Passive Time Configuration

Passive time collection can be configured based on your organizations’ needs and habits. Passive time is defined as when an employee is not actively using their keyboard or mouse, and most often occurs when an employee is attending a video or in-person meeting, on the phone, reading a document, or away from their computer for a break. While ActivTrak cannot collect data outside of when the employee uses their computer, with passive time you can see when they became inactive.

Passive time is represented within the application 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. 

Start Collecting Passive Time  

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 employees’ passive time starts collecting 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%

Starting in 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.

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”

See this screenshot for examples of the Security Audit Log: