How to Adjust Productivity Ratings

Where are Productivity Ratings Used? 

In widgets and reports where productive and unproductive time is shown, productivity is measured based only on websites and applications used.  

Each website and application has one of four possible productivity ratings:

• Productive

• Unproductive

• Neutral

• Unrated

Setting Productivity Ratings 

Many websites and applications have default ratings. For example, by default, Facebook.com is rated “unproductive” and Microsoft Excel is rated “productive.” Many other websites and applications are “unrated.”

Owners, admins, and managers (if allowed) can adjust productivity ratings on the Settings / Productivity Ratings page. 

Here’s how productivity ratings can be adjusted:

Allowing Managers to Access Productivity Ratings

Managers don't have permission to adjust productivity ratings by default, but the permission can be granted on the Settings / Company Settings page. There is an Allow managers to set productivity ratings permission there.

Rating Scopes Explained

The Scope column on the Settings / Productivity Ratings page shows the level at which the rating is applied. The scope can have three values:

• Global: Applies to all companies using Time Doctor. It contains default ratings that you can adjust for your company. 

• Company: Applies to your company only.

• User Group: Applies to a specific user group within your company.

• Individual: Applies to an individual person within your company.

If a certain website or application has a rating set at more than one level, the lowest level takes precedence.

Here’s an example of how that works:

If Facebook is rated “unproductive” at the global level, then Facebook will be rated “unproductive” for all users in all companies by default.

However, if you rate Facebook “neutral” for your company, then that will override the global setting for your company. So, Facebook will be considered “neutral” for all users in your company. 

If you then rate Facebook “productive” for a specific user group (like the marketing team that does advertising on Facebook), Facebook will be considered a productive use of time for the members of that group, while it will still be considered “neutral” for everyone else in your company.  

FAQ

Where do a person’s productivity ratings come from if they’re a member of more than one group?

If someone is a member of only one group (apart from the default “All Regular Users” group), their productivity ratings come from the one group that they’re a member of. 

If a person is a member of two or more groups (aside from the default “All Regular Users” group), their productivity ratings come from the company level and not from any of the groups that they’re a member of. The only exception to this is when a website and application has been rated differently for that particular individual (rated at the "Individual" scope). In that case, the individual rating will be applied.

How does changing productivity ratings affect past work?

If an owner/admin/manager changes productivity ratings on the Settings / Productivity Ratings page, the changes will be applied to the past data as well. However, there's one exception: what was rated using group-level ratings cannot retrospectively be changed by individual-level ratings.

Note: There might be a short delay before the ratings are applied to past work. The length of this delay will depend on how much past data needs to be updated.

How does moving a user from one group to another affect their productivity ratings?

If a user is moved from one group to another, these changes won’t affect the work tracked before the user was moved. 

For example, Instagram is unproductive by default and a user tracked 10 minutes on Instagram while they were not a member of any group. Then the user was added to a group where Instagram is rated as productive. Those 10 minutes tracked before becoming a member of the group will still count as unproductive but any time tracked after joining the group will count as productive.