Auto Absence FAQs

This guide answers frequently asked questions about Arbor's Auto Absence AI Feature.

💡 Auto Absence has now graduated from Arbor Labs. If you are interested in purchasing Auto Absence for your school, please register your interest here.

Table of Contents

1. Permissions and Access
2. Technical Compatibility
3. Language Support
4. Functionality and Usage
5. Error Handling and Issue Management
6. Privacy and Data Security
7. Pricing and Trials
8. Auto Absence for Attendance Officers

1. Permissions and Access

1.1 What permissions are required to set up and use Auto Absence?

Setup Permissions: To set up Auto Absence, you will need both of the following permissions:

• School: General Admin: Administer
• School: Communications: Administer

Usage Permissions: To use Auto Absence, you will need one of the following permissions:

• Student: Attendance: Administer All Students
• Student: Attendance: Administer My Students

Note: Staff with the Student: Attendance: Administer All Students permission will see absences that need processing in the "To Do" section of the homepage.

You can learn more about how permissions in Arbor work here.

1.2 How do I access Auto Absence?

Access Auto Absence by heading to Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences.

You will see the following tabs on this page:

1. Pending Absence Records - this tab shows potential absences Auto Absence has picked up from voicemails for you to accept or reject
2. Auto Absence | Imported Emails tab - this tab shows an overview of 

2. Technical Compatibility

2.1 Will Auto Absence work with my phone system?

Yes! As long as your phone system supports voicemail-to-email functionality, then Auto Absence will work.

2.2 How do the messages transfer from our phone system to Arbor?

Arbor links with the email inbox that your phone system sends voicemails to.

2.3 What specialist equipment or phones are needed?

You will need a phone system/provider that supports voicemail-to-email. Additionally, we recommend that you have some headphones to hand to listen to voicemails when reviewing absences.

2.4 Which audio formats are supported?

Auto Absence supports all standard audio formats like m4a, mp3, mp4 and wav.

2.5 Is Auto Absence compatible with Google Mail (Gmail)?

Not yet. We are working with Google to integrate with Google Mail (Gmail). In the meantime, you can sign up for a Microsoft email account or use an IMAP email address instead. Please talk to your IT provider about the options available to you.

2.6 Can we use a Google mailbox that’s set up with IMAP?

Yes, you can. You just need to enter the IMAP server’s credentials during your Auto Absence setup.

2.7 Why is Auto Absence only available for schools with a Microsoft email account currently?

The first release of Auto Absence is only available to schools with a Microsoft email account. We’re working with Google to offer this functionality to Google schools soon. If you are a Google school and would like to use Auto Absence, you can still create a Microsoft email account for the express purpose of receiving your absence emails. You can also add any IMAP-compatible email to Auto Absence. 

2.8 Can this be used for staff absences? 

Not yet, but we’re considering processing staff absences in the future. 

3. Language Support

3.1 Which languages are supported by Auto Absence?

The following languages are supported:

Afrikaans, Arabic, Armenian, Azerbaijani, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Estonian, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kazakh, Korean, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Malay, Marathi, Maori, Nepali, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tagalog, Tamil, Thai, Turkish, Ukrainian, Urdu, Vietnamese, and Welsh.

While the underlying model that powers Auto Absence was trained on 98 languages, only the languages that exceeded <50% word error rate (WER), which is an industry-standard benchmark for speech-to-text model accuracy, are listed above. Auto Absence will return results for languages not listed above, but the quality will be low.

3.2 How does Auto Absence deal with a hard-to-understand caller or a bad recording?

The technology Auto Absence uses is very good at transcribing messages, even if the audio quality is not great or if a caller's accent or dialect is difficult to understand. Even if the transcription is not perfect, the AI can often make sense of it and create the right absence.

Auto absence can also translate languages, which can be great in schools with high English as an Additional Language (EAL) cohorts. However, should the message be incomprehensible, this is listed in an error report with the name and number of the parent or guardian so you can contact them easily to find out more.

4. Functionality and Usage

4.1 How does Auto Absence pick the right attendance code?

By default, the AI picks from any attendance code. Many schools limit marks to Illness (I), Medical/Dental Appointment (M), and No Reason (N).

Example: If a parent says, “My child has a fever,” Auto Absence might suggest “Illness (I).” You can then confirm or change this code.

You can control which attendance marks Auto Absence can use during setup or later in the Auto Absence | Settings tab.

4.2 How does this work with SMS text messages?

Auto Absence currently only supports voice messages. We're always open to new ideas and suggestions.

You can do this by clicking Help & Learn with Arbor (the question mark icon) on the left-hand sidebar anywhere in Arbor, and then selecting Share product idea (the lightbulb icon). 

4.3 Can Auto Absence process emails from parents that aren’t left as voicemails?

At the moment, Auto Absence only processes voicemail, but we’re looking at how we can develop this functionality in the future.

4.4 How does Auto Absence deal with errors?

Auto Absence will flag any messages that it can’t process in the To Do section of the homepage and the Students > Attendance > Planned Absences page. This could be because:

• The message is unclear or distorted.
• The language is not supported or has a high Word Error Rate.
• The message is not a voicemail.

When a message is flagged, you can listen to the voicemail and manually process the absence if needed.

Read more on this in the Imported Emails section of our Auto Absence User Guide.

4.5 What happens if a parent/guardian calls off an unknown or different phone number?

Auto Absence uses the phone number to try and match the voicemail to a student. If auto absence is not able to match a phone number to a student, this flags a No records created error.

Steps:

1. Auto Absence receives the voicemail and attempts to match the phone number to a student record.
2. If a match is found, it will suggest the absence for that student.
3. If no match is found, or if the phone number is different from the one on record, Auto Absence will flag the message with a No records created error.
4. You can then listen to the voicemail and manually identify the student and process the absence. This may involve calling the parent back to confirm who they are, or if you are confident you know who they are, amending the parent's contact details on their profile so you can click on the error and press Process Email so it can be matched..

4.6 Does Auto Absence work with withheld or private numbers?

The incoming voicemail will still be processed, and Auto Absence will alert you that the phone number could not be matched to a guardian. You will then need to listen to the voicemail (this can be done in Arbor) and manually record an absence for the student.

4.7 What are Pending Absence Records?

Pending Absence Records are voicemails that Auto Absence has processed and is suggesting as potential absences. These will appear in the To Do section of the homepage for staff with the Student: Attendance: Administer All Students permission and on the Pending Attendance Records tab of the Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences page. You can review these records, listen to the voicemails, and either confirm or edit the suggested attendance code and student.  

4.8 How accurate is Auto Absence?

The accuracy of Auto Absence depends on several factors, including:

• The clarity and quality of the voicemail.
• The language of the voicemail and its Word Error Rate (WER).
• The complexity of the message.
• The phone system’s voicemail-to-email functionality.

While Auto Absence is designed to be highly accurate, it is still an AI feature, and occasional errors may occur. It is important to review the Pending Absence Records in the To Do section on your homepage or the Auto Absence | Imported Emails of the Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences page and listen to the voicemails to ensure accuracy.

4.9 We only want to let primary guardians call in with absences. How do we do this?

Yes, you can set this up using these steps:

1. Go to the Auto Absence | Settings tab on the Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences page.
2. Click on Guardian matching to open the Auto Absence Settings slide over
3. Click on the Guardian matching dropdown and set this to Primary guardians only.

4.10 We link parents who are Authorised to Collect other children and include their phone number. Will Auto Absence know which child the call is for?

Yes, Auto Absence uses the contents of a voicemail to identify which child an absence report is about. So, as long as these conditions are met, Auto Absence will be able to log an absence for Guardians who are linked to multiple students but not necessarily Primary Guardians:

• The person authorised to report an absence on behalf of a child is a linked guardian

• The Guardian matching setting on the Auto Absence | Settings tab of the Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences page is set to Any linked guardian. Find more on configuring your Auto Absence settings in our Auto Absence User Guide.

4.11 As phone numbers are used to allocate an absence to a student, how does Auto Absence allocate to the correct sibling?

The Auto Absence AI will work out which sibling the message is about based on the content of the voicemail, and Auto Absence only allows the person calling to record absences for a child they are a guardian of in Arbor. So, if the voicemail message mentions which sibling the absence is about, even if both siblings are linked to the same guardian, the AI picks this up. Auto Absence can even create absences for multiple students from one voicemail if the message is about multiple students.

4.12 What happens if a parent rings up to report multiple absences in the same message for multiple children?

Auto absence will separate the absences, one for each child. Each absence can then be individually addressed.

4.13 If a student has less than 90 % attendance, we record an unauthorised absence. Is Auto Absence able to do this?

As a principle, we always have a human in the loop before an absence gets applied to a student's record. This means that if you know a student is below 90% attendance, you can change the attendance mark to an unauthorised attendance mark. You can see a student's current attendance percentage for the current academic year when accepting or editing a Pending Absence Record by referring to the YTD Attendance column.

