Setting up a workspace

What has to be decided before anyone starts tracking?

Six things. The setup wizard at /onboarding asks them in order and writes nothing until the last step.

Step	The question it asks	What it sets
1 · Company	What kind of company is this?	The pack. Five industries, or start blank
2 · Counting	How does work get counted?	Task based, or productivity only
3 · Roles	Which roles do you have?	The productivity roles, with their app lists
4 · Recording	What is recorded, and for how long?	Screenshot interval, idle threshold, retention
5 · People	Who is in it?	Teams, invitations, a role for each person
6 · Review	Review and apply	Everything, in one go

The rail on the left is also the progress bar. Each step states the question in plain words and one line on why it is being asked, so you are never guessing what a field is for.

Two of the six matter more than the rest

Step 2 — the work mode — cannot be undone

It decides whether projects, tasks and the billing reports exist in your workspace at all. The server refuses every later attempt to change it: “Tenant work mode cannot be changed after creation.” A workspace created in the wrong mode has to be created again.

Read Task based or productivity only before you answer it.

Step 4 — what is recorded — is what you will have to explain

Screenshot interval, idle threshold and retention. These three decide what you tell your people, and what the law expects you to keep. An Indian contact centre has no real choice on the third one.

Read Screenshots, privacy and how long data is kept.

Steps 1, 3 and 5 are all changeable in a minute afterwards.

Nothing is written until step 6

Steps 1 to 5 only collect answers. Step 6 shows you the list before any of it happens:

• every productivity role, team, alert rule and goal about to be created
• every setting about to change, with the old value beside the new one
• a skip line for anything that already exists under that name
• a warning for a choice that fights the pack — retention under a year on a pack that needs a year, or screenshots switched on in a pack that deliberately has them off

Then one button writes all of it together. If any part fails, none of it is written.

You can stop and come back

Your progress is saved as you go. Close the browser at step 4, sign back in, and you return to step 4.

When it is done

Step 6 hands you a rollout note: a short page that says what you switched on, written for the people who will be tracked. Do not skip it.

The research behind this product is blunt about why. Rollouts of this kind of tool fail when the tool is handed over with no explanation of why it exists, who can see the data, or how it changes a person’s day. The note exists so that does not happen to you. It links to What is recorded about you, the one page every employee should read before their first tracked day.

Read next

Choosing your industryOne question separates the five packs. What each creates, and what happens if you pick wrong.

Task based or productivity onlyStep 2, in full. The one decision the product will not let you take back.

Screenshots, privacy and how long data is keptStep 4, in full. Eight switches, three numbers, and two records this product does not keep.

Inviting your peopleStep 5, and the three things that still have to happen after someone accepts.

The first week after setup

Check every invited person acceptedThe Invited figure on Users should be falling. A person stuck on that list has installed nothing either.

Watch for apps nobody has classifiedA large unclassified share is a rule you still owe, and it makes every productivity figure wrong.

Confirm every seat is sending dataA person with no tracked time on day three is a desktop app that was never signed in.

Give it a week before you judge any number. The first few days of a rollout contain more setup mistakes than they do behaviour.