Productivity by Location

Productivity by Location, available in select plans, 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.

Note: Users' access to dashboards and features may vary based on account configuration. ActivTrak Admins can adjust access settings by assigning user roles and permissions.

To access Productivity by Location, navigate to Productivity Optimization > Productivity by Location. 

Contents

• Requirements
• Understanding location calculations
• Navigating Productivity by Location
  • Team tab
  • Users tab
• Frequently asked questions
• Learn more

Requirements

Before diving in, make sure the following are configured. Taking time to set these up correctly will ensure your data is accurate and your insights are meaningful.

1. Groups (or Teams): Organize your users into teams or business units that reflect how your organization actually operates. Without well-structured groups, it's difficult to pinpoint productivity gaps or understand their impact at the department or team level. If you haven't set up groups yet — or need to update your existing ones — start with Group management before moving forward.
2. Goals: Define the productivity benchmarks your groups are measured against. Setting goals at the group level allows you to track performance trends, identify areas of concern, and quantify the gap between current and target productivity. Goals should reflect realistic expectations for each team's role and work patterns. Make sure to set productivity goals before digging into your data.

Understanding location calculations

Productivity by Location categorizes location data into four categories: Office, Remote, Office/Remote, and Hybrid.

In charts that show daily averages (Productivity by Location, Average Start (Avg Start) and End of Day by Location and Location & Productive Hrs/Day), the following definitions apply:

• Office: ≥80% of the day is spent working in the office
• Remote: ≥80% of the day is spent working remotely (not in the office)
• Office/Remote: A combination of time spent in the office and remote on the same day, with <80% of the day spent in either location

The 80% threshold used in the definitions above can be customized by navigating to Settings > Account Configuration > Threshold for Office/Remote Work Days settings.

In all other charts, the following definitions apply:

• Office Only: Team members only worked from the office during the selected time period
• Remote Only: Team members only worked from the office during the selected time period
• Hybrid: Team members worked a mixture of in the office and remotely during the selected time period

Note: Click here to learn more about how ActivTrak identifies remote vs. office work activity.

Navigating Productivity by Location

Productivity by Location is divided into two tabs:

• Team tab
• Users tab

Team tab

The Team tab allows you to explore how your employees divide their time among office, remote, and hybrid work, and to compare productivity and working hours by location. The data is broken down into several different panels—let's take a deeper look.

Productivity by Location

See the average productive hours per day for employees across each location. (Customers who have enabled an ActivTrak calendar integration will also see the average amount of time spent in offline — or non-virtual — meetings.)

While many employees claim to be more productive when working from home, leaders and managers may be concerned that the shift away from in-office work has reduced productivity. Productivity by Location enables leaders to make informed, data-driven decisions about the optimal work policies for their teams and organizations.

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’ Screen Time (including both productive and unproductive activities) by the number of user workdays in the selected time period, including non-active days (days in which a user does not meet the Threshold to Count Active Days). As a result, the data in this chart may not match the ‘Productivity by Location’ chart, which only considers productive hours and active days.

Location Breakdown & Location Breakdown by Week

See the percentage of team members who worked from each location during the time period as a whole, and broken down by week. Note that the Hybrid category includes employees who worked even one day at each location (i.e., it does not indicate that their time was split evenly between the office and remote work).

This serves as a helpful starting point for assessing compliance with in-office requirements. For example, if every employee is required to spend at least one day a week in the office, but the data shows some percentage of ‘Remote Only,’ you know that at least one team member is not abiding by the policy.

Team Member Overview

You can see which employees worked where during the selected time period and view their average productivity compared to other team members in the same work environment.

Each table displays up to 50 users. Click' See all users' above the table to view a complete list of team members and additional details about their work habits.

Users tab

You can view a detailed breakdown of where team members work and where they are most productive. You can also view each employee’s location by day to assess compliance with workplace policy.

User Details

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

Use the ‘Location Summary’ filter at the top of the dashboard to view only employees who worked from a specific location. For instance, you may want to select ‘Remote Only’ to identify people who aren’t complying with in-office requirements.

Note: Offline Meeting data will only be populated for customers who have enabled an ActivTrak calendar integration. For additional information and instructions, click here.

User Stats

Select a team member from the User Details table to view their data in the User Stats section.

You can drill down to an individual employee to see where they worked each day during the selected time period, as well as their average start and end time and workday length by location.

Frequently asked questions

How does ActivTrak determine a user’s location?

Please read this article for technical details.

Are there 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 showing as '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 Productivity by Location?

Customers who had Insights before Sept. 2022 will see location data from Sept. 1, 2022, onward. Earlier dates will be labeled “Unknown” in the dashboard. Customers who upgrade to a plan that includes Insights will see location data beginning on their upgrade date. New ActivTrak customers on a plan that provides for Insights will see location data beginning when their first Agent was deployed.

Is location data available in other ActivTrak dashboards?

Yes! Location data also appears in Productivity by User, Productivity Trends and Daily Work Metrics.

Is location data available in ActivConnect?

Yes! The Productivity by Location dataset is available directly through the ActivConnect API for your advanced reporting needs:

• Combining Productivity by Location with other datasets
• Custom reporting & visualizations
• Incorporating it into internally distributed BI dashboards
• Application development using Productivity by Location

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 and IP addresses.

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

ActivTrak hashes these signals before processing or storage for data privacy reasons – 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) and Citrix environments (via XenDesktop or XenApp). Activity while connected to one of these protocols 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 unsupported remote desktop protocols is labeled according to the server location (typically “Office”), so is not a reliable indicator of a user’s location. Future releases may include location estimates for other remote desktop protocols.

Is it possible to override automatic location estimates?

Yes, for situations where employees routinely connect to the same IP address, such as at an office or via a Virtual Private Network (VPN), ActivTrak Admins can provide the IP address or IP range 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 app's Account Configuration page (Settings > Account Configuration).

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 Productivity by Location (Location Insights). 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 an employee splits their workday between locations (for example, spending 80% of their time in their primary location and 20% in a secondary location), how is that secondary location time attributed in ActivTrak?

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, most 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 spends at home is rolled into the productive hours at the primary location (Office).

Learn More

• How ActivTrak Determines Location
• Offline Meetings
• What Data Does ActivTrak Collect?
• Contact Support