address Book contacts and add known metric values later - see the next section for further information on Adding attendance with people tracking enabled. To add known attendance metric values now, click Show Metricsets - you can add people tracking data later.

Returning to the focus of this section, and for gatherings where people tracking is not enabled, the metric fields for each metricset are shown, ready to populate attendance data. Zero and empty values are permitted. Click Save to add the attendance.

After saving, the attendance View shows all the details just added, and the metricsets are totalled. Click Edit if you need to make changes. Returning to the Attendance section, you can add attendance for other gatherings and dates.

When adding attendance and where you have multiple gatherings, an On this date widget shows a summary of all attendance for all gatherings for the date. From here, you can easily navigate between other attendances for the date being viewed.

Adding attendance (people tracking enabled)

A great feature of the module is tracking the attendance of Address Book contacts at your various gatherings. You can enable people tracking on a gathering-by-gathering basis. For example, you might track people at Sunday gatherings but not track them at certain midweek gatherings. Historic people tracking data is preserved if people tracking is subsequently disabled.

Before you can add people tracking data for a gathering, you'll first need to enable it. We've produced a related article on Adding and managing attendance gatherings that explains how to set up your various gatherings and how to enable people tracking for a gathering. You're now ready to begin adding attendance with people tracking.

Working within the Attendance section of the module, click Add attendance.

On the Add attendance pop-up, select the Gathering and the attendance Date using the date picker. Optionally, add any Notes that are relevant to the data for the date being added. Note the option to record that a gathering Didn't Meet - dates when a gathering didn't meet are not plotted on attendance graphs.

For gatherings where people tracking is enabled, the metricsets and metrics are initially collapsed. You can either click to reveal the Metricsets now if you prefer to add known attendance data first and add the people tracking data after:

Or, click Next to begin recording people tracking data:

The people tracking pop-up opens. The pop-up opens filtered for recent attendees, but you can remove the filter to see all contacts or apply a different filter based on selected Tags, e.g. 'Members'. Tap a contact name to mark them as attended - their attendance is immediately added - or tap again to deselect them, and their attendance is cancelled. Use the Search bar to locate specific people - the list filters as you type. The list of people shown in the pop-up is paginated, and long contact lists may span multiple pages. You can increase the pagination to reduce the number of pages if you wish. Once you've recorded attendance for the relevant people, click the X in the top-right corner to close the pop-up.

The attendance View is shown, and the People section at the bottom of the page shows a list of those recorded as in attendance for the gathering and date. Any smart-linked metrics were automatically updated as contact names were ticked. From this section, you can still search and add tracking for individual contacts or Edit to record further people tracking data. To remove a tracked person from the list, click the X next to their name. Again, any smart-linked metrics are automatically updated as tracked contact names are ticked or removed. Finally, if not previously added, you can now complete the attendance record by clicking Edit at the top of the page:

On the Edit pop-up, record known metrics values for the gathering. Zero and empty values are permitted.

Note that smart-linked metrics, distinguished by a chain-link icon, are not editable. Smart-linked metrics will automatically populate with a value when people tracking data is added. In the example below, people tracking is enabled for the gathering, and the 'Adults' metric has been set as smart-linked, which means the 'Adults' metric data will be populated when the people tracking data is later added. It's not possible to make changes to the value of a smart-linked metric, but changes are made automatically when contact names are ticked when adding the people tracking data for the gathering and date. See the related article Adding and managing attendance gatherings for further information on smart-linking. Click to Save the changes.

The attendance View updates to show the total attendance for the gathering.

Finally, in this section, note the Engagement tab of Address Book contact profiles, which shows recent attendance tracking:

Managing and visualising attendance data

The module's Reports section includes two powerful reporting options to help you drill down into your attendance data and visualise changes and trends over time:

Additionally, as you add attendance data, the Attendance section gives an immediate visualisation with equally powerful filtering and data-grouping of attendance across each of your various gatherings:

Beneath the chart is your raw attendance data. The Advanced search can be used to further filter the list by Date, Day, and Gathering to locate attendance data of interest:

And actions to View, Edit, or Delete an attendance:

Batch actions are available to Delete multiple selected attendances. Deleting attendance data is destructive and permanent and will impact reports, so delete with caution!