Insights Frequently Asked Questions

What new dashboards and features are included with Insights?

Insights provide valuable productivity insights, metrics and goal-setting capabilities that help you and your team to work better. Insights you need to optimize focus time, workload balance, and technology usage across your team. View an overview of the Insights capabilities.

How often does the Insights data refresh?

Insights data updates once per day for all the dashboards and reports within the Insights tab. Any changes to configuration settings, account access or goals made during the day will not be reflected until the next data load. The refresh window is 1am - 6am (based on the account’s timezone). 

The top right corner of the application will display the information on how long ago the data was updated.

Additionally, caches are created at the user level on a daily basis once a Dashboard has been executed. Caches are saved for every single filter combination, meaning that every change in a filter will create a new cache for the remainder of the day. This results in faster response times after the initial dashboard execution.

How often are Coaching Opportunities refreshed?

Coaching Opportunities are refreshed every Monday (once per week). When new Coaching Opportunities are available to review, a red notification indicator will appear next to the Coaching tab in the navigation.

How does the Goal Setting feature work?

All users are onboarded with default goals; Productive Hrs/Day = 6.0 and Focused Hrs/Day = 3.0. Goals can be configured at the team level on the Benchmarks & Goals page. If a user belongs to more than one team, the user will be assigned the goal of the team with the highest value for Productive Hrs/Day.  If the goal value happens to be the same, then we use the highest value for Focused Hrs/Day for tie breaking purposes.

Goals can be set by Administrators across the board. Additionally, Power Users and Viewers can set goals by team if they were assigned the permission by the Administrator.

How is Focused Time calculated?

Focused Time is the productive time in which an individual is engaged and working on a single task without collaboration, disruption or attention shifts.

Focused Time = Productive Time - Collaboration Time - Multitasking Time 

How is Collaboration Time calculated?

Collaboration Time occurs through two-way communication using digital collaboration tools like meeting software, chat and messaging. Collaboration Time, by definition, is not focused, even though it is critical in every company.

You can configure the categories that roll up to Collaboration Time from the 'Collaboration Time' setting on the Metrics tab of the Insights Configuration page (Insights > Configuration).

How is Multitasking Time calculated?

This includes productive activities consisting of multiple tasks executed in a short period of time. 

Multitasking Time = Time spent in Attention Shifts + Attention Residue Time

See definitions for attention shifts and attention residue time below.

How are Attention Shifts identified?

Attention Shifts can be configured at the account level from the 'Attention Shifting' setting on the Metrics tab of the Insights Configuration page (Insights > Configuration). By default, Attention shift events will be triggered when:

• The number of applications/sites accessed within 60 seconds are more than 2
• The number of screen views (title bars) accessed within 60 seconds are more than 4

How is Attention Residue Time calculated?

Our brains take some time to get back on track and focused after an attention shift. ActivTrak incorporates this dynamic into our app by adding a 3-minute attention residue ‘tax’ after each attention shift, making it more representative of how our brains react to an attention shift before they can focus again. You can read more about the science behind it here.

How are the Workload Balance Utilization Levels calculated? 

By default, users are classified in a bar chart color-coded by utilization level as follows:

• Underutilized: when an individual is less than 30% under their productive hours / day goal

• Healthy: when an individual is within +/- 30% of their productive hours / day goal

• Overutilized: when an individual is more than 30% over their productive hours / day goal

Note: % Threshold vs Productive Hrs/Day Goal can be configured using the setting at the top of the Workload Balance - Analysis Dashboard.

How is Break Time calculated?

A Break begins when a user's computer has been inactive for more than 5 minutes during Working Hours. (Working Hours for each user can be configured in Settings > Scheduling.)

The duration of an individual break is capped at 2 hours. After 2 hours, a user will be shown as inactive, but the time will not count toward the user's Break Time.

Average minutes per break = total break time in minutes / the total number of breaks over a given time period.

How is Location (Office vs. Remote vs. Office/Remote) determined?

The ActivTrak Agent analyzes a user’s IP address and unique on-device signals to determine whether the user is co-located with other employees from the same organization (labeled “Office”) or not (labeled “Remote”). The “Office/Remote” category is assigned when a user works from an office and a remote location in the same day, with less than 80% (by default) of their work time spent in either location.

Please read this article for additional details. For other Location Insights FAQ, click here.

What is the difference between Last 7 complete days and Last 7 days?

Last 7 complete days does not include today while Last 7 days does. 

Example: Today’s date is 02/01/21

• Last 7 complete days: 01/25/21 - 01/31/21
• Last 7 days: 01/26/21 - 02/01/21

Note: The Personal Insights Dashboard is the only dashboard configured to return Last 7 complete days. On all other Insights Dashboards, users can select a timeframe using the Activity Date filter.

What is the purpose of the Day Type filter in Insights dashboards?

The Day Type filter allows users to limit the data displayed in Insights dashboards to either weekday (Monday through Friday) or weekend activity. When viewing data for a team whose typical work schedule is Monday through Friday, this filter ensures that averages (e.g., Productive Hrs/Day, Focus Hrs/Day, Total Time) are not skewed by weekend activity. Learn more about how averages are calculated in the Premium Data Glossary.

To ensure accurate reporting for teams that do not work a standard work week (Monday through Friday), Admins can create schedules to reflect employees’ working days and hours. ActivTrak only collects data during a User’s defined schedule.

How do filter selections transfer between Insights Dashboards (Coach and Insights Dashboards)?

In most dashboards within the Insights tab, the filters you apply carry over when navigating between dashboards where the same filters are available. The first time you visit a dashboard, the ‘Team’ filter defaults to the first team in the list (in alphabetical order). This is also the default when filter selections are cleared.

However, there are a couple of exceptions:

• Each time a user navigates to the Executive Summary Dashboard or Coach, the ‘Team’ filter defaults to ‘any value’ (all teams in a user’s Viewable Groups), regardless of the teams selected in other Insights Dashboards. This reflects the intended purpose of the Executive Summary and ActivTrak Coach, which is to provide a view of performance across the organization.
  • Note: If a user selects specific teams within the Executive Summary, these values do transfer to other Insights Dashboards.
• Team selection in Insights Dashboards are not reflected in the Personal Insights Dashboard, which only displays data for one employee at a time.