What is Idle Time on WebWork?
Idle tracking monitors the inactive minutes of workspace members. When idle tracking is enabled in settings, the tracker will stop tracking when it detects inactivity and will display the idle pop-up.
This feature is useful for tracking the activity of workspace members who may be present but not actively interacting with their devices, such as during meetings, calls, discussions, or thinking.
Before we proceed, let's quickly review the terms inactive time and max inactive time.
What is inactive time?
It is the period when the member did not make any clicks, keystrokes or scrolls.
What is Max inactive time?
It is the continuous inactive time after which the tracker should stop. The Max Inactive time can be customized for the workspace from Settings. It can be at least 1 minute or more.
How does it work?
When a member has been inactive for longer than the set max inactive minutes, the tracker stops and counts the inactive time.
When the tracker detects activity on the device, it opens the idle pop-up. On this pop-up, members can select whether they had been working when the tracker was inactive or not.
What will happen when members choose the pop-up options:
- No, I was not working: when selected, the inactive time will not added to the timeline. Inactive period will not be recorded.
- Yes, I was working: when selected, members will be asked to specify and describe what they were working on either by choosing one of the provided options, or entering a custom description (if the Make activity description mandatory in enabled in Settings>Tracker). If members were not working for the entire inactive time, they have the option to split it and submit only the period during which they were working. They can also choose the project and the task they were working on during the inactive period.
Idle time is marked in gray color in Timeline.
Idle tracking is available only on the Desktop Tracker.
Idle settings
You can adjust the Idle settings from Settings>Tracker page.
- Set Max Inactive Minutes
- Enable Idle tracking
- Make activity description mandatory. This function can be activated only if Idle tracking is enabled.
How to turn off Idle tracking?
If there is no need to add inactive time, the Owner or Executive Manager can disable the function of Idle tracking. In this case, the tracker will stop after reaching the Max Inactive Minutes.
When the Auto enable when active setting is off, by the end of Max inactive minutes a special pop-up appears asking if members want to continue tracking or not.
And if Auto enable when active is enabled for tracking, this pop-up will not appear. Instead, tracking will resume whenever the member is active again.
FAQ
What is the difference between inactive time and idle tracking?
They are related but they represent different concepts. Inactive time refers to a period when the member did not make any clicks, keystrokes, or scrolls, while idle tracking is the function that records inactive periods and allows adding them to the timeline.
Why was the member inactive for a long period without any idle in the timeline?
This is because the inactive period was not continuous. The total inactive time might be longer than the max inactive minutes, but because it consists of small periods, the tracker does not consider those as inactive.
Can I use descriptions of activities other than the ones suggested (meeting, call, discussion, thinking)?
Yes. You can write any reason for inactive time in the idle pop-up window.