Understand the Engagement KPI — how it measures time spent in work tools and why tool categorization matters.
Engagement answers a focused question: of all the time tracked, how much was spent inside work tools? "Work tools" means your primary and secondary tools combined — the applications and sites your team is supposed to use to get their job done.
The portion of tracked time spent in primary and secondary tools (together called "work tools") out of the total tracked time.
Engagement = Time in primary and secondary tools ÷ Total tracked time × 100
Engagement is purely time-based — it looks only at where time was spent, not how actively. (That activity dimension is what Productivity adds.) The denominator is the total time tracked, so time spent in distracting or uncategorized tools counts against Engagement.
Tools are sorted into categories — Primary, Secondary, Distracting, and Neutral — and you can extend the default categorization by adding and classifying your own tools. Only Primary and Secondary time counts toward Engagement.
A person tracks 8 hours. About 6 of those hours were spent in their IDE, email, and Slack (all primary or secondary), and the rest in miscellaneous browsing and uncategorized apps. Engagement = 6 ÷ 8 = 75%.
The Tools guide (categorization), Productivity (engagement plus activity), and the Understanding Performance guide.
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Productivity KPI →