Attendance is optional. Go to Course Settings › General Settings and turn on Enable Attendance. The Attendance tool will then appear on the course dashboard.
Attendance starts as Tracking only, so recording it does not automatically change student grades.
To grade attendance, open Course Settings › Assessment Categories, turn on Count toward final grade, and choose its weight.
Assessment-category weights plus Attendance must total exactly 100%. Until at least one class is held, Attendance is excluded from the active-grade denominator so students are not penalized for missing data.
The Attendance calendar
Opening the Attendance tile shows a calendar-style overview of the term, color-coded by day:
Held classes (attendance was actually marked)
Excused/cancelled classes (no class held, doesn't count against anyone)
Scheduled-but-not-yet-marked days
Three summary cards sit above the calendar:
Card
Meaning
Total Scheduled
How many class days fall in the course's date range based on your class-schedule settings.
Classes Held
How many of those days have attendance actually recorded.
Classes Excused
How many days were marked as cancelled/excused rather than held.
The attendance calendar with Total Scheduled / Classes Held / Classes Excused summary cards.
Marking attendance
There are four ways in. The first three are on every plan and none of them has a monthly limit.
Batch Attendance Update, click any date in the calendar (or a spreadsheet header) to open a modal listing every enrolled student for that date, where you mark present/absent/excused for the whole class at once and save in one action.
Fast Attendance Marker, a streamlined, single-purpose page ( Fast button) optimized for marking attendance quickly on a phone or tablet while physically taking roll in class.
AI scan of your paper register, upload a photo or PDF of the register you signed in class and the AI reads the names or roll numbers and matches them to your roster. It draws from your monthly AI credits, with no separate attendance cap.
Live student check-inPro, open a timed session (5 to 30 minutes) and ProfDesk generates a six-digit code. Students enter it from their own course portal to mark themselves present, and you watch the list fill in live, so you never call the register at all. Most useful in a large class.
Only the live check-in session is a Pro feature. Recording attendance is not: manual marking stays unlimited on every plan, and AI register scans draw from your monthly AI credits without a separate attendance cap.
Exporting
Click Export to Excel to download the full attendance spreadsheet (every student, every date, marked status) for your own records or to hand to an administrator.
