Insights dashboards (available in trials and select ActivTrak plans) provide valuable productivity insights, coaching opportunities, and recommendations for leaders, as well as goal-setting capabilities that help you and your teams work wiser. To ensure accurate reporting and data privacy, you’ll need to customize how Insights are configured for your organization. 

To get started, navigate to Insights > Configuration to access the Insights Configuration Page. Here, you can customize your Insights settings via the following tabs:

• Metrics
• Privacy
• Location
• Subscriptions
• Offline Meetings*

*Only viewable with an enabled ActivTrak calendar integration

Metrics

View and adjust key metrics that impact productivity measurement. This tab includes four settings that are detailed below.

Note: Changes to your Metrics tab settings won't be reflected in Insights dashboards until the next data refresh (every 24 hours). 

1. Attention Shifting

An Attention Shift is triggered when a user toggles between multiple applications or screens within a minute. Consecutive minutes without Attention Shifts are counted toward a user’s Focused Time.

To calculate Attention Shifts:

• Set how many applications or websites visited within a minute will trigger an Attention Shift.
• Set how many screen views will trigger an Attention Shift.

Tip: Consider the nature of your team’s work. If their processes often involve multiple screen views or site shifts, make increase these settings to accurately capture Focused Time. If their work dictates high focus within single applications, decrease these settings.

2. Collaboration Time

Determine which activity categories should count toward users’ Collaboration Time. The applications and websites within each category can be configured from the Classification page.

• By default, Collaboration Time includes the “Meeting Software” and “Chat & Messaging” categories.
• Tailor what is considered Collaboration Time in your organization by selecting all the categories that apply, then click "Save" to apply the changes.

3. Configuration to Compute Averages

To calculate averages, such as average productive hours/day, a user's productive hours are divided by the number of active days in a given time period.

Configure the minimum threshold for what is considered an active day (based on productive hours) to ensure that averages are accurately calculated and not diluted by a brief period of activity on a weekend or other non-work day. But also keep in mind that setting the minimum threshold too high can also produce skewed averages. Review the examples below.

Example 1: Setting the THRESHOLD TO COUNT ACTIVE DAYS too low

If an employee logs 40 hours of productive time over a 5-day period, their average productive time will be 8 hours/day. But if that employee logs onto their computer for 5 minutes over the weekend, and the active day threshold is set to 0, the total time worked will be divided by 6 days, bringing the average down to 6.7 hours/day, thus deflating the employee's true average.

Example 2: Setting the THRESHOLD TO COUNT ACTIVE DAYS too high

If an employee logs 28 hours of productive time over a 5-day period, their average productive time will be 5.6 hours/day. But if the active day threshold is set to 5 hours, and the employee only worked over 5 hours on two of the days, the total time worked will be divided by 2 days, bringing the average up to 14 hours/day, thus inflating the employee's true average.

To further understand these two examples side-by-side with ActivTrak's recommended approach, see the table below.

Calculating Averages

• A user's total hours in a given time period (including time worked on non-active days) is divided by the number of active days in that time period.
• On days when a user does not meet the active day threshold, all activity will still be logged and will appear in ActivTrak reports. Productive Time, Focus Time, and Collaboration Time will be factored into weekly totals, but days below the active day threshold will not be factored into the calculation of average metrics.
• This setting applies to all users within the account, and cannot be configured for individual users or teams.
• The threshold will be applied retroactively to enable an accurate comparison of data across time periods. You may see higher values for average metrics after configuring a minimum threshold.

Note: The Active Day Threshold is not synonymous with a team’s Productive Time goal. The goal represents the ideal number of hours that employees should work each day, while the Active Day Threshold is the minimum number of expected hours for a working day.

4. Account-level Goals

Via one easy setting, Admins can set or adjust goals for productivity metrics (Productive, Collaboration, and Focus Time) for all teams in the account, including existing and future teams.

When setting goals, consider employees’ historical benchmarks, as well as our Benchmarks Guide, based on data from ActivTrak’s customer base. 

Managers can still set custom team-level goals via the Benchmarks & Goals Dashboard. 

Note: The goal that was most recently set — whether at the account or team level — will take precedence. 

Privacy

Ensuring data privacy while measuring productivity is critical. This tab includes 2 settings that are detailed below.

Note: Changes to your Privacy tab settings will be applied and reflected immediately across Insights dashboards. 

1. Exclude Non-business Activity Details

By hiding details of non-business activities from Insights dashboards, organizations can give managers access to deep workforce productivity insights while protecting employee privacy and reducing concerns about exposing personal data.

When this setting is enabled, Insights dashboards will show the total amount of time spent on unproductive or unclassified activities, but not details about the specific apps and websites that were accessed.

Note: This setting is applied at the account level and cannot be configured for individual users or teams.

