Understanding and Troubleshooting Unusual Productivity Averages

When reviewing productivity data in ActivTrak, you might notice some unexpected average productivity numbers or employees appearing to work below or above the active day threshold. This article explores common scenarios and how to resolve them.

Contents

Common scenarios and solutions

Changing the default thresholds

Additional tips

Common scenarios and solutions

1. Zero hours showing despite activity

Sometimes, a team member who works a few hours each day does not show up in the Insights Report as meeting your productivity minimum threshold. For example, let’s say an employee worked the following number of hours each day:

Monday: 1.5 hours

Tuesday: 1.8 hours  

Wednesday: 1.6 hours

Thursday: 1.4 hours

Friday: 1.7 hours

This employee’s total for the week is eight hours. However, in ActivTrak, the report shows no active days. In this scenario, the active day threshold has been set to two hours. In other words, employees must work a minimum of two productive hours for ActivTrak to consider the day active. While the work time is tracked, days where the Active Day Threshold is not met are not counted as active days. However, the productive time from those days is still included in average calculations based on your selected time period.

Solution: If a team member is not meeting your daily threshold, try these fixes:

  1. Verify your active day threshold settings to make sure they match your team’s work patterns. (For example, if you have contractors who are expected to work less than two hours a day.)
  2. Use the PTO integration (Beta) to handle partial work days.

2. Zero hours showing and no activity

In some instances, the Insights Report may show null for all averages for a user who typically meets or exceeds your active day threshold — but can’t be explained by PTO.

This can happen when a user is spending more time than usual in offline activities, such as a company retreat or on-site client sessions. In this scenario, the user will show up in reports but the average can't be calculated since the number of days worked (active days) is zero.

Solution: Integrate your calendar to view offline meeting activity that could be impacting your productivity reports.

3. Unusually high daily averages

Unmerged user on multiple devices

If an employee has multiple User Agents across multiple devices they use simultaneously or frequently switch between, the reports may show an unusually high number of hours for one 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, such as the example above with a laptop and a virtual machine. CDAWT only applies to merged users; Aliased users will show as a single reporting user in reports, but any overlaps in their data will still be double-counted. To learn more about how to properly merge users and leverage CDAWT, refer to this guide.

Imbalanced workweek

Another potential cause of an unusually high daily average could be an imbalanced workweek. For example, let’s say the active day threshold is two hours and an employee worked the following number of hours each day:

Monday: 1.5 hours

Tuesday: 1 hour

Wednesday: 9 (Active day threshold crossed)

Thursday: 1.8

Friday: 1.9

The active day threshold was only met on Wednesday, which means the user worked below their active day threshold four out of the five days. In this instance, ActivTrak sums up all of the productive time for the five days but only divides by one. (15.2 hours / 1 = 15.2 average).

Solution: In this scenario, the best course of action is usually to talk to the employee to find out why they are working overtime one day but not meeting your active day threshold on the other four. 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.

High passive time

Yet another cause of unreasonably high daily averages could be large amounts of Passive Time. If the Passive Time stop setting is too high and users are not diligent about logging off or sleeping their computers when they step away, large amounts of Passive Time can be captured overnight or over the weekend and skew data.

Solution: Check your setting via Settings > Account Configuration. The recommended Passive time stop is 5 minutes. Admins can adjust 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, but only point forward. To learn more about Passive Time, refer to this guide.

Changing the default thresholds

To calculate average productivity, ActivTrak divides a user's productive hours by the number of active days in a given time period. It’s important to set your active day threshold to match your work environment:

You can set the minimum threshold for what's considered an active day for your users on the Insights Configuration Page. The user must meet this threshold for a day to be considered active and appear in your report. 

ActivTrak recommends the following thresholds:

Remote teams: 2 to 4 hours (to account for flexible schedules)

In-office teams: 4 to 6 hours (to match the traditional workday)

Shift work: Approximately 50% of shift length (Such as 3 hours for a 6-hour shift)

Part-time contractors: Approximately 50% of anticipated work (Such as 1 to 2 hours for four hours of work) 

How to configure the active day threshold

  1. Navigate to Insights > Configuration in the ActivTrak app.
  2. Scroll to the Configuration to Compute Averages section.
  3. Set your desired minimum productive hours (e.g. 2 hours).
  4. Click Save.

Configuration_to_Compute_Averages_Screenshot.pngThe changes will apply retroactively and will be reflected after the next data load.

Note: This setting applies account-wide and cannot be customized per team or user.

Additional tips

In addition to the solutions detailed above, you can try these fixes:

  1. Check the Devices tab in User Settings to see if the employee is using multiple devices simultaneously.
  2. Look for duplicate agent installations. See the Agent Deployment Guide for troubleshooting tips.
  3. Review your virtual machine configurations — for example, if you leverage Remote Desktop Services — to ensure you're not tracking virtual activity alongside physical devices.
  4. 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 alerts to be notified when a user’s average is exceedingly high.
  • Set up alerts to be notified when a user has zero-hour days.
  • Update your thresholds as team work patterns change.

Learn more

The Insights Configuration Page 

ActivTrak Alarms Guide

Offline Meetings

Cross-Device Active Window Tracking

Active Time and Passive Time in ActivTrak 

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