Create a School Absence Excuse Form Online [Tutorial]

Key Takeaways

How does absence reporting work at your school? For many offices, it starts out simple but quickly turns messy. [music] Phone calls come in during the morning rush. Emails are lost in the shuffle, and handwritten notes show up late. And your team doesn't get the information [music] it needs. In this video, I'll show you how to replace the chaos with a simple online form. The goal here is clear. >> [music] >> One form, complete information, and a system your team can rely on. So, let's start by building our form. We want a mobile-friendly form that parents can fill out in under a minute. I'm on the My Workspace page of my Jotform account. >> [music] >> You can start your own Jotform account for free at jotform.com. To get started, click the create button that's on the top left portion [music] of the screen, and then select form. You can create a form from scratch with Jotform's drag-and-drop form builder, use a form template, and more. I'm going to use Jotform AI to create our form. You can use your voice [music] for this prompt section here, or use the keyboard. I have a prompt prepared, so I'm going to enter it and hit the send button. So, make sure to include crucial fields like the parent's name and email, the student's name and grade, the date of the absence, and the reason for the absence. You can even add a file upload field for doctor's notes if you like. So, here's [music] our form nearly ready to customize. Use the form builder to make changes to your form, or continue working with Jotform AI with the form copilot until it's good to go. You can access form fields on the left with the drag-and-drop form builder. It's as simple as that, adding elements or removing them. Or continue working with Jotform AI until you like your form and you're ready to go. Once the form looks good in the form builder, use the preview form feature to make sure it looks good on mobile devices. Access this feature with the preview form toggle switch on the [music] top right portion of the screen. Go ahead and just click on that switch, and then click the phone icon to the left of that switch. And you can see your form how it looks on a mobile device. Now this is a crucial step. Parents are busy, so you need the form to be easy to fill out wherever they are. Once your form is ready, sharing it is simple. In the form builder, click publish to view all your options. You can grab a direct link to send out in newsletters, embed the form directly onto your school website, send it via mass email, [music] and more. Now parents will always know exactly where to go to report an absence. No guessing, no back-and-forth emails, no voicemails to to replay, >> [music] >> and everything's going to run a lot more smoothly. Plus, every submission flows automatically into Jotform tables. You don't have to do a thing. To access Jotform tables, go to the My Workspace page, find your form, >> [music] >> click the more button, and then click submissions. This gives your office a secure, centralized log of all absences, completely organized and timestamped in real time. Your staff can instantly search by student's name, filter by date, and more. No more digging through [music] old paperwork, and no more guessing who called in sick. This form will give your school a clear system to work with every day and save your staff a ton of time. Click the link in the description below to grab a free form template that you can [music] customize easily with Jotform AI. And don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel by clicking the link on screen. You'll find more time-saving tips like this that will not only save time, [music] but give you better data, let you breathe a little easier, and focus more on your students.