1. Using the Employee Absence Record System
Jason Zheng, Bruce Chmieleski
Department of Information Technology
Fairfield-Suisun Unified School District
01/23/2003
Background and Introduction
FSUSD Employee Absence Record System was initially proposed by the Fiscal Department
to better track and manage employee absences throughout the district. It is a web-based
application developed by the IT Department at FSUSD using Java and Oracle Technology.
This system enables sites to report their employee absences on-line, and thus makes it
possible for the Fiscal Department to gather employee absence information in a timely
manner. All of the absence information entered by site users are stored in an Oracle database.
The following figure shows the overall system architecture.
Site 1 Web
Fiscal
Application
Server
Site 2 Internet Internet
JDBC Driver Payroll
.
.
.
.
Oracle
Site n Database
Figure 1: System Architecture for FSUSD Employee Absence Record System
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2. Procedures for Reporting Absences
The following chart outlines procedures for site users to report an employee absence in the
FSUSD Employee Absence Record System.
BEGIN
Enter an employee absence whose
starting date is approaching or has
passed.
Review the absence record you just
entered. Pay special attention to those
key fields like “Starting Date”, “Ending
Date”, “Total Hours of Absence”, and
“Absence Reason”.
Do all the fields in NO
Make any necessary
the record have corrections by modifying
correct data? the record.
YES
Print an absence certificate and send it to
the absentee and his/her immediate
supervisor for signatures.
Collect the absence certificate which has
been signed by the absentee and the
supervisor, and send it off to the Fiscal
Department.
Update the absence record to indicate
that an absence certificate for this
absence has been sent to the Fiscal Dept.
END
Figure 2: Procedures for Reporting Employee Absences
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3. Step-by-Step Instructions
In this section, we will give step-by-step instructions on how to report an employee absence at
a site. Please note that there are two levels of access rights for site users: “Read-Only” and
“Read & Write”. To report an employee absence, a site user needs to have “Read & Write”
privileges.
1. Open Internet Explorer or Netscape on your workstation, and go to the FSUSD
homepage at http://www.fsusd.k12.ca.us. Find the “Quick Links” dropdown box
located at the lower part of the page and select “Absence Tracking” as shown in the
following figure.
Figure 3: Absence Tracking Link on FSUSD Homepage
2. You will get the following screen where you can log into the system by providing your
user id and password and clicking the “Sign In” button.
Figure 4: Sign-In Screen
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4. 3. After you have signed into the Absence Record System, you will see the following
screen with a welcome message like “Welcome to xxx” where xxx is your site name.
Now you can enter an employee absence. You will search for the employee first by
typing the first few letters in his/her last name into the text box named “Last Name”,
then click the “Search” bottom. If you leave the box blank, all staff at your site will
show.
Figure 5: Welcome Screen
4. Now you are at the following screen. Select the employee for whom you want to enter
an absence by clicking the radio button at the “Enter Absence” column. Then click the
“Enter…” button. If the employee whom you want to find does not show, try to search
again. If you still could not find him/her, contact the IT Help Desk.
Figure 6: Employee Search Result Screen
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5. 5. Now you get the following screen where you can enter detailed information about an
absence for the employee. Make sure that you fill in all the required fields that are
marked with asterisks (*). See below for an explanation of all the fields on this page.
• Absence Starting Date: Fill in the starting date of the absence in the format of
“mm/dd/yy”. You may use a graphical calendar to assist you to pick up the
starting date by clicking on the small calendar icon next to the date field.
• Absence Ending Date: Fill in the ending date of the absence in the format of
“mm/dd/yy”. You may use a graphical calendar to assist you to pick up the
ending date by clicking on the small calendar icon next to the date field.
• Total Hours of Absence: Enter a number for the total hours of this absence.
For example, enter 7.25 for an absence for 7 hours and 15 minutes.
• Absence Reason: Select a reason for this absence from the dropdown box.
• Explanation: Enter a brief explanation when the absence is for a District
Meeting, Conference, Union/Association Business, Other District Business, or
Personal Business.
• Substitute Name: Enter the substitute’s name if there is a substitute for this
absence.
• Budget Department: Select a budget department from the dropdown box if
that department pays for one of these absences: District Meeting, Conference,
Union/Association Business, and Other District Business.
