Guide to Activity Classification in ActivTrak

Activity Classification enables you to categorize websites and applications by business function and classify them as productive or unproductive, impacting the data accuracy of your ActivTrak reports and dashboards and enabling easier analysis of team and individual productivity. 

Visit the Classification Page (Settings > Classification) to classify activities in ActivTrak.

Use this guide to learn about:

• Intelligent Auto-Classification
• How to Classify Activities in ActivTrak
• Classified Activities
• Classification Settings
• Bulk Classification
• Group Classification

Intelligent Auto-Classification

ActivTrak's crowd-sourced Intelligent Auto-Classification system reduces Admin burden and saves everyone time by automatically classifying over 90% of activities with a category and productivity classification. The Intelligent Auto-Classification system is built from anonymized customer usage data and descriptions of tools used by common roles such as Design, Marketing, Sales, Developers and more as well as industry-specific data. Note: These auto-classifications will not override any previously added classifications in your account. They will only be applied to new activities or those that have remained undefined. 

How to Classify Activities in ActivTrak

The Classification page (Settings > Classification) defaults to the Pending tab displaying activities that need a category, productivity status, or both. This table is sorted by duration and lists activities with the longest time spent first and limits the results to the first 500. Within the Pending tab, each activity is shown with an assigned classification type: Pending, Pending Category and Pending Productivity.

• Pending is applied to any new site or application that a user has engaged with that was not automatically associated with an existing category or productivity status.
• Pending Category is applied to any new site or application that a user has engaged with that was not automatically associated with an existing category. Categories define the kind of activity or tool the employee is using, such as email or project management, in lieu of analyzing each individual website or application. 

To categorize an activity, select a category or add a new one from the Select Category drop-down menu. This designation will be applied to all previous and future use of this website or application. 

NOTE: There is an Ignore category that can be selected if there are certain activities that need to be excluded in the productivity reports. Learn more about how to use the Ignore category here.

• Pending Productivity is applied to any new site or application that a user has engaged with that was not auto-classified as productive or unproductive. These will need to be designated as either productive or unproductive. This designation will be applied to all previous and future use of this website or application. 

To classify these activities, select productive or unproductive from the Select Status dropdown menu.

To view more details about a specific website or application, click on its row within the table. This will bring you to the activity-specific page where you can view usage, classify, and apply group classifications.

To find an activity not listed, search all pending activities using the search bar. While the table displays the first 500, searching will allow you to find any pending activity. If you need activities that are shorter than 5 minutes, select ‘Show All Activities’ from the three-dot menu. 

Classified Activities 

Moving from the Pending tab to the Classified tab will show you activities that have a category, productivity, or both applied - either via auto-classification or manual classification. Similar to the Pending tab, this table is sorted by duration with the longest time spent listed first and the results show all activities over 5 minutes from the last 30 days. You can filter this table by Classification Type. 

• Auto-Classified: Displays all of the activities that ActivTrak’s auto-classification system classified based on crowdsourced information. These classifications can always be customized to better fit specific needs.

• Group Classified: Displays all of the activities that are classified based on groups. For example, Facebook would be considered a productive activity for a marketing team, but unproductive for an engineering team.

• Ignored: Displays all activities that have been categorized with the Ignore category option. Ignored activities will not be shown throughout reports and their duration will not be included within the Activity Log.

To find an activity not listed, search all pending activities using the search bar. While the table displays activities from the last 30 days over 5 minutes, searching will allow you to find any pending activity. You can enable the display of all activities from the last 30 days via selecting ‘Show All Activities’ from the three-dot menu. 

Use the advanced search to find all activities assigned to a particular category.

Classification Settings

The Settings tab within the Classification Page details all categories and the number of activities assigned to each category. Within this page, you can take the following actions:

• New categories can be added by clicking on + New Category below the Categories table.
• Existing categories can be deleted by clicking on the three-dot menu to the right of each category.
• Existing category names can be updated by clicking on the pencil next to each category name. 

Bulk Classification 

Our paid plan users can enjoy reduced time classifying activities by using Bulk Classification. This feature allows an Admin to place similar activities all in the same category with minimal effort. To do this, simply click on the checkboxes next to the activities in the right-hand box. There is the option to select all or select only a few. Once the activities are selected, choose a category from the drop-down menu at the top and then classify the activity as either productive or unproductive.

Note: The activities listed on the Classifications Page are limited to activities that have a total duration of greater than 5 minutes over the last 90 days. There is no way to classify activities that are not shown on the Classifications Page.

Group Classification

Most activity classifications work across the organization, however, it’s important to note that some activities are productive only for certain teams. Group classifications allow Admins to create exceptions and indicate a particular site or app is productive for one team, but not for others.

Example: A social media site could be classified as unproductive for an engineer, while the same site could be classified as productive for a marketing manager. 

Applying a classification to a group is just as easy as assigning global classifications. From the Classification Page (Settings > Classification), click on the ‘Details’ button within the Activity cards. From there, click "Add Group Classification" to add one or more group-specific categories and productivity. Click on the "Details" button to access the Group Classification Settings, as shown in the screenshots below.

Given that many employees are members of multiple groups (for example, Management and HR) you can set the priority of which group classification is applied. Reorder the groups within the Group Classification settings on the details page to indicate the priority order of which category and productivity assignment is applied.

In addition to the Settings page, the Top Websites and Top Applications reports include icons that indicate when a website or application has a mixed productivity status. All other reports will display the category and productivity assigned to the individual employee. Learn more about how to classify groups here.

Learn More:

• View our Classification 101 on-demand training 
• How to Classify Productivity and Categories by Groups
• How to Use the Ignore Category
• Contact Support