When reviewing productivity data in ActivTrak, you might notice some unexpected average productivity numbers. This article explores common scenarios and how to resolve them.
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Common scenarios and solutions
Zero hours showing despite activity
Sometimes, a team member who works a few hours each day may appear in the ActivTrak Dashboard using Insights as not meeting your productivity goal. For example, let’s say an employee worked the following week:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5 hours | 1.8 hours | 1.6 hours | 1.4 hours | 1.7 hours |
This employee’s total for the week is eight hours. While work time is tracked, the current settings mean workdays are not counted as Active Days. The productive time from those days is still included in the average calculations based on your selected time period.
Try these fixes:
- Use the HRIS integration (Add-on) to handle partial work days.
- If you don't have the HRIS Integration, enable the Use Work Schedule setting in Settings > Insights Configuration > Configuration to Compute Averages. This ensures days outside your defined schedule aren't counted as Active Days, which can improve accuracy for part-time or variable workers. Learn more about Work Schedule configuration.
- If you don't have the HRIS Integration, adjust the Use Hourly Threshold setting in Settings > Insights Configuration > Configuration to Compute Averages. Lowering the minimum hours required for an Active Day may better reflect your team's actual work patterns — particularly for part-time workers or contractors with shorter daily schedules.
Zero hours showing due to offline activity
Sometimes, a team member who attends hours of in-person meetings may appear in the ActivTrak Dashboard using Insights as not meeting your productivity goal. For example, let's say an employee worked the following week:
Try these fixes:
- Set up a calendar integration to account for Offline Meetings.
- Use the HRIS integration (Add-on) to automatically handle partial workdays by leveraging work schedules and time-off data.
- If you don't have the HRIS Integration, enable the Use Work Schedule setting in Settings > Insights Configuration > Configuration to Compute Averages. This ensures days outside your defined schedule aren't counted as Active Days, which can improve accuracy for part-time or variable workers. Learn more about Work Schedule configuration.
- If you don't have the HRIS Integration, adjust the Use Hourly Threshold setting in Settings > Insights Configuration > Configuration to Compute Averages. Lowering the minimum hours required for an Active Day may better reflect your team's actual work patterns — particularly for part-time workers or contractors with shorter daily schedules.
Unusually high daily averages
Unmerged User on multiple devices
If an employee has multiple User Agents across multiple devices that they use simultaneously or frequently switch between, the reports may show an unusually high number of hours for a single workday. For example, let’s say the report shows the following hours for an individual employee using a laptop to access a virtual machine:
- Laptop: 8 hours
- Virtual Machine: 7 hours
The employee’s two User Agents have been given an alias to combine them for reporting purposes, so their total productive hours for the day show as 15, even though they only worked 8 hours.
Solution: ActivTrak can leverage Cross-Device Active Window Tracking (CDAWT) to ensure that time is not double-counted when switching between multiple devices. This is particularly important in environments where Users may work on several devices simultaneously, as illustrated by the example above with a laptop and a virtual machine. CDAWT applies only to merged Users; aliased Users will appear as a single reporting User in reports, but any overlaps in their data will still be double-counted.
Imbalanced workweek
Another potential cause of an unusually high daily average could be an imbalanced workweek. For example, let’s say an employee worked the following number of hours each day:
| Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday | Friday |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.5 hours | 1.0 hour | 9.0 hours | 1.8 hours | 1.9 hours |
For accounts without the HRIS Integration, the Configuration to Computer Averages may be set to the default of using the set Hourly Threshold of 2 hours. In this case, the definition of an Active Day was met only on Wednesday. In this instance, ActivTrak sums all productive time across the five days but divides by only one. (15.2 hours / 1 = 15.2 average). If these five days count as Active Days, the calculation would be 15.2 hours / 5 days = 3.04 average productive hours per day, providing a more accurate picture of the employee's work pattern.
In this scenario, the best first step may be to talk to the employee to find out why they are working overtime on one day but not meeting your active day threshold on the other four days. You can also set up alarms for consistently low activity so you know when employees are not working as they should be and need coaching.
Try these fixes:
- Use the HRIS integration (Add-on) to handle partial work days.
- If you don't have the HRIS Integration, enable the Use Work Schedule setting in Settings > Insights Configuration > Configuration to Compute Averages. This ensures days outside your defined schedule aren't counted as Active Days, which can improve accuracy for part-time or variable workers. Learn more about Work Schedule configuration.
- If you don't have the HRIS Integration, adjust the Use Hourly Threshold setting in Settings > Insights Configuration > Configuration to Compute Averages. Lowering the minimum hours required for an Active Day may better reflect your team's actual work patterns — particularly for part-time workers or contractors with shorter daily schedules.
High passive time
Another possible cause of unreasonably high daily averages is large amounts of Passive Time. If the Passive Time stop setting is too high and Users are not diligent about logging off or putting their computers to sleep when they step away, large amounts of Passive Time can be captured overnight or over the weekend, skewing the data.
Solution: Check your settings via Settings > Account Configuration. The recommended Passive time stop is 5 minutes. Admins can adjust the range from 0-30 minutes or toggle “Track passive time indefinitely.” We do not recommend indefinite capture. Please note that changes to Passive Time Settings are not applied retroactively; they only apply forward. To learn more about Passive Time, refer to this guide.
Additional tips
In addition to the solutions detailed above, you can try these fixes:
- Check the Devices tab in User Settings to see if the employee is using multiple devices simultaneously.
- Look for duplicate agent installations. See the Agent Deployment Guide for troubleshooting tips.
- Review your virtual machine configurations — for example, if you leverage Remote Desktop Services — to ensure you're not tracking virtual activity alongside physical devices.
- Adjust application classifications for apps that often run in parallel.
You can also stay on top of unusual patterns with these tips:
- Enable the Weekly Digest to review the recap of team activity and productivity over the previous week.
- Set up Alarms to be notified when a User’s average is exceedingly high or when a User has zero-hour days.
- Update your settings and thresholds as work patterns change.
- If you have HRIS Integration (Add-on) enabled, verify that work schedules and time off data are configured correctly to ensure accurate Active Day calculations.