ActivTrak Review

Why ActivTrak Is Best for Analytics

There are many employee monitoring tools on the market that can track employee activity, identify shirking and report back on productivity. However, ActivTrak’s reporting goes into more granular detail that enables companies to make more strategic decisions. The company bills the software as offering insights rather than oversights, meshing with call data and numerous other productivity tools, including Salesforce and monday.

Imagine a scenario where you’re considering introducing a four-day workweek. ActivTrak can generate impact analysis reports by profiling workplace efficiency and output. Once you know when people deliver their best work, it’s easier to build a case for adjusting the length of the workday.

Other monitoring tools lack ActivTrak’s valuable insights, like overutilization. It might seem positive when an employee works long hours and delivers more than expected, but this ultimately leads to burnout — and possibly sick leave or even a resignation. ActivTrak allows you and your team managers to identify the employees who are at risk of burnout, such as people who regularly work through breaks or spend too much time in front of their screens, before suggesting coaching opportunities to help them work more wisely and effectively.

By drilling down into individual employees’ utilization and productivity levels, you can identify who is at risk of burnout. Source: ActivTrak

This focus on employee well-being — as well as on core areas, like user activity and employee productivity — makes ActivTrak one of the better platforms in its field for maintaining employee privacy. We particularly welcome the inclusion of silent and visible operating modes, which debuted several years ago. Previously, the program only ran silently, which we found to be a limitation for companies that prioritize transparency.

Usability

ActivTrak is incredibly easy to use, from installation to daily tasks. Its user interface is streamlined and uncluttered, making it easy to navigate, even for first-time users. Everything is neatly organized under well-labeled tabs, so you never have to hunt for what you need. It’s easy for employers and managers to track their workforce’s productivity on an employee, team and company basis. You can view a wealth of employee data, which the software can quickly break down into actionable insights.

The main dashboard provides a numerical overview of your team’s performance. Source: ActivTrak

To begin using ActivTrak, you simply install the software and download agents onto the devices you wish to monitor. Once installed, the agent can feed data back to the central dashboard, where company administrators can monitor it in real time. 

ActivTrak Features

Application Monitoring

ActivTrak includes an application monitoring feature that keeps tabs on the programs users access, when they are doing so and for how long. The most frequently accessed apps appear in a chart on the dashboard and show how much time your team or a given user spends on certain applications. The charts are clear, though some rival platforms offer more scope to present the information in varied ways, which is often beneficial for presentations or internal documents.

Productivity Monitoring

When configuring the software, you can select websites or applications that you deem “unproductive.” These settings are used to gauge the productivity of individual employees and your team as a whole. Using the productivity monitor, you can quickly tell who spends most of their time on task and who is otherwise unengaged while on the clock.

Workforce Insights

The latest versions of ActivTrak include analytics with varying degrees of granularity. You can track productive versus unproductive behavior, employee focus and efficiency, tool and application use, workload balances and technology usage. Side-by-side comparisons of employees and teams help you identify who is excelling and who needs additional guidance or assistance. You can also use past behavior and activity to set future usage and performance goals.

We like that you can track how successfully a new tool or software is being adopted throughout your company. Source: ActivTrak

Web Content Filtering

If tagging a website as “unproductive” isn’t enough, ActivTrak also allows you to block access to specific types of web content — a service that could help prevent cyberattacks on remote workers, in particular. This filtering tool can be useful for preventing employees from navigating to particularly problematic content (e.g., anything related to drugs, pornography and gambling) and maintaining network security. We found it especially neat that you can establish user risk scores to get a better understanding of who is conducting high-risk activities outside of established company policies, which could necessitate retraining.

Alerts and Reporting

Managers can get a real-time view of employee performance. You can run reports to help you analyze the daily, weekly, monthly or annual productivity of individual employees, your team or your entire organization. This data can be used for future decision-making.

Personal insights provide visual representations of work balance and overall employee well-being. Source: ActivTrak

ActivTrak Costs

ActivTrak offers four moderately priced paid plans, plus the ability to create a custom plan and quote based on the requirements of a larger enterprise. One thing we especially like about ActivTrak is that it also offers a free plan. It has somewhat limited capabilities compared with ActivTrak’s paid plans, but no other competitors we reviewed have a free plan. ActivTrak also offers a 14-day free trial of its paid plans, which is standard for the industry. 

Unlike many of its competitors, ActivTrak doesn’t offer monthly plans. Instead, plans are contracted on an annual basis. We like that multiyear and volume discounts are available. 

Setup

Because ActivTrak already has roughly 95 percent of user activities predefined as productive or unproductive, the software is quick to implement. It doesn’t take long to become familiar with ActivTrak’s intuitive interface. After half an hour of clicking around, you should feel comfortable using the software, so you can get up and running without much of a learning curve. You certainly don’t need to be overly familiar with this category of software to get started with ActivTrak’s operation.

Customer Service

ActivTrak offers several ways to reach customer support. The company’s tech support team responds to email requests for assistance, or you can access live chat or call the company’s toll-free number for immediate assistance. That’s a marked improvement over some employee monitoring platforms whose customer service is limited to web support.

ActivTrak provides 24/7 coverage and multilanguage support. You can also access a dedicated team of experts for more help with onboarding, training or classes. In addition, ActivTrak has many online resources, including FAQs, how-to videos, case studies, blogs, whitepapers, templates and webcasts.

Drawbacks

One potential limitation of ActivTrak is the absence of keystroke logging. This tool is often useful for tracking what users type into web browsers and applications. Although the platform doesn’t monitor precise keystrokes, it does track mouse and keyboard activity to gauge user productivity. Some rival platforms, like Teramind, do offer keystroke logging. Check out our full Teramind review to learn more.

You might want to look elsewhere if your employees routinely use mobile devices for their jobs. ActivTrak is compatible with Windows, Mac and Chrome OS, but not with Android or iOS. Given the popularity of iPads, particularly among employees, that’s arguably an oversight. It’s something we’d like to see addressed in future iterations of the company’s software.

Methodology

This review was produced alongside detailed analyses of nine other employee monitoring software platforms. To help you choose the best employee monitoring software, we attended training courses and got into the nuts and bolts of different platforms to explore the limitations and boundaries of these applications.

We also considered employees’ perspectives. It’s been proven that monitoring software can improve staff morale if positive data is visible, but there will be occasions when surveillance begins to feel intrusive. In ActivTrak’s case, it’s possible to set monitoring as either silent or visible, depending on which device the software is installed on and how upfront you want to be with your personnel about monitoring their activities.

Overall Value

We recommend ActivTrak for …

• Businesses that want granular workforce analysis to support strategic decisions.
• Managers who are keen to ensure their staff doesn’t burn out or become unproductive.
• Departments that regularly use other productivity tools, like Asana and Slack.
• Newcomers who are looking to run the software free for a while before upgrading.

We don’t recommend ActivTrak for …

• Businesses that need to monitor smartphones and iPads.
• Businesses that would like to log keystrokes rather than take screenshots.

Skye Schooley contributed to this article.