Essential Steps for Getting Started with ActivTrak

Congratulations on your new ActivTrak account! You’re on your way to gaining all sorts of invaluable organizational insights. Setting up ActivTrak is super easy, but we’ve made it even easier by putting together this checklist to make sure you complete all of the essential setup steps. Have fun and let us know if you have any questions!

1. Download & Install the ActivTrak Agent 

The entire data cycle begins with the ActivTrak Agent. The Agent is a robust and reliable piece of software with a low system profile. Install the Agent to collect data and execute responses to user activity.

Downloading the agent is simple. From the ActivTrak application, click on the blue "Download Agent" button in the upper-right corner of the dashboard. This will initiate the download process. The app knows what operating system you're on for that workstation, and will automatically push the correct agent to download. 

If you wish to download the agent to install on another workstation, there are a handful of ways to deploy the ActivTrak Agent that we support.

Article: Deploying Agent Guide

NOTE: Please also ensure that you place the agent on the whitelist of your antivirus and or firewall so that your agent does not get blocked. Not doing this tends to be one of the major reasons new users come across issues. Click here to follow a step by step guide on how to place your agent on the whitelists.

2. Create User and Computer Aliases

Change the viewable name of a computer or user with an alias. When the agent is installed on a computer, it shows the registered name of the computer on all associated computer data. You can also use aliases to change the names of users in reports and combine variations of user names into a single alias.

Article: Change and Create Aliases

3.  Organize Users Into Groups

Groups allow you to group monitored workstations together and segment data any way you’d like. Each workstation in a group can still be accessed and viewed individually, but groups allow you to aggregate, segment and analyze specific clusters of data together.  

Article: Creating and Managing Groups

4.  Assign Applications and Websites a Productivity Label & Category

ActivTrak's Intelligent Auto Classification feature uses crowd-sourcing and will automatically classify most of the websites and applications that the majority of customers use with a productivity label and a category. 

You can also customize productivity assignments to websites and applications and label each as productive or unproductive. Both types of classifications are essential to ensuring your reports reflect how users spend their time. 

Article: Classifying Productive Sites and Apps 

ActivTrak offers a pre-built library of common descriptive categories with applications and websites classified accordingly. You can also customize this list to suit your needs. Categorization allows for a better understanding of how various types of applications and websites are utilized.

Article: Categorize a Website or Application

5.  Create Custom Tracking Schedules 

Set up scheduled monitoring hours for users to reflect their working hour schedules. This allows for collecting user activity data only during working hours and prevents unnecessary data collection outside of the workday.

Article: Use the Scheduling Feature to Reflect Employee Working Hours

6.  Create Alarm Triggers and Actions

All reactions to user activities are triggered by alarms. As the ActivTrak Agent runs in the background, it’s capturing a user's actions to match specific criteria configured by an account administrator. When these predefined conditions are met, the ActivTrak agent triggers a reaction on the user's machine or in the ActivTrak dashboard.

Article: Creating Custom Alarms

7.  Explore the Dashboard 

The ActivTrak dashboard displays key summaries of the extensive and more detailed reports available in other areas of the app. If you just want a quick snapshot of your organization, the dashboard is the place to go. 

Article: Navigating the Dashboard

8.  Review Individual Reports

Multiple analytical reports help you discover valuable insights and increase team productivity. All reports contain powerful filters — some universal, some report-specific — to help you discover trends more quickly.  

Article: ActivTrak Reports