How do I set up Worktivity for my team?

Setting up is one short form and a handful of settings. Nobody is tracked until a desktop app is installed on a computer, so the order below can be followed from top to bottom without anyone being recorded by surprise.

Create the organization

1. Open app.useworktivity.com and create an account.
2. Answer the three questions the setup asks: the organization name, your industry, and what you want Worktivity to do for you.
3. Check the summary on the last step and finish. Nothing reaches the server before this point; the steps in between are on your own screen.

Worktivity then creates two teams, Managers and Developers, adds you to the first one as the Owner, starts a seven day trial for fifteen people and opens the My activities screen.

If the goal you picked was about tracking time and attendance, billing hours and projects, seeing where time goes or managing a remote team, task tracking is switched on for you. It is an ordinary setting afterwards and can be turned off.

Correct the work schedule first

A new organization starts on the Europe/Istanbul timezone whatever your own is. Clock-in times, daily totals and every report are calculated in it, so this is the setting to fix before any hours arrive.

1. Open the workspace menu at the top of the sidebar and choose Workspace settings.
2. Stay on the General tab and find the Work schedule card.
3. Set the organization timezone, the working days and the expected work hours per day, then save the card.

The defaults are Monday to Friday and seven hours fifteen minutes a day. Days outside the working list are dimmed on the timesheet and are not counted against the daily target. Working days and expected hours covers the card in full.

Decide what is recorded

The Tracking tab holds everything the desktop app follows. Four cards matter on the first day:

• Work day rules: the expected clock-in and clock-out, and Idle after, which is how long a computer can go without keyboard or mouse input before a minute is marked idle. The default is five minutes.
• Screen capture: whether screenshots are taken, how often, whether they are blurred and who can see or delete them. How often screenshots are taken goes through it.
• Tracking condition: whether application names, website hosts, both or neither are kept.
• Permissions: whether employees can see their own timesheet and whether they can add manual time entries.

Changes on this tab reach computers that are already running within about fifteen minutes. Settle them before you invite anyone, and nobody has to be told the rules changed under them.

Bring the team in

Invitations go out one at a time from the employee list, and each person joins with a team and a role. How to invite your team members covers that form. After they accept, they install a desktop app and the hours start arriving; which desktop app to install depends on the computer.