The Location Insights Dashboard
ActivTrak Product Team
The Location Insights Dashboard, an Insights feature 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.
To access the Location Insights Dashboard, navigate to Insights > Location Insights. Watch the video below for a quick tour of the Location Insights Dashboard and read this article for additional details.
A video overview of the Location Insights Dashboard
Understanding Location Calculations
In the Location Insights Dashboard, location is broken down into four categories: Office, Remote, Office/Remote and Hybrid.
In charts that show daily averages (Productivity by Location, 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 in 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 Insights > Configuration > Threshold for Office/Remote Work Days.
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 in the office and remotely during the selected time period
Note: To learn more about how ActivTrak identifies remote vs. office work activity, click here.
Overview
The Location Insights Dashboard is divided into two tabs (views):
The Location Insights Dashboard - Team Tab
See how your team divides their time between the office, remote, and hybrid work, and compare productivity and working hours by location.
Productivity by Location
See 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 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.
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 ‘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 in each location (i.e. it does not indicate that their time was split evenly between the office and remotely).
This is a helpful starting point when 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
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. To view a complete list of team members and additional details about their work habits, click ‘See all users’ above the table.
The Location Insights Dashboard - Users Tab
View a detailed breakdown of where team members work and where they are most productive. 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.
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 length of workday by location.
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 other ActivTrak reports or features?
Yes! Location data also appears in the:
Is location data available in ActivConnect?
Yes! The Location Insights dataset is available directly through ActivConnect API for your advanced reporting needs:
- Combining Location Insights with other datasets
- Custom reporting & visualizations
- Incorporating it 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) and Citrix environments (via XenDesktop or XenApp). Activity that takes place 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 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).
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