ActivTrak Location Insights provides visibility into productivity metrics for hybrid, remote, and in-office employees, enabling informed decisions about hybrid work policies and office space requirements.
ActivTrak categorizes employee location into three categories: Remote, Office, and Office/Remote. ActivTrak classifies “Office” as any location where multiple contributors from the same organization (users on the same ActivTrak account) work. Every other location is classified as “Remote.” When an employee works in both settings on the same day, ActivTrak labels this situation as "Office/Remote." Admins can set a customizable threshold to determine the primary location as Office, Remote, or Office/Remote (the default is greater than 80% at one location).
To determine whether multiple individuals are co-located (classified as “Office”), we analyze their network signatures using both IP addresses and unique on-device signals. This approach enables ActivTrak to accurately determine whether coworkers are physically co-located, even when organizations utilize Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) or Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
Contents
- VPN detection details
- Explicit IP assignment
- Location history
- Remote and terminal servers
- Learn more
VPN detection details
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. ActivTrak differentiates between office and VPN activity by inspecting unique on-device signals and IP addresses.
For data privacy reasons, ActivTrak hashes these signals before processing or storage, so we never know the original value. All that matters is whether it is unique (“Remote”) or shared (“Office”).
Explicit IP assignment
For situations where employees routinely connect to the same IP address, such as an office or a VPN, Admins can label the IP address/range to ensure that associated user activity is always assigned the correct location.
- From the ActivTrak app, navigate to Settings > Account Configuration > Data tab > Assign IP Addresses to an Office Network or VPN. Fill in the fields per the instructions below:
IP address or range (subnet mask): IP4 addresses only
Location Description: Select VPN or Office
- If Office is selected, activity on the associated IP address will always be classified as “Office.”
- If a VPN is selected, activity on the associated IP will be classified according to the detected location (“Office” or “Remote”) using additional network attributes beyond the IP address.
IP Type: Select public (internet IP) or private (subnet IP)
- Use the toggle below the list of manually assigned IP addresses to specify whether the list of Office IPs 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, according to the location detection rules described in this article. (Activity on manually assigned ‘Office’ IPs will be labeled accordingly.)
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.)
Location history
Location history enhances the accuracy of location estimates by incorporating data from the past 24 hours and the last nine days. If three or more employees worked from this location at any point during that time period, the attendees' locations will be labeled as "Office," even on days when fewer than three employees were present. After 9 days, the location will revert to "Remote" if fewer than 3 workers are present.
This approach balances key location use cases:
- Auto-discovery of offices, especially those where IP addresses are unknown or change
- Remembering offices, even when they are sparsely attended on some days
- Forgetting temporary offices after nine days to limit false positives
Remote and terminal servers
Location can be determined for users connected to Windows Remote Desktop (RDP) and Citrix environments (via XenDesktop or XenApp). Suppose the ActivTrak software is installed on the user’s local device (most commonly in a Remote location). In that case, we will ignore the terminal server location and accurately predict the user's true location for the entire working session. If the ActivTrak agent is not installed on the local device, we will default the location prediction to ‘Remote— the most common case.
Future releases may include location estimates for other remote desktop services (RDS).