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Use Attendance Analytics

While there are a number of ways to access attendance data using Data Views and SQL reports, Rock also provides powerful analytics capabilities that you can access from Tools > Reporting > Attendance Analytics. This powerful tool should be able to answer any question you throw at it. Let's see what's possible.

This block operates in two modes: Chart and Attendees.

Chart Mode

When in chart mode, the analytics block will report back the count of the attendees who match the criteria you've provided. This is great when you're looking for numbers for a specific weekend or viewing attendance over time.

  1. Attendance Area - The first step is to select the kind of attendance that you'd like to report. Most often you'll probably be interested in check-in data, so select Weekly Service Check-in.
  2. Date Range - The most important criterion you will provide is the date range. This date range picker is very powerful and allows you to select many different types of date ranges. To help reduce confusion, the label above it shows the exact dates that are currently being used for the filter.
  3. Group By Setting - This determines how the attendance data should be grouped for the graph. Typically, this will be by week, but you may want to get a monthly or yearly graph too.
  4. Schedules - Use this dropdown menu if you want to filter by specific schedules, such as only Sunday morning services. Select multiple times or events by clicking on them. Leave it blank if you don't want schedules to be included in your filter.
  5. Campuses - If your church has multiple campuses, you can select the one you're currently interested in.
  6. Groups - Next you can filter which check-in groups (usually age ranges) you'd like to view in your analysis. If your organization has a lot of groups, you can change the block settings to display your groups as a dropdown menu, which makes finding and selecting groups easier. To learn how to change this display, see Configuring Attendance Analytics Block Settings below.
  7. Limit By Data View - This is an advanced setting that allows you to apply even more filter options to your criteria. For instance, let's say you only want to report on girls. You could easily make a data view with this gender filter and use it here to only show girls.
  8. Copy Link - Did you configure the attendance analytics block to provide the perfect snapshot of your attendance? Want to share that with a colleague? The Copy Link button lets you do exactly that.
  9. Update - Since the block has to crunch through a ton of data to show its results, the graph will only refresh when you click the Update button.
  10. Graph By - Sometimes you may want to only see one series on your graph (the Total option) but other times you'd like to see multiple series. This setting allows you to configure what types of series you'd like displayed.
  11. Graph - Yep...this is the graph.
  12. Show Data - Sometimes you want a pretty picture, other times you need raw data. The good news is that you can have both!

Now that you see how you can see how to get numbers, let's look at how you can see the individuals who make up those numbers. Clicking the Attendees button will hide the graph and show you the individuals behind the data.

Much of the block works in the same way as the graph mode, but here are a few of the differences.

  1. Filter - The filter allows you to show all the attendees or special attendees. We discuss these filters in detail below.
  2. Return Type - Sometimes you want the attendees (usually children) but other times you want to convert the list to the parents (or children) of the attendees.
  3. Columns - If you look carefully, you'll notice that the number and types of columns change based on your criteria. Normally you'll see a column for each week in the date range with a checkmark if they attended that week. If you select Group By month or year however, it will show a column for that period type instead.

Attendee Mode

Now that you see how you can see how to get numbers, let's look at how you can see the individuals who make up those numbers. Clicking the Attendees button will hide the graph and show you the individuals behind the data.

Much of the block works in the same way as the graph mode, but here are a few of the differences.

  1. Filter - The filter allows you to show all the attendees or special attendees. We discuss these filters in detail below.
  2. Return Type - Sometimes you want the attendees (usually children) but other times you want to convert the list to the parents (or children) of the attendees.
  3. Columns - If you look carefully, you'll notice that the number and types of columns change based on your criteria. Normally you'll see a column for each week in the date range with a checkmark if they attended that week. If you select Group By month or year however, it will show a column for that period type instead.

Filters

By Visit

Many times, you'll want to filter out only the first-time visitors. That's easy! Just use the By Visit filter. You can select from the first to fifth visits.

Note that the date range is important to this filter. It will show anyone who has had a first visit during the provided range.

You'll also notice a No visit option at the end. This will show members of the selected groups that did not attend at all during the selected date range. Keep in mind though that children are not members of most weekend service groups. This option is more for small groups or service groups that children are members of.

Tip

Ministry Idea
Hopefully you're already seeing that this filter provides an easy way to send emails or letters to parents of first-time visitors.

Pattern

Perhaps you want to find kids who have stopped coming or maybe who come often. The pattern filter can help with either case.

As you can see, you can filter by certain attendance and non-attendance patterns.

Configuring Attendance Analytics Block Settings

You can configure the Attendance Analytics block to service other types of check-in scenarios, such as volunteer or serving team check-in. In the Group Types section, select which group types you want to use for your analytics. Ensure that the group type you select is a top-level type that contains the groups you wish to report on.

Attendance Analytics block settings is also where you can choose whether to display all of the groups in your organization as a list on the screen, or to use a group dropdown menu instead. If you want to use a dropdown menu, select No in the Show All Groups field.

We have a couple of final items to mention, both of which can be found at the top of the Attendance Analytics screen.

Attendance Analytics for Specific Groups

There are additional Attendance Analytics block settings that allow you to filter data by a specific group ID, as well as additional display options. This option is intended for group leaders to use as part of their Group Leader toolbox.

Selecting "Yes" in the Group Specific field will tell the block to only display attendance for a single group, passed to the block through a query string in the URL (e.g. ?GroupId=123). When a group ID is used, the Merge People, Bulk Update and Merge Document options on the Attendance Analytics screen will be hidden.

The Show Schedule Filter, Show Campus Filter and Show View By Option settings give you control over whether or not these options are displayed on the Attendance Analytics screen.

Final Pieces

  1. Help - We've provided a lot of built-in help to this block to assist you in remembering all of these details. When in doubt, open this panel up.
  2. Check-In Detail - This button will take you to the attendance data that drives the analytics. This allows you to edit the data.
Attendance Rapid Attendance Entry