Tips and best practices for monitoring computer usage (screenshots, privacy, reports)
It is essential to understand how to monitor computer usage and analyze data without losing productivity. A couple of helpful tips to help you in starting your journey with Monitask:
Tip #1: Understand settings and monitor responsibly
Monitask comes with a variety of settings, which are customizable for the whole organization or a single employee. Set an appropriate number of screenshots per hour, set who has access to view employee data, and turn on/turn off internet and app usage for each employee.
It is crucial to only track what's needed. If your employees work on sensitive data, you can always turn off screenshots or blur individual screenshots.
Unlike many other tools, Monitask is not spy software. This means that it can only be installed with the user's permission. Internet, screenshots, time, and activity-tracking is only available when an employee is using the desktop application and it is turned off outside of work hours.
We encourage all of our users not to use spy software and hidden tools. Instead, focus on productivity and responsible monitoring.
Tip #2: Use reports as a helpful guide
A variety of reporting features in Monitask can help with your day-to-day operations. Our favorite reports to use are:
Daily email report - This report sends summary email reports about the previous workday. They can be sent in the morning or at night, so you have peace of mind and know that all employees spent their day productively.
Time entry report - This is a great report if you want to slice and dice the data on tasks and time entries. Pro tip: Export to CSV to analyze even further and import it into your accounting software.
Apps and internet usage - Use this report to review websites visited by your team and view charts of time spent on different applications.
Tip #3: Communicate with your team
Be upfront with your team and explain how you will be utilizing Monitask. Make sure your team understands that Monitask doesn't record keystrokes or sensitive data and only works when they start tracking time. As soon as time tracking is stopped, Monitask doesn't transmit any data. Plus, all collected data is securely stored in enterprise-grade encrypted storage.
If you have any particular use cases or questions about implementing Monitask in your organization, you can always contact us so that we can share our best practices.