Location Insights Dashboard

The Location Insights Dashboard provides location-based data on employee productivity and work habits to help leaders make informed decisions about workplace policy. Understand how much time employees spend working in the office, remotely or on a hybrid schedule, and how productivity varies by location.

Demo of the Location Insights Dashboard

By default, Location Insights is enabled for Admins and Configurators. Admins can manage role-based access within the Insights section of the Role Access page.

Enabling the Location Insights Dashboard via the Role Access Page

Location Calculations

In the Location Insights Dashboard, location is broken down into three categories: Office, Remote and Office/Remote (indicating hybrid). Each day, users are assigned a location based on where they spent the majority of their time:

• Office: ≥ 80% of the day in-office.
• Remote: ≥ 80% of the day remote (not in-office).
• Office/Remote: A combination of time spent in-office and remote, with < 80% of the day spent in either location.

By default, the location threshold is set to 80%. ActivTrak Admins can customize this setting by navigating to Insights > Configuration > Threshold for Office/Remote Work Days.

Note: To learn more about how ActivTrak identifies remote vs. office work activity, click here.

Dashboard Filters

You can control how your data is visualized in the Location Insights Dashboard based on different factors. For example, you might select ‘Office’ and ‘Office/Remote’ to see which employees spent time in the office over a certain time period, or select a specific user to understand where they tend to be most productive.

NOTE: After updating filter selections, hit the Reload button in the upper right-hand corner to refresh the dashboard.

The Location Insights Dashboard Filters, shown at the top

Filter by location: Click  ‘Office,’ ‘Remote’ or ‘Office/Remote’ in the Productive Hrs/Day by Location or Location Breakdown chart.

Filter by user: Click a user’s name in the User Activity table.

Filter for multiple locations or users: Follow the instructions above, then hold down the Command or Ctrl key on your keyboard and click another location or user.

View by: Select Day or Week to view a daily or weekly breakdown in the Location Distribution chart by Day or Week' chart.

Activity Date: Use the drop-down menu to select a preset timeframe, or click “Custom” at the top of the drop-down to select specific dates.

Team: Select one or more teams to view. The teams that appear in the drop-down are limited to a user’s Viewable Groups.

Click "More" to see the following filters:

• Location: Determine which locations to show/hide in the dashboard.
• Day Type: Limit the data displayed in the dashboard to only weekday or weekend activity.
• Show N Users: Set a limit for the number of users displayed in the dashboard (between 30 and 500).
• Filter Users by: Determine the hierarchy of the users being displayed in the User Activity Type vs Goal report. “Top” refers to the members of the selected Team(s) with the highest average productive hours per day; “Bottom” refers to those with the lowest average productive hours per day.

Filter icon: Click this button to hide the filter settings from your dashboard view.

Three-dot icon: Click the three-dot icon on the right to download the dashboard view(s), reset filters and change the dashboard timezone.

Subscribe: Click the green “Subscribe” button to receive a snapshot of the dashboard via email on a recurring basis. Learn more about Insights email subscriptions here.

Productive Hrs/Day by Location

See average productive hours per day for employees across each location.

While many employees say they are more productive when working from home, leaders and managers may be concerned that the shift away from in-office work has led to decreased productivity. Location Insights enable leaders to make objective, data-based decisions about the optimal work policy for their teams and organizations.

Location Breakdown

See the percentage of employees’ workdays spent in each location over a given time period.

This data can inform office space requirements and help validate compliance with workplace policies. (For example, if employees are expected to spend two days a week in the office, you should expect the ‘Office’ location to make up at least 40% of the Location Breakdown chart.)

Avg Start and End of Day by Location

See the average time employees start and end their days and the average length of workdays by location.

Identify correlations between location and working hours such as later start times due to an office commute or longer days due to the always-on nature of remote work.

Note: The average hours per day displayed in this chart are calculated by dividing users’ total time (including both productive and unproductive activities) by the total number of user workdays in the selected time period, including non-active days (days in which a user does not meet the Active Day Threshold).

As a result, the data in this chart may not match the ‘Productive Hrs/Day by Location’ chart, which only considers productive hours and active days.

User Activity

See each user’s total productive hours, average productive hours per day, active days and days spent in each location during the selected time period.

