ActivTrak should really be renamed to ActivEverythingAwesome
August 11, 2020
ActivTrak should really be renamed to ActivEverythingAwesome

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with ActivTrak
We currently use ActivTrak to validate productivity of our employees. We use it throughout most of our organization, with some exceptions based on research and use at other companies, not just of ActivTrak, but other productivity software as well. Our support and engineering departments are the prime focus of the application, and it is helping us keep users on track with their work, as well as validation like I previously mentioned. At times, it would seem that people are less/more productive, and it's a great utility to verify if that's the actual case. We have found that despite it seeming like people are less productive, they actually have been more productive at times when we felt otherwise. It is certainly assisting us in making sure we reward those that deserve it, and help move others towards those goals.
Pros
- Simplicity and ease of use- the application is extremely friendly and easy to use, more so than the competitor packages I've tried before
- Widgets/Dashboards are extremely good at showing exactly what you need, and it's only getting better
- Their current Data Connect offerings open up a multitude of further possibilities. I don't know if anyone is this good at data connect
- Classification of apps/sites is more of an enjoyment than a chore with other providers
Cons
- One of my biggest peeves is that you cannot currently force "pop up" messages on alarms per specific group, it is only company wide. I believe this is being worked on
- While licensing/etc works well if you have SSO/AD, it could be a bit better if you're not quite there yet; combining and linking users so that licensing is little cheaper is not the easiest
- Alarms, while customizable, could definitely offer a bit more customization and/or filtering to make them a little easier to manage
- Knowing exactly who's performing and at what level has allowed us to tailor our teams better, and in the worst cases swap members out for new blood
- Validation of employee performance helps us stay feeling secure that our workforce is doing what we're asking them to, therefore minimizing time and resource waste
- Slightly negative impact is simply related to employees first thinking or believing this is a negative tool, often related to "spying" on employees. We attempt to use every opportunity to establish a trust and knowledge that this utility is for everyone to get stronger, not to be punished
- We're able to tailor raises and bonuses based on both data and validation from the data regarding our employees, which in turn allows us to really make sure money goes to the right places
- Team Pulse - Widgets with all the "super important" data, right there on one page easy to view; what's not to love
- Classification - We're able to quickly and easily tailor these classifications and break them down to filters per department; this is allowing us to classify certain apps/pages to unproductive/productive per different department
- Alarms - It's such a simple "cop out" answer, but it's true; their alarms are incredibly easy to set up, and work very well as long as you understand the configuration. Very excited about their further expansion
I know this is beating a dead horse, but for us it was really mostly about validation. Customer support for our company has a vastly different culture than most call centers, and it's always been something of an odd beast to wrangle down and figure out exactly how to tweak for both the employees' and company's benefit. As our support staff is allowed a lot more internet usage than most companies, we had to ensure that their time is not wasted. ActivTrak has helped us verify a lot of these fears, and we've found that you truly cannot judge some books by their cover. We found that many employees, whom some we thought may be falling behind, simply were utilizing their time differently. It's a huge sigh of relief to know.
The ability to see exactly what's going on on the other side, the agent side, is key. While we do not have any real time video on our account, we do have the ability to see the screens live, and in addition to the reports and classification filters, we're able to ensure that our employees are utilizing their time how they're supposed to, even remotely.
ActivTrak was one of the first we've tried, but settled on others. I was happy to make the decision to go back to ActivTrak eventually; this was primarily based on the amount of effort and work that ActivTrak has put in the time we were away. They were simply releasing patches, notes, and features at a much faster rate than the competition. We've always advocated for coming up with new features and pushing the industry forward, and we believe they do just that.
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