4.14 Is there a way to still transcribe the full message, but the note on registers does not show the detail? 

Yes, you always have full control and can edit the absence note before accepting it.

There is also a setting in Auto Absence that allows you to use only a summary of the voicemail, or no note at all on the absence note.

By default, we add the entire transcript of the voicemail to the absence note. However, we understand not all schools want this level of detail. We therefore have three options for what is added to the Absence Note: the entire transcript, a summary of the transcript, or nothing at all.

You can control this using these steps:

1. Go to the Auto Absence | Settings tab on the Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences page
2. On the Auto Absence Settings slide over, select the setting you want
3. Press Save Changes

4.15 Can Auto Absence put short codes (e.g. HA for headache) into absence notes for us?

You cannot set up Auto Absence to convert conversations into pre-defined codes for you. However, you can overwrite the AI-generated absence note with a code manually when reviewing and accepting a Pending Absence note. Auto Absence can be set to create a summary note for you, so it’s quick to figure out what the short code would be.

4.16 What is the delay between being left and the upload to Arbor?

Auto Absence takes approximately two minutes to process a voicemail once it has been delivered to your dedicated absence email address. There may be an additional delay while your voicemail-to-email provider processes the voicemail.

4.17 Why is the “Received” column showing the incorrect time? 

If the received time is showing the incorrect time, it could be that your email server is set to a different time zone than the one you’re currently working in.
It’s most common if your email server is set to UTC, or British Summer Time when it’s not currently in effect, or it is set to another incorrect time zone.

To fix this, either log in to your email provider and update the time zone settings, or contact your IT support team for help.

5. Error Handling and Issue Management

5.1 What are common error messages and their solutions?

Read more about imported emails and managing errors in the Imported Emails section of our Auto Absence User Guide.

5.2 What happens if a student steals their parent's phone and rings the school?

Absences will be queued up ready for you to review and accept. You can listen back to any of the calls if you want to verify them.

5.3 How does the system protect against students impersonating parents? 

Auto Absence is not able to use voice recognition, but there’s always a human in the loop before an absence is approved and added to a student's record. Furthermore, the pages and user interface are designed to help staff quickly check messages. For example, staff can quickly hover over the absence to hear the audio, which allows them the opportunity to check the voicemail. 

5.4 What happens if someone who is not a guardian calls to record an absence? 

Arbor will not process the message. You will still be able to view the message in the Auto Absence Emails tab, but the absence will need to be triaged by a member of staff.

5.5 What does Auto Absence do when guardians leave a message unrelated to an absence?

If the message is not absence-related, the AI will be able to identify that no absence should be created and will flag it as a No absences created error.

Arbor's AI only creates an absence note if it determines that the voicemail is about an absence and the phone call was received from a telephone number that belongs to the child’s primary guardian.

You can still listen to and triage non-absence-related voicemails in the Auto Absence | ImportedEmails tab of the Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences page, where you can listen to non-absence-related voicemails and deal with these manually.

5.6 Does Auto Absence recognise guardians ringing in about an absence in advance, not on the day?

Yes, Auto Absence can be set up to process absences left in advance or after the day. Alternatively, if it is your school policy to only accept absence calls on the same day as an absence, you can set up Auto Absence to only automatically process absences left for that day. See how to change Absence Note Creation settings to manage this in our Auto Absence User Guide.

5.7 What does Auto Absence do if a parent says a student is going to be late to school? 

Auto Absence’s AI will attempt to work out which timeframe the student will be absent for and will suggest an absence note between those times. For the suggested absence note, you can adjust the start and end time from the Pending Absence Records tab in the Planned Absences page. Auto Absence can only suggest absence marks, so the student will not be marked as Late until they arrive in school, and this is manually changed.

5.8 If a parent calls later in the day about an absence, how does Auto Absence deal with this?

Auto Absence can add retrospective absences. The absence will appear as a Pending Absence Record. If an absence has already been created for the student, the AI will not create an additional record, but will flag it as a No absence created error.

5.9 What happens if Auto Absence doesn’t create the right absence?

At Arbor, we believe in keeping the human in the loop, so all absences go into a Pending Absences holding queue, and a staff member needs to approve them before they're added to the student's record.

6. Privacy and Data Security

6.1 Can parents see absences on the Arbor Parent App?

Yes, absences created by Auto Absence work the same as absences created manually. They show on the Parent App if you have switched on access to attendance information in the Portal and App through your Parent Portal Settings.

