Orientation sessions are not all equal: some are welcome events, and some carry real weight — visa obligations, safety briefings, policy introductions that the institution may later need to show were delivered. The attendance record for both is typically the same: a sign-in sheet, if it survived the morning.
Why attendance records evaporate
Paper sheets are the format: passed along rows, signed illegibly, occasionally missing a page, eventually transcribed by someone reading hurried signatures against an enrollment list — or not transcribed at all. The data exists for the week it is needed for catering counts, then degrades into a drawer. When the question arrives months later — from a compliance review, a conduct process, a visa matter — the answer is a reconstruction: cross-referencing sheets, emails, and memory to establish whether one specific student sat in one specific room. The session happened; proof of who attended did not survive it.
What tracked attendance changes
Each session is an Event with a registration list; check-in against that list takes seconds per student and produces a record that exists the moment the session ends — searchable by student, session, and date. The Progress Tracker shows completion across all mandatory sessions per student, so the gaps surface in week one, when a catch-up session fixes them, rather than in a review, when nothing can.
Six steps inside SumHubs
You don't have to start from a blank page.
Orientation attendance tracking is a free SumHubs template — set up for your session structure in an afternoon. Request a sample hub to see registration, check-in, and the record in one flow.