We routinely have students with the same name in the same grade level. When using tasks like Record absence, there is no way for us to identify which is the correct student. We can certainly go record the absence in their academic profile/people finder, but it's inefficient. Additionally some of the search fields look at first or last name, but not both (record absence, student enrollment).

Some ways this process could be improved: 1) allowing student id, user id, or email as searchable beyond firstname OR lastname 2) include more information in the menu of selectable students to include middle name/initial, or student or user ids. Open to other improvements as well!