In Teramind, Idle Time is defined as the period during which the Teramind Agent is running, but no keyboard or mouse activity is detected from the user. Accurate idle time tracking is essential for measuring productivity, auditing payroll, and ensuring Service Level Agreement (SLA) compliance.

For the full definitions of how Teramind determines idle, active, and productive time, see How can I defining and analyze employee idle time in Teramind and the Productivity Metrics FAQ.

The baseline for all idle metrics is the Idle time threshold setting which can be configured from the Applications monitoring settings. This defines the duration of inactivity required before the system stops counting time as "Active" and begins logging it as "Idle". If the threshold is set to 5 minutes, the user remains "Active" until the 5th minute of inactivity is reached. At that point, those 5 minutes (and all subsequent inactive time) are retroactively reclassified as "Idle".

For step-by-step instructions, see How to change the application idle time threshold.

The Productivity dashboard serves as the central hub for visualizing these metrics across the organization. You can clone the dashboard and configure it to suit your needs.

For more information about the productivity metrics, check out the Productivity Metrics FAQ. To compare productivity across employees and teams, see How can I compare who is productive/who isn't?

The Schedule, Applications, and Webpages rules support various time-based criteria, such as Time Idle, Time Active, and Time Focused, allowing you to automate responses to inactivity based on specific workplace contexts. See How to create a behavior rule to get started, and How to change the time when a rule is active (rule schedule) to scope when a rule applies.

By defining these criteria within rules, you can trigger immediate actions to maintain productivity and security, such as displaying a warning for the user to return to work when idle time is too long. Rules are not limited to warnings: they also support actions such as Lock User, which can automatically lock a workstation when an employee has been idle too long. For a full guide to locking options, see How to lock a user's computer.

Here are two rule examples:

While the distinction between Active and Idle time reveals whether a user is physically at their workstation, Productivity Classification provides the context necessary to determine if that time is being spent on business-critical tasks.

By categorizing applications and websites as Productive, Unproductive, or assigning them to custom categories, you can transform raw activity data into actionable performance metrics. See How to classify activities into productive, unproductive or custom category, How to create productivity categories, and How to create productivity profiles.

On the Productivity Dashboard and other analytics views, this classification allows you to combine behavioral data with activity status to measure highly granular KPIs, such as:

To take the analysis further, see How can I benchmark employee performance with Teramind?