Both Session Rosters and Participant Group Rosters (also called Participant Groups) are convenient ways to group participants together so attendance can be recorded more easily. The difference is what each roster is tied to and when it makes sense to use one instead of the other.
How to Decide Which Roster to Use
Use a Session Roster when you want a list of the people regularly enrolled in one specific activity session so you can easily take attendance for that session’s occurrences. Session Rosters are best when attendance is being taken for one specific, ongoing activity session and the same group of enrolled participants are expected to attend. Building the roster once and reusing it saves time compared to manually searching for the same names every time.
- See the "Enrolling Participants" section of this document for more information on creating a session roster
Use a Participant Group Roster when you want a custom, reusable list of participants that isn’t tied to any one session. Common examples for participant groups are all students at a grade level, everyone on a bus route, all adults at a site, etc. Participant Group Rosters are best when the people you need to track don’t map neatly to one activity session, or when the same set of people needs to be used for many different sessions or dates. Because groups are reusable and site/term-specific, they minimize the amount of re-searching needed to record attendance for people who regularly move between activities together.
A typical use case for using Participant Groups is when the group of participants move throughout the program day together. For example, the "3rd grade" participant group goes together from Snack to Homework Help to the same STEM activity and then to Recreation. Taking attendance for the group on a participant group paper roster (printed from the Rosters folder) one time is enough. When recording attendance in the system entering attendance by group for Snack and then copying that attendance to Homework Help, the STEM activity and then Recreation saves a considerable amount of time than creating four separate Session Rosters.
- See this document for more information on creating a Participant Group roster.
An easy way to help decide is to ask: is this list of people permanently defined by one activity session, or is it a custom grouping I want to reuse?
- If the answer is “it’s just whoever is enrolled in this one session,” use a Session Roster.
- If the answer is “it’s a group I define myself and want to reuse across sessions/activities” use a Participant Group Roster.
Quick Roster Comparison
| Session Roster | Participant Group Roster | |
| Tied to | A specific Activity and Session | Nothing - any set of participants you choose |
| Best for | Taking attendance for a regular occurrence of one activity session | Taking attendance for the same fixed group across multiple activities/sessions |
| How it’s built | List of participants enrolled in / regularly attending that session | List built by selecting any participants, regardless of session enrollment |
| Reusable across sessions? | No - one roster per session | Yes - the same group can be pulled up when taking attendance for many different sessions |
| Where to build it | Session Edit | People > Participant Groups |
Frequently Asked Questions
Isn’t a Session Roster and a Group Roster really just the same thing - a list of participants? Yes, structurally they’re both just rosters (lists of participants) used to record participation. The only real difference is what defines the list: a Session Roster is tied specifically to an activity session, while a Participant Group Roster is a flexible, custom grouping you create yourself (grade level, bus route, all adults, etc.)
Can I use a Participant Group Roster to take attendance for a session? Yes. When entering attendance, you can fill the attendance list from either a session roster or a group roster - group rosters are especially useful when a session includes participants from multiple pre-defined groups (for example, a shared snack time).
Do Participant Group Rosters carry over from term to term? No. Groups are site- and term-specific, so new groups need to be re-created at the start of each new term.
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