• Comments: Enter other valuable information regarding this absence as a
comment.
• Absence Form Signed and Sent to Fiscal Department: Leave this field as
the default value which is “No” as the absence certificate has not been printed,
signed, and sent to the Fiscal Department at this time.
After reviewing all the information you entered, click on the “Save” button. If everything
is correct, the record will be saved in the database and you will get a confirmation which
reads “The absence data has been successfully entered into the database. Thank
you”. Click on the “Continue…” button below the confirmation message and you will get
back to the screen shown at Figure 6. If there is anything incorrect (such as a required
field left blank) you will get a pop-up window reminding you of what you need to do
before you can save the record.
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6. Figure 7: Screen for Posting New Absence
6. Now that you have entered a new absence for the employee, you may want to view the
absence record, modify the record, or print an absence certificate for the absence
record you entered. You can do these at the screen shown at Figure 6. You need to
click on the radio button at the “View/Modify/Delete/Print” column for the employee.
Then click the “View…” button. The following screen will show. Similar to what you
have done to enter a new absence, you will have to choose the record that you want to
view, modify, or print by selecting the radio button at the appropriate column. Then
click on the appropriate button. Please note that site users do not have the rights to
delete records.
Figure 8: Screen for Selecting to View, Modify, and Print Absence Records
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7. 7. If you select to view an absence record, you will get the following screen. You may
double check to make sure that all the information is correct. If you find anything
incorrect in the absence record, you will have to modify it. The screen for modifying a
record is very similar to the one shown at Figure 7. You can make any necessary
corrections on the screen before you click on the “Update” button.
Figure 9: Screen for Viewing Absence Record
8. If you find everything is correct, it is time to print an absence certificate for the
employee and his/her immediate supervisor to sign. You click on the “Print” button at
the screen shown in Figure 8, and you get the following screen, a print-ready version
of the record. Now you can click the “Print” button on your web browser and an
absence certificate for the selected absence will be printed at your printer. Ask the
absentee and his/her supervisor to sign the certificate. After you get back the signed
absence certificate, forward it to the Fiscal Department.
Figure 10: Screen for Printing Absence Certificate
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8. 9. After you have sent the absence certificate off to the Fiscal Department, make sure
you mark that you have done so by updating the “Absence Form Signed and Sent to
Fiscal Department” field to “Yes” for the absence record. You will do this by clicking
the “Modify” button for the selected record as shown in Figure 8.
That is it! It is pretty straightforward to use the Absence Record System to report employee
absences at sites. In addition to reporting absences, the system also assists you in tracking
daily staff attendance at your site. You can view absence records at your site in a calendar
format. You may go back to the screen shown in Figure 5 by clicking on the “Back” button
on your web browser. You will find a dropdown box at the lower part of the web page and
select “View Absences in a Calendar Format” from the dropdown box. Then click “Go”. The
following screen shows absences in a calendar format. You can view the details of every
absence record by clicking on the person’s name. You will also notice that names may have
different colors. Red means certificates for these absences have not been signed and
forwarded to the Fiscal Department, while green means the certificates have been signed and
forwarded. Thus, you can easily find out those records that need additional work. You can
query absences in the calendar based on the absence types and time period by
checking/unchecking different absence types and selecting a time period, then click “Go”.
Figure 11: Absences in Calendar Format
There are additional queries or reports you can run from the dropdown box at the screen
shown in figure 5. Please try to run them, follow the instructions on each screen, and the
results should be self-explanatory. More queries may be developed in the future.
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9. Site users should keep in mind the following important issues when reporting an employee
absence.
• Do not enter absences scheduled for the distant future. Only enter absences whose
starting date is current, imminent or has passed.
• Site users do not have rights to delete absence records. If you enter duplicate absence
records by accident, or the absence you entered does not actually take place, you can
zero out total hours of absence in that record and add an explanation in the comment
field.
• Do not enter absences which have already been reported to the Fiscal Department by
NCR-form regular absence certificates to avoid “double-reporting”.
• Employees who work at more than one site will only be accessible in the on-line
system from their primary site. Please use the NCR form to report absences for
employees that you cannot access on-line.
• If you have any questions or experience problems with the system, please contact the
IT Help Desk at 399-5100.
Thank you for helping us implement our Employee Absence Record System!
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