6.2 Where is the data processed, and what happens if parents opt out? 

Data processing details are handled in accordance with Arbor's privacy policy and data processing agreements. If parents opt out of providing absence information via voicemail, they would need to use alternative methods of communication with the school, as per your school's attendance reporting policy.

6.3 Do we need to inform parents that the calls are recorded and that the call will be saved?

Yes, it is a legal requirement to inform callers that their calls may be recorded for monitoring and training purposes, and that the recordings will be saved in accordance with your school's data retention policy. This can be done through a pre-recorded message on your school's attendance line.

6.4 How do we know personal data is safe?

It’s important to note that any student or staff data processed by Arbor AI is not stored or retained to train the AI model. When you ask Arbor AI to perform a task, it uses an AI model to determine how to find the information you need. Arbor AI then checks what information you have permission to access, before going away and retrieving the information needed to complete its task. We have ensured that Arbor AI complies fully with all data protection legislation. You can find more information in our AI FAQs. 

6.5 How long are the recordings kept for? 

The voicemails are stored on your email account and against the absence created. They will remain there as long as you want them to. Most email providers allow you to auto-delete emails after a certain period of time. On Arbor you can remove the attached voicemail at any time.

6.6 Are the audio files downloadable?

Yes, they are. If you click on the absence, an Accept/Reject Pending Absence Note slideover will appear. On the slide over, click on the blue download the voicemail link to download a voicemail to your device.

6.7 How are voicemails deleted?

Because voicemails are stored in the email you have linked to Auto Absence, you remove a voicemail by deleting it from the email inbox linked to Auto Absence. 

6.8 Is there a legal stance for “Oh, AI coded that” if the coding is wrong and the LA or court queries an absence record?

Auto Absence only creates a pending absence record; an actual absence record and note are only created once approved by a human. So, no record is added to the legal register without going through human review and approval first. 

6.9 Will the messages be saved to the Communications area of Arbor?

Yes, once your absence email is linked to Arbor, the emails are also available in the Communications module as an Imported Email.

7. Pricing and Trials

7.1 Why is Auto Absence an additional cost on top of our Arbor MIS?

Auto Absence is an advanced AI feature that provides significant efficiency benefits for schools in processing student absences. The development and ongoing maintenance of this technology involve additional costs, which is why it is offered as an add-on to the core Arbor MIS.

7.2 We are part of a large trust with more than 20 schools. Would this still be £200 per school, or can we get a further discount?

Our standard MAT discount does not apply to Auto Absence, but we do have the introductory offer running until the 31st of August. Your Partnership Manager can discuss this further with you, or you can contact customersales@arbor-education.com.

7.3 Are we able to have a trial period before purchasing?

Due to the setup process for Auto Absence, we’re unable to offer a trial period. However, once you have set Auto Absence up, it will automatically run every morning.

7.4 Are there any hidden costs? 

Arbor is transparent with its pricing. The cost of Auto Absence is an annual subscription fee per school. The subscription includes everything you need for Auto Absence, including any future developments to the feature. There are no hidden costs associated with the Auto Absence feature itself. However, ensure your phone system supports voicemail-to-email functionality, as this is a prerequisite.

7.5 Once Auto Absence is purchased, what are the timescales for getting it up and running? 

Your Arbor contact will be able to let you know how long it takes for Auto Absence to be enabled on your Arbor MIS. After that, it’s just a case of setting it up on Arbor. Assuming everything goes well, you’ll be up and running in ten minutes!

8. Auto Absence for Attendance Officers

8.1 Is accepting or rejecting each message time-consuming?

We have bulk options, so you don’t have to do them individually. Only if you want to tweak an attendance code or comment will you need to edit the individual record.

To bulk accept or reject Pending Absence Records:

1. Go to the Pending Absence Records tab on the Students > Attendance > Absentees > Planned Absences page.
2. Tick the boxes next to the absences you want to accept or reject in one go
3. Use the green Bulk Action button to choose your resolution.

8.2 Is Auto Absence going to take my job?

No, Auto Absence has been designed to reduce the time you spend processing absence voicemails each morning, but it always requires human involvement. Auto Absence handles the repetitive, time-consuming tasks of listening to voicemails, transcribing them, and applying the initial absence codes, giving you more time back to follow up on unauthorised absences and making sure that students who should be in school are.

8.3 How does this impact parental engagement and relationship-building?

We’ve built Auto Absence to make it quicker and easier for Attendance officers to approve and process day-to-day absences. This gives them more time to work with the parents of students who may need a one-to-one discussion. We’ve made it easy to call guardians back by including their phone number and name on the absence note slide-over.