Activity Alignment

The Activity Alignment dashboard, available with select ActivTrak plans*, helps maximize employee time on high-value activities that drive business results. Use it to understand how teams allocate their time and provide data-driven coaching to improve performance.

To access Activity Alignment, navigate to Productivity Optimization > Activity Alignment in the left-hand navigation menu.

Note: Users' access to dashboards and features may vary based on account configuration. ActivTrak Admins can adjust access settings by assigning user roles and permissions.

Contents

• Requirements
• When to use Activity Alignment
• Navigating Activity Alignment
• Analyzing Activity Alignment
• Practical applications
  • Role alignment analysis
  • Performance coaching
  • Project and customer time tracking
• Learn more

Requirements

Before diving in, make sure the following are configured. Taking time to set these up correctly will ensure your data is accurate and your insights are meaningful.

1. Groups (or Teams): Organize your users into teams or business units that reflect how your organization actually operates. Without well-structured groups, it's difficult to pinpoint productivity gaps or understand their impact at the department or team level. If you haven't set up groups yet — or need to update your existing ones — start with Group management before moving forward.
2. Goals: Define the productivity benchmarks your groups are measured against. Setting goals at the group level allows you to track performance trends, identify areas of concern, and quantify the gap between current and target productivity. Goals should reflect realistic expectations for each team's role and work patterns. Make sure to set productivity goals before digging into your data.

When to use Activity Alignment

Activity Alignment shows how employees spend time on activities that are critical to their roles, helping you:

• Identify which team members are focused on high-value work
• Discover coaching opportunities to improve performance
• Learn best practices from top performers that can be replicated across teams
• Quantify time spent on specific projects or customers

Tip: Add Activity Alignment to your Favorites for quick access.

Navigating Activity Alignment

The dashboard is organized into three main tabs:

• Team: Understand how team utilization changes over time
• Users: Identify individuals at risk of burnout or disengagement
• Capacity Planning: Make informed decisions about headcount allocation

Configuration

In Activity Alignment, Productive Time is divided into Core and Non-Core Activity. When configuring the feature, managers define Core Categories to indicate the activities critical to their team’s success.

Note: All apps and websites within a Core Category count as Core Activity. In some cases, an Admin may need to refine categories at the account level to ensure they are sufficiently granular to be helpful for Activity Alignment. If Core Categories have not yet been configured for any of your Viewable Groups, you will automatically be taken to the Configuration page and prompted to complete the process.

Team tab

The Team tab provides an overview of team performance against Core Activity Goals. It assesses activity alignment at the team level. It shows how many team members are achieving their Core Activity and Productivity goals, gauges performance trends, and identifies employees missing their goals.

Customize the Team tab using the filter options at the top:

• Activity Date: Select a time period to analyze
• Team: Choose one or more teams
• Day Type: Limit data to either weekday or weekend activity

Note: The Team drop-down filter will only appear for teams configured in Activity Alignment. For best practices and detailed instructions, see our Configuration Guide: Activity Alignment.

The top panel of the Team tab is the Team Overview, which provides a high-level overview of team performance. Managers can start by reviewing their team's data at least weekly to understand how aligned the team is with their Core Activities. 

Review the Team Distribution by Week chart to see whether team performance is improving or declining. This helps managers and leaders assess the impact of coaching conversations and determine if additional guidance is needed.

The Users with Performance Opportunities panel provides an at-a-glance view of team members not achieving their Productivity and/or Core Activity Goals. It enables managers to assess where their attention is needed and prioritize accordingly. Click a user’s name to drill into their activity in the Users tab. See this article's Analyzing Activity Alignment data section to learn how to read and analyze the data in this table.

Users tab

In the Users tab, managers and leaders can see each team member’s Assessment and the underlying data. With one click, access actionable guidance to drive performance coaching conversations tailored to each employee’s opportunities for improvement.

Customize the Users tab using the filter options at the top:

• Activity Date: Select a time period to analyze
• Team: Choose one or more teams
• Assessment: Filter users based on the evaluation of their activity alignment (i.e., Misaligned)
• User: Select a specific user
• Day Type: Limit data to either weekday or weekend activity

Note: The User drop-down filter will only appear for users configured in Activity Alignment. For best practices and detailed instructions, see our Configuration Guide: Activity Alignment.

The User Details panel at the top provides a comprehensive view of user performance, comparing productive and core activity time to reveal opportunities for improvement and unlock personalized coaching strategies. Click on any user's assessment for tailored coaching recommendations based on their work patterns. See this article's Analyzing the Activity Alignment data section to learn how to read and analyze the data in this table.

The User Activity Summary panel at the bottom includes the Category Breakdown. It displays the Core and Non-Core categories, showing where users spend the most time, along with the percentage of their productive time allocated to each. By analyzing this breakdown, managers can help team members allocate their time more effectively to high-value work.

