Weekly Attendance Roster…structure?

[John Amagliani]

I’m struggling to know how to structure a Tap Forms Pro database to compose class rosters.

Right now I have several forms, with forms linked using a joining record. The forms I currently have are…
Students form for student demographics, with the Teacher as the joining field.
Classes/Periods form for the day, period, and day, with Teacher as the joining field.
Calendar for the quarter, week number, day of the week, and date.

What I want to end up with is a traditional daily (weekly in my case) attendance roster, with names down the left side, and dates across the top. When printed out, I will write in attendance/grades in the intersecting “cell”. (I don’t currently have plans to record grades or attendance in this database. This database is intended only to generate printable attendance rosters.)

I already have this in a Numbers on Mac spreadsheet but want to transfer this into Tap Forms Pro.

I need a class/period associated with a subset of students (e.g. all the students assigned to a particular teacher) and a subset of dates (e.g. all the Monday dates from Quarter 1). The info needs to be layed out in a traditional roster format.

I can imagine how to get a list of names down the left side for a particular class. Where I’m struggling most is how to get the dates to run across the top and get the attendance grid.

I have attached an anonymized screenshot as an example from my Number spreadsheet. Thanks for any ideas on how to structure this!

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[Brendan]

Hi John,

You would basically need to create separate fields in your form to contain the values for all the columns. Will the values in the columns be checkmarks? That is, if they’ve attended or not? If so, create a separate checkmark field for each column in your example. The report generator can create a tabular format report, but it wouldn’t necessarily look exactly like your example. But it could be close enough hopefully.

Thanks,

Brendan

[John Amagliani]

Thanks Brendan. I’m not planning on keeping attendance in the database. I will only use the database, at the least the roster layout part, to print a roster.

I may try, as you suggested, adding a field for each date, but putting these fields in a separate “dates” form, so that my student demographic database doesn’t get peppered with dates fields.

I was imagining using javascript to call data and place it meticulously in text boxes on the layout. Hopefully that meticulous work would only have to happen once. But I’m so unfamiliar with javascript, I don’t see that happening.

[John Amagliani]

I uploaded a screenshot of an attempt that gets significantly closer to what I’m wanting.

It has names down the left, composed of a link to a Students form.

It has dates across the top, composed of a link to a Dates form. The record linked in the dates form is set to show certain fields for the proper weeks.

In the app, an outline shows around each name and around each date. Is there a way to show the outline in the printout?

Also, is there a way to not have the headers (the field names) on the printout? (I suppose I could put a white box over the headers.)

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[Brendan]

Are you using the report generator for that report? Or are you using a custom layout? On the report generator you can turn off the field names header row.

[John Amagliani]

Thank you. That’s closer. But I wasn’t able to get the field names even the I unchecked “Include field names header” and “Field names on first page only.” It was the same on any “normal” (not linked) fields as well. See attached screenshots.

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[Brendan]

Ah, my apologies, that setting is only for the Table report layout, not the Details report layout.

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