Apply the ‘Office’ filter to see which employees are complying with in-office work policies, or select an individual user to view their average productivity and working hours in each location. This data can help managers understand who works best in each work environment and identify changes in work habits as a result of policy changes (for example, a drop in productivity with a return to the office).

Location Distribution

Select View by Day or Week in the filters to view a day-by-day or week-by-week breakdown of user workdays by location.

Get visibility into location trends to determine how much office space is required on a regular basis. This data can support a decision to close or consolidate an office, or to adapt hybrid work policies to encourage more frequent office usage and maximize return on investment.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does ActivTrak determine a user’s location?

Please read this article for technical details.

Are there minimum Agent version requirements to ensure accurate location estimates?

Yes, users must be on Windows or macOS 8.2.14 or later.

Why are some users' locations 'Unknown'?

The 'Unknown' category is displayed when a user's location cannot be detected, typically because the user is on an Agent version that does not support location estimates (earlier than Windows or macOS 8.2.14). Admins can see which Agent version is installed on a user's device by navigating to Settings > Users & Groups > Computer Agents.

What is the earliest date for location data to be available in the Location Insights Dashboard?

Customers who had Insights prior to Sept. 2022 will see location data for Sept. 1, 2022, and beyond. Earlier dates will be labeled “Unknown” in the dashboard.

Customers who upgrade to a plan that includes Insights will see location data beginning on the date of their upgrade.

New ActivTrak customers on a plan that includes Insights will see location data beginning on the date their first Agent was deployed.

Is location data available in ActivConnect?

Yes! The Location Insights dataset is now available directly through ActivConnect for your advanced reporting needs:

• Combining Location Insights with other datasets
• Custom reporting & visualizations
• Incorporating in internally distributed BI dashboards
• Application development using Location Insights

Learn more about ActivConnect here.

Can the Agent accurately determine a user's location when connected to a Virtual Private Network (VPN)?

Yes, ActivTrak differentiates between office and VPN activity by inspecting unique on-device signals in addition to IP addresses.

Organizations use VPNs to secure access to particular systems by routing internet traffic through an office server first. This can cause remote workers to appear as though they are working from an office. However, since your network router is co-located with you, it won’t change when connected to a VPN, like an IP address does. 

For data privacy reasons, ActivTrak hashes these signals before processing or storage – we never know the original value. All that matters is whether it is unique (“Remote”) or shared (“Office”).

Can the Agent accurately determine a user’s location when connected to a remote desktop?

We currently support location detection for Windows Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). Activity that takes place while connected to Windows RDP will be labeled according to the location of the user’s device (assuming an Agent is installed on the device), rather than the location of the server they are connected to.

Activity that takes place over other remote desktop protocols is labeled according to the server location (typically “Office”), so is not a reliable indicator of a user’s location. We are evaluating support for additional remote desktop protocols in future releases.

Is it possible to override automatic location estimates?

Yes, for situations where employees routinely connect to the same IP address, such as an office or a Virtual Private Network (VPN), ActivTrak Admins can provide the IP address or range of IPs to ensure that associated user activity is always categorized correctly. Manually assigned networks will override automatic location estimates.

Admins can provide this information via the ‘Assign IP Addresses to an Office Network or VPN’ setting on the Insights Configuration page in the app (Insights > Configuration > Assign IP Addresses to an Office Network or VPN).

Admins can use the toggle below the list of manually assigned IP addresses to determine whether the Office IPs they’ve provided should be exhaustive or partial.

• If this toggle is 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 the toggle is turned off, the Agent may automatically assign the ‘Office’ location to activity that takes place on other IP addresses (in addition to manually assigned Office IPs) according to the standard location detection model.
• 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.)

When a user spends the majority of their day (e.g. 80%) either in the office or remote, but spends part of their day (e.g. 20%) in another location, how is the 20% of the time that was not spent in the primary location attributed?

When a day is labeled as Office or Remote, all time worked during that day (including time not spent at the primary location) is attributed to the primary location.

In the example below, Leah had 5.3 hours of productive time in one day, the majority of which was spent in the office. Let’s say she worked from the office for 4.3 hours and from home for 1 hour. The hour she spent at home is rolled into the productive hours spent at the primary location (Office).

Learn More:

• How Does ActivTrak Determine Remote vs. Office Location?
• Insights Configuration
• What Data Does ActivTrak Collect?
• Contact Support