Summary
Orah can send alerts when a student is missing a class in real-time. While taking roll call on Orah if a student is marked absent, it can send an alert to staff, students themselves, or their parents. Alerts can be adjusted to the school's threshold limit eg. if a student misses class for 3 days in a row send an alert to their parent. This will help schools to reduce absenteeism as this feature will send concerning alerts in real-time.
🧭 Navigation : Location > Attendance > Attendance Settings > Alerts Settings
Access to Attendance Alerts
A staff would need access to General settings
Ask your admin to assign Attenndance/General Settings access under additional permission to the individual staff (or in bulk using Roles)
🧭 Navigation : Admin Console > Staff > Select a staff or user role > Additional Permisison > under Product Access section > Supervise > Attendance > General Settings
Both View Insights and General Settings - a staff can do both, view the Insights and also access to settings page
Only General Settings - allows staff to only have access to Insights settings without viewing it
Setting up Attendance Alerts
Once you have the required access as mentioned above
🧭 Navigate to Attendance > Attendance Insights > Dashboard Settings > Alerts
1st select students' cohort
any student - this option would alert if any student falls in the created criteria
House - search and select for one or multiple house
Tag - search and select for one or multiple tags
Group - search and select for one or multiple Groups/Meetings
2nd select roll codes
For SIS source: Select attendance categories
For Orah Source: Select by roll code types (Excused Absent, Late, Absent, Present) or by roll codes
3rd select course
any course - this option would alert for any classes
the same course - search and select for one or multiple classes
☝🏽 Note - we have recently changed the logic for 'the same course' - read more here. https://app.orah.com/announcements/127
4th select frequency
in total - will add the times in specific time
in a row - will alert only when student has consecutive triggers
5th select trigger behaviour 🆕
Only once when criteria is first met (default) — An alert will be sent the first time a student meets the criteria. No further alerts will be sent for the same criteria, even if it is met again.
Every time criteria is met — An alert will be sent each time the student meets the criteria, allowing for repeated notifications as the threshold is met again.
6th select time frame
rolling period: set number of days, weeks, or months
set a custom fixed period like school's term
☝🏽 Note - we don't send any retroactive alerts. The alerts will be created and sent only from the day the alert criteria are set/created.
7th select time to send
Immediately — triggers immediately when the criteria are met
Delayed after criteria is met — adds a time buffer before the alert is sent, allowing time for corrections or updates
At a scheduled time — triggers at a specified time of the day
Minute-based timing (New — June 2026): The "Delayed after criteria is met" option now supports minute-level precision. You can set alerts to fire 15, 30, or 45 minutes after criteria is met — ideal for schools that need rapid notification for safety or welfare monitoring.
Scheduled Alert Handling (New — June 2026)
When using a scheduled send time, you can now control what happens if criteria is met after that time (e.g. a teacher edits attendance at 11:00 AM when the alert was set for 10:30 AM):
Queue for the next scheduled send (default) — the alert waits until the next day's scheduled time
Send immediately — the alert fires right away even though the scheduled window has passed
Open a concern without notifying recipients — a concern is created on the Concerns page but no email/SMS/push is sent
This prevents parents receiving alerts for absences that were already corrected after the send window.
8th select user
Students via Email or SMS or both
Contacts of students via Email or SMS or both — select all or filter contacts by Relationship, Permissions, Family App user
Staff via Email or Push or both — filter by Specific Staff, Assigned Staff, Course Staff, or Staff by User Role
Once all the parameters are added, hit save to create the alert
Update (Nov'24) - earlier only 1 recipient was allowed to be selected while creating alerts; now we can select all 3 recipients at once
Staff Email Format (New — June 2026)
When staff are selected as recipients, you can now choose how alert emails are grouped:
Summarised email — one email listing all students who matched the alert rule
Individual emails — one email per student (existing default behaviour)
This setting only affects staff recipients. Parent and student emails are always sent individually.
9th select concern status 🆕
We have recently introduced a concern page to track and action on the alerts been trigger. So, every alert created by this setting can be tracked and further actioned upon. By default, an alert/concern is opened, but school can change depending on the different types of alerts set.
Read more about the attendance concern page: https://success.orah.com/en/articles/10600232-attendance-concern-alerts-page
Editing or Deleting Alerts
All the alerts created will be listed in the same path
Alerts can be edited/deleted to match the needs of the school
To edit an alert - you can directly click on the alert or hover to use the pen icon
To delete an alert - hover over the alert you want to delete and use the delete icon on right
Activating / Deactivating Alert
An alert can be deactivated if not used by the school anymore
To deactivate an alert - hover over the alert you want to deactivate and use the 3 dot option on the right side
If you wish to re-activate, use the same path
☝🏽 Note - Switching the attendance source will deactivate all the alerts.
View alert history
We have added a new page where all alerts are stored and can be actioned on the Attendance Concern page - https://success.orah.com/en/articles/10600232-attendance-concern-alerts-page
Receiving Alert Email
Alert is sent as soon as the trigger is matched with the rule
Alert will be only sent once (for 1st time) the criteria are met, not every time a criteria matches
Deleting the alert from the settings would not send any alert email
Email, SMS or Push are sent on real time basis
Only those matching the filters will be receiving the alert
Alert email will be received from no-reply@orah.com
Note - the time mentioned in the parent email is the class scheduled time and not the actual roll marking time by the staff.
Hope this was helpful. If you have any further questions, email us at support@orah.com or just click the blue chat icon at the bottom right corner of this page, we will help you navigate through it. Now you can be proactive with absence management 😃