The Activities to Maximize and the Activities to Minimize tables provide deeper insights into specific applications and websites that consume the most of the user's time, categorized as either Core or Non-Core. Managers should refer to this data before coaching conversations to provide targeted guidance on time management.

The Core vs. Non-Core Activities by Hour of Day section shows when users focus on high-value work throughout the day. This helps employees identify patterns in their work habits and avoid distractions during key periods. By studying data from top performers, managers can identify effective habits that may benefit the entire team, such as setting aside time blocks for internal communication.

Details tab

Note: The Details Tab is available in accounts with the Advanced Activity Details setting or the Screen Details (Add-on).

The Details tab enables managers and leaders to drill one step further into employee activity, providing visibility into the title bars of websites and applications used by each team member. This provides more granular visibility into what employees are working on and can be used to quantify aspects such as time spent on a specific project or a particular step in a process.

Customize the Details tab using the filter options at the top:

• Activity Date: Select a time period to analyze
• Team: Choose one or more teams
• User: Select a specific user (only the User(s) within the selected Team(s) will be available)
• Day Type: Limit data to either weekday or weekend activity
• App or Site: See which documents or pages a user works with in a particular application. This reveals what employees are actually working on and can help identify time-consuming steps in processes. For example, while Salesforce may be a Core Activity for Sales Account Executives, the Details tab shows how they use it—adding opportunity notes, researching accounts, or following up on event leads.
• Title Bar Filter: Search for keywords to track activity across all apps and websites. This helps quantify time spent on specific projects or customers. For example, entering a customer's name would show all related Salesforce records, presentation decks, and Zoom calls, along with the time spent on each during your selected period. Tip: Select "contains" (not "equals") for more comprehensive results. Remember that searches are case-sensitive.

Analyzing Activity Alignment data

The Users with Performance Opportunities panel (Team tab) and the User Details panel (User tab) contain tables that include the following data for each user:

Primary Team

This is identical to the user’s Primary Group. Users can belong to multiple Groups, each with a Productive Time Goal and Core Categories. In Activity Alignment, a user’s Primary Group determines which goal and Core Categories to apply to each user.

If Core Categories are not configured for a User’s Primary Group, their Assessment will show as “Undetermined.” Admins can manually change a User's Primary Group on the Users page.

Productive Hours/Day

Productive Hours/Day tracks time spent in applications and websites classified as "Productive" within ActivTrak. It's a core performance indicator used in Activity Alignment to assess employee productivity.

Productive delta vs. goal

The first delta vs. goal column indicates the difference between actual productive time and the team's goal.

Core Activity Hours/Day

The Core Activity Goal is determined during the configuration process for each team. It is a percentage of the team’s Productive Hours/Day Goal. If a team’s Productive Hours/Day Goal is 7 hours, and the Core Activity Goal is 70% of productive time, then the Core Activity Hours will equal 4.9 hours.

The default Core Activity Goal is set at 70% based on an analysis of ActivTrak customer data that indicates that top performers spend 70-80% of their time on high-value work, as defined by their managers.

Core Activity delta vs. goal

The second delta vs. goal column indicates the difference between the actual time spent on core activities and the Core Activity Goal. 

Core Activity Efficiency

The percent of a user’s actual Productive Hours/Day spent on Core Activities. This metric differs from the Core Activity Goal, which is based on a user’s Productive Hours/Day Goal.

Core Activity Efficiency indicates how efficiently each employee uses their work time. A high percentage indicates that employees spend most of their time on Core Activities.

If a user is achieving their Core Activity Goal, but Core Activity Efficiency is low (below ~60%), the employee is likely only hitting their goal by working long hours.

Assessment

Each user is assigned an Assessment based on their attainment of the Productive Hours/Day Goal and the Core Activity Goal.

• Fully Aligned: The user meets or exceeds both productivity and core activity goals
• Increase Productive Time: The user meets the core activity goal but falls short of productive hours
• Increase Core Activity: The user meets the productive hours goal but falls short of core activities
• Misaligned: The user falls short on both productivity and core activity goals
• Undetermined: Core Categories have not been configured for the user’s Primary Team

Practical applications

Role alignment analysis

Ensure employees are focusing on the right activities for their roles:

• Check if sales team members are primarily using CRM and communication tools
• Verify that engineers are spending adequate time in development environments
• Identify training opportunities when employees are spending less time in core tools than their peers

Performance coaching

Turn data into actionable guidance:

• Click on a user's Assessment to access tailored coaching strategies
• Use the Activities to Maximize and Minimize lists for specific recommendations
• Share patterns from top performers to help struggling team members improve

Project and customer time tracking

Understand resource allocation across projects and customers:

• Use the Details tab to search for specific project names or customer accounts
• Calculate the time investment in significant initiatives
• Ensure critical customers receive appropriate attention

Learn more

• Configuration Guide: Activity Alignment
• ActivTrak Academy Courses: Performance Coaching with Activity Alignment
  • Fully Aligned
  • Increase Productive Time
  • Increase Core Activity
  • Misaligned
• Understanding Live Data and Insights