Example of an Insights dashboard with activity details hidden

Example of the same Insights dashboard with activity details shown

2. Hide User Activity Data

Toggle on the Hide User Activity Data setting to further protect employee privacy and focus on analyzing productivity metrics at the team or account level in Insights dashboards.

Once enabled, all Insights dashboards will display aggregate or anonymized data only and will not display the names of individuals.

Example of an Insights dashboard with user activity data hidden

Location

To accurately account for variations in work location, such as a hybrid work model, adjust location settings. This tab includes 2 settings that are detailed below.

Note: Changes to your Location tab settings won't be reflected in Insights dashboards until the next data refresh (every 24 hours).

1. Threshold for Office/Remote Work Days

By default, an employee’s location is categorized as Office/Remote when they spend less than 80% of a given day in either location. Ex: 70% of the day in the office, 30% of the day remote.

Conversely, when 80% or more of a given day is spent in one location (Office or Remote) an employee is assigned that location for the full day.

To customize this threshold, enter a number between 51% and 99% in the gray text box in the last sentence (as shown in the screenshot above), then hit the return key or click anywhere outside of the text box and a message will appear at the top of the page confirming the new threshold has been saved.

Note: Changes to the threshold will be reflected the next time the Location Insights Dashboard is refreshed (once every 24 hours). Historical data will be updated in accordance with the new threshold.

2. Assign IP Addresses to an Office Network of VPN

The ActivTrak Agent analyzes a user’s IP address and unique on-device signals to determine whether they are located in an office (co-located with other employees) or are working remotely. This data is displayed in the Location Insights Dashboard.

For situations where employees routinely connect to the same IP address, such as an office or a Virtual Private Network (VPN), Admins can provide the IP address to ensure that associated user activity is always assigned the correct location category.

To specify whether the list of Office IPs should be exhaustive or partial, use the toggle below the list of manually assigned IP addresses.

• If turned on, only activity on manually assigned ‘Office’ IP addresses will be labeled ‘Office’ in the Location Insights Dashboard. User activity on all other IPs will automatically be labeled ‘Remote.’
• If turned off, the Agent may automatically assign the ‘Office’ location to activity that takes place on other IP addresses, according to the location detection rules described in this article. (Activity on manually assigned ‘Office’ IPs will be labeled accordingly.)
• Location estimates for VPN activity are not impacted by the toggle. Whether the toggle is on or off, manually assigned VPNs will be labeled ‘Office’ or ‘Remote’ according to the location detection model. (Manually assigning the ‘VPN’ designation to an IP address ensures the accuracy of these predictions, because it indicates that the user’s location should be inferred from on-device signals rather than the IP address.)

Notes:

• Manually assigned networks will be applied to activity that takes place on the associated IPs going forward. The location assigned to the prior activity will not change retroactively.
• IP addresses with more than one possible location (such as an IP address that is shared by an office and a VPN) should not be added to this list, as this will lead to locations being labeled incorrectly.

Subscriptions

Email Subscriptions make it easier to share Insights reports and enable your team to:

• Align on goals and measure progress
• Identify productivity blockers and the necessary actions to remove them
• Have more productive coaching conversations
• Optimize schedules based on personal and team work habits

The Subscriptions tab includes one setting that is detailed below.

Note: Changes to your Subscriptions tab settings will be applied immediately.

1. Subscriptions & Sharing

To allow all users to share the Personal Insights Dashboard with their direct reports and to create email subscriptions for other app users, toggle on "Allow Users to Share Personal Insights with direct reports or subscribe other application users.”

Important Note: By enabling the Subscriptions & Sharing toggle above, your company agrees that it will obtain all required consents from an employee prior to using the ActivTrak application for capturing & sharing activity data with the employee, other employees, or representatives of your company. ActivTrak's Terms of Use and Privacy Policy continue to apply.

Offline Meetings

Note: This tab is only viewable if an ActivTrak calendar integration is enabled. Learn more here. The Offline Meetings tab includes two settings that are detailed below.

1. Minimum Number of Invitees (Default: 2 invitees)

Specify the minimum number of non-declining invitees for a calendar event to be counted as an Offline Meeting. Invitees will be included in this number if they accept, respond Maybe/Tentative, or do not respond to a calendar event invitation.

Note: If it’s common for members of your organization to book a meeting room by adding it to a calendar event as a guest (rather than a room or a resource), we recommend setting this threshold to 3 or higher to ensure that a single person working alone in a conference room does not count toward Offline Meeting time.

2. Maximum Meeting Length (Default: 8 hours)

Set an upper limit on meeting time to avoid skewing the data with all-day or multi-day calendar blocks (i.e. PTO or sick leave). Meetings that exceed the maximum meeting length will be excluded from Offline Meeting time (0 hours will be counted).

Note: Changes to your Offline Meetings tab settings won't be reflected in Insights dashboards until the next data refresh (every 24 hours).

Learn more about Insights:

• ActivTrak Insights Overview
• ActivTrak Benchmarks Guide
• ActivTrak's Subscription Differences