Passive Time in ActivTrak

Throughout the workday, users have many tasks that do not involve using their keyboard or mouse - for example, collaborating with a colleague in person, watching a training video, attending a meeting, or speaking with a customer on the phone. This work is not idle and that's why time away from the keyboard and mouse is labeled passive within the ActivTrak app.

By default, ActivTrak starts collecting Passive Time after 2 minutes of the employee not actively using or providing input into their computer. These 2 minutes are included in the prior activity’s duration. 

In order to change the duration and customize the configuration of passive time review, Passive Time Configuration. 

Passive Time Details

Passive time is represented within ActivTrak as the lighter color of each of the Productivity statuses:

Passive time is shown within the Activity Log (Live Reports > Activity Log) as gray, italicized, and with the previous activity’s metadata. 

For more information on the difference between these productivity states and the active vs passive times reference, Understanding Active Time and Passive Time. 

Summary & Detail Views 

Summary and Detailed Views are displayed across reports in ActivTrak. Summary views include active and passive durations. Detailed views break down active and passive time explicitly.

The Dashboard and Team Pulse always show the summary views where active and passive time are shown together as Productive, Unproductive or Undefined.

Drilling down into the reports, the Top Users & Groups report has been updated and simplified to both reflect the new color schema and to provide an easier means to see both a summary view and a detailed view either by individual Users or by Groups. 

 Summary View: 

 Detailed View: 

On the Productivity Report Detailed View, you will see the new color scheme utilized here with the activities broken out by the descriptors. 

Within the Single Day Report (Live Reports > Productivity) you’ll see we show passive locked or stopped as blank intervals:  

Passive-Locked is the Passive state when ActivTrak does not know what the employee is doing because they are not interacting with their computer. This occurs when the employee has turned off their computer, it has gone to sleep, or after passive time stops collecting. By default, passive time stops after 5 minutes. 

Activity Log

Within the Activity Log, you can see each passive activity shows the details of the last activity the employee was engaged in prior to going inactive. These details are how each passive episode is classified with a productivity status.  

In this example, mail.google.com is considered a Productive activity and classified as Productive Active. The employee went passive while in gmail so therefore that passive time is classified as Productive Passive. 

You can also see the employee was passive for longer than 5 minutes so any time after the 5 minute mark is shown as Passive - locked. Given the user is not interacting with their computer while Passive, ActivTrak cannot determine exactly what they are doing. Therefore, we stop collecting passive time after 5 minutes to prevent over reporting.

Notes:

• Passive time can show as more than 24 hours. When this occurs, it is due to a computer being left on overnight or over the weekend. Passive Time is applied to the day in which is started therefore if a computer goes into passive mode on a Friday afternoon and is not active again until Monday morning, the hours will be applied to Friday's metrics. In order to prevent instances as such, Passive Time can be configured to stop after a set amount of time; this setting can be found on the Account Configuration page (Settings > Configuration). Learn more here.
• Alarms cannot be triggered based on Passive Time.
• Once a computer has become Passive, screenshots will not be collected and they will show as Passive in the Team-Pulse view. 
• Read the Passive Time FAQ here.

Configuring Passive Time

Passive time collection can be configured based on your organization’s needs and habits. 

By default, ActivTrak starts collecting an episode of passive time after 2 minutes of the employee not actively using or providing input into their computer. These 2 minutes are included in the prior activity’s duration. 

Within the Account Configuration page (Settings > Configuration), Admins can adjust when Passive Time starts collecting for employees - anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes. We default to 2 minutes because a moment or two of rest or inactivity while thinking through a tough problem or reading a document is normal work behavior. However, if you would like strict control to only see when the user is active, start passive at 1 minute. 

Stopping Passive Time Collection

Prior to January 2021, Passive Time did not stop collecting unless the computer was shut down or went into sleep or lock mode. At times, this resulted in a significant over-collection of passive time. 

In a study across our customer base, we found that 95% of passive time episodes are less than 10 minutes in duration. Here is the full breakdown of passive time frequency by duration:

Less than 5 min 85.0%

Less than 10 min 95.1%

Less than 15 min 97.2%

Less than 20 min 98.6%

Less than 30 min 99.0%

Beginning January 2021, Admins can adjust when Passive Time stops or “clips” each passive episode from 0 to 30 minutes or choose to keep tracking passive time indefinitely as it did before. 

We recommend stopping passive time between 5 and 10 minutes given that most Passive Time episodes are less than 10 minutes and that will allow you to classify the most common cases (e.g. going passive on a video conference).  However, you can also set it to 0 to completely exclude passive time. If you completely exclude passive time by stopping it at 0 minutes, we recommend starting it at 5 to 10 minutes to ensure you are accounting for normal short pauses throughout the day.

The Impact of Adjusting Passive Time Configuration

REPORT IMPACT

If the passive time is clipped or set to stop after 0-30 minutes, passive time throughout the data, app, and reports will reflect this change. This time will look similar to Passive Locked (when the computer is locked or asleep).

Within the Single Day Report (Live Reports > Productivity) you’ll see we show passive locked or stopped as blank intervals:  

Here is the same time frame within the activity log (Live Reports > Activity Log). You will see the previous activity, passive entry, and passive stopped shown as Passive - Locked without duration. 

HISTORICAL IMPACT

When an admin adjusts the passive start/stop historical data will not change. Modifying when passive starts/stops will inform the agents associated with your account to track data differently and will not update historical data. It will only affect data moving forward and we cannot recover or adjust historical data.

Admins will see the following warning prior to saving adjustments to the Passive Time Configuration:

RECORDING CHANGES

Each adjustment of passive time configuration will be recorded in the Security Audit Log (Settings > Security > Audit). 

Each entry will show the following:

• Event: UpdatePassiveSettings 
• Description: Passive Start or Passive Stop
• Action Data: 
• Starting adjustments will show with the minutes the start has been set
• Stopping adjustments with the minutes the stop has been set
• Infinite stops will show as “PassiveStop: Indefinite”

The Security Audit Log

Passive Time Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

When did Passive Time change?

Effective Wednesday, January 20, 2021, passive time stops after 5 minutes per episode. 

To change this setting go to Settings > Passive

Why did we change Passive Time?

To provide deeper control into how you classify the time when employees are passively participating in common work activities like attending a video conference or reading a document.

How did Passive Time change?  

We’ve updated how the platform captures, records, configures and displays passive time. These enhancements reflect the activities/behaviors of users prior to going passive.

• Passive time is now classified as Productive Passive’, Unproductive Passive’, or ‘Undefined Passive’ based on the last activity the user was engaged in before going passive.
• Passive time recording continues to default to 2 minutes, but users can now adjust it to start anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes.
• Passive time now defaults to stop after 5 minutes, but users can adjust it to stop from 0 to 30 minutes or choose to keep recording indefinitely or until the computer goes to sleep, is locked, or turned off. 

What may be confusing with this new change?

• The passive time yellow bar is no longer present in the Dashboards and Reports. Passive time now is allocated into productive, unproductive, or undefined at the summary level (Dashboard and Summary View for the Top Users and Productivity reports).
• Commonly used metrics are affected:
• Passive times will be lower because we are now clipping it per the new setting (vs. waiting for the computer to become locked or go to sleep)
• Productive time, unproductive time, and undefined time will be higher as they will now contain passive time.
• The productivity ratios in Team Pulse will be higher due to the higher metric values and the overall smaller passive times.
• There is now a different color schema across the application UI.

Where can I find the legacy values for different metrics?

• Legacy values for Productive, Unproductive, or Undefined: Go to Top Users report or Productivity report and select the Detailed View toggle. Productive Active, Unproductive Active or Undefined Active are the new names for these metrics.
• Legacy Productivity ratios in Team Pulse: Change the toggle to “Use Active Time”. This will calculate the Productivity ratio using the legacy formula (Productive Active / Total Time)
• Legacy Productivity ratios in Top Users: Select the “Detailed View” toggle where you can see the ratio for Productive Active (Productive Active / Total Time).
• Legacy Passive Time: You can increase the clipping setting or set it to capture passive time indefinitely, which is how it worked previously. We don’t recommend this but that will give them the prior behavior.

The productivity ratio changed and everyone is much higher. How do I see the productivity ratio as it was before?

Productivity ratios appear higher now because employees' total times are no longer including superfluous passive time thanks to clipping passive time at 5 minutes. Prior to this release, productivity ratios were calculated using productive time divided by total time.

Within Summary Views (including the Dashboard and Team Pulse), productivity ratios are now calculated with the productive active and productive passive time over the total time.

Within Detailed Views, productivity ratios are now calculated with the productive active over the total time.

To see the productivity ratio using active time only as you saw before, you can use the Detailed view within the Top Users and Groups report:

 Summary View:

Detailed View:

To view Team Pulse using active time click on the settings cog and select “Use Active Time”

Which versions of the Agent support the new Passive Time classification?

WinAgents 8.1.15 and MacAgents 8.1.4 and newer will send in the new passive time. 

Chromebook agents have not been updated

See here for how to upgrade to the latest version.

What happens if legacy Agents aren’t updated? 

Legacy agents will send in passive time without previous activities and passive time will be shown as Undefined Passive (gray color). 

What’s the difference between the summary and detailed views?

Summary views include active and passive duration. 

Detailed views break down active and passive time explicitly.

What are the default times for when passive time starts and stops?

Passive time start defaults to 2 minutes. Admins can adjust from 1-10 minutes.

Passive time stop defaults to 5 minutes. Admins can adjust from 0-30 minutes.

What is the recommended passive time configuration? 

We recommend passive time configurations be between 5 and 10 minutes given that most passive time episodes are less than 10 minutes and that will allow you to classify the most common cases (e.g. going passive on a video conference).  However, you can also set it to 0 to completely exclude passive time.

If an Admin adjusts the passive start/stop, does this change historical data?

No, modifying when passive starts/stops will inform the agents associated with your account to track data differently and will not update historical data. It will only affect data moving forward.

If an Admin accidentally changes the Passive Time start/stop, can ActivTrak adjust the historical data?

No, we cannot recover the data or adjust it.

How do I know if the Passive Time starting/stopping has been adjusted?

Check the security audit log.

Will the new passive data break the ActivConnect templates?

No, this release will be adding new data elements but not changing existing data so that templates or any customer queries and ETL scripts will continue to work without disruption. We are adding a new version of database views to the ActivConnect data so that customers can adjust any reports they rely on themselves.

When will ActivConnect be updated with classified passive time?

The classified passive data will be made available with the Premium Early Access release. 

Will the weekly digest be updated with the new passive time classification and color scheme?

The Weekly Digest will be updated to show the classified passive time summary view and the new color schema starting on 1/25. 

Learn more:

• Activity Classification: A Step-by-Step Guide
• Contact Support