What is StaffTracker?

StaffTracker is a powerful time tracking and employee monitoring software designed to help businesses optimize productivity, enhance accountability, and streamline workforce management. 

With StaffTracker, employees can log their work hours using a desktop application, allowing them to start, pause, and stop time tracking as needed. The software provides real-time insights into employee activities, ensuring accurate work hour documentation while maintaining flexibility for users. 

StaffTracker is ideal for remote teams, freelancers, and in-office employees, offering a seamless way to track time, monitor productivity, and generate detailed reports for better workforce management. 

To begin tracking, users need to install time-tracking application on their machines to track time, activity levels, record URLs and applications, as well as take screenshots. 

Workers can select a project, and StaffTracker will then track time and activity to that specific project, which becomes viewable in the web application. 

StaffTracker Overview

StaffTracker offers a comprehensive suite of features to enhance time tracking, project management and workforce analytics. Here are some of the key functionalities: 

  • Time Tracking to Manage Projects and Productivity 
  • Screenshot-Based Time Tracker 
  • Comprehensive Timesheet Management 
  • User & Role Management 
  • Project Management 
  • Advanced Reporting Tools 
  • Website & URL Tracking 
  • Workforce Analytics & Performance Insights 
  • User Profile Management 
  • Automatic Time Tracking on Company Laptops 
  • Advanced Activity Tracking 

Time Activity Tracking

StaffTracker enables users to log work hours either manually or automatically. The Time Activity section provides a detailed view of time tracked by users in various formats, including daily, weekly, custom range or calendar view. The recorded time data is also exportable in PDF and CSV formats for easy reporting and analysis. 

  • Project: Indicates the specific project under which time is tracked. 
  • Activity: Activity levels are calculated based on the percentage of keyboard and mouse strokes over the total tracked time. 
  • Idle Time: The duration when no activity was recorded. 
  • Manual Time: Time that was added manually by the user. 
  • Duration: The number of hours between the start time and end time. 
  • Time: Displays the exact start time and end time of work sessions. 
  • Manual Entries: Users have the flexibility to manually add or edit time entries in their timesheets. 

Screenshot Monitoring

The Screenshot Monitoring feature in StaffTracker enhances your team’s productivity oversight by enabling or disabling the screenshot functionality on a project-by-project basis. When activated, you will receive notifications every 10 minutes when automatic screenshots of a user’s computer screen are captured. 

  • Automatic Screenshots: Every 10 minutes, screenshots of the user’s screen are taken, providing a real-time view of activity and engagement. 
  • Activity Percentage Calculation: StaffTracker evaluates team activity levels by determining whether users are active or inactive each second. 
  • Active: A mouse movement or keyboard stroke. 
  • Inactive: No keyboard inputs or mouse movements 
  • Daily Overview: Screenshots are organized by day in 10-minutes intervals and can be viewed collectively on a single page for easy analysis. 
  • Multiple Monitors: If users operate multiple monitors, StaffTracker will capture screenshots from each active display to ensure comprehensive coverage. 

 

Navigation & Filtering 

  • Date Selection: Use the calendar icon or tap on available dates to navigate through different days. 
  • Team Member Selection: To view activity for specific individuals, select the name of the desired team member. 

 

Review Screenshots 

Users can access and review their screenshots in full resolution, maintaining awareness of what is being recorded. Each row represents one hour of time tracked by a user broken down into 10-minute intervals. Six thumbnails representing each 10-minute interval within the hour are displayed within each hourly row.   

Directly under each image, you will find the timestamp of when each screenshot was taken as well as the activity level your user achieved.   

  • Interval: Displays the exact time range of the screenshot, For instance, in the image above, it shows screens recorded between 12:00 pm – 12:10 pm. 
  • Activity Level: Displays the total keyboard and mouse activity percentage over the recorded time. For example, a 10-minute interval with 600 seconds tracked and 468 seconds of activity (51%). 

Apps Tracking

The App Tracking feature in StaffTracker enables organizations to monitor and analyze how team members utilize various applications during work hours. This feature ensures that only active work windows are tracked when users are actively engaged with applications. 

The Apps section provides a comprehensive overview of application usage. Under App Activity, the system displays the following data: 

  • App Name – The name of the application used. 
  • Time Spent – The total duration the app was active. 
  • Percent Used – The percentage of total tracked time spent on the app. 

Project Management

The Project Management feature in StaffTracker simplifies the creation, editing, and management of your projects through the Project Management > Projects section. 

Each project includes the following attributes: 

  • Project Name: Assign a descriptive name to your project 
  • Status: Choose the status of the project as either: 
  • Active: Indicates that the project is currently in progress. 
  • Inactive: Indicates that the project is on hold or completed. 
  • Screenshots: Determine whether to enable or disable the screenshot feature for the project, allowing you to monitor user activity as needed. 

 

The View Project dialog displays essential project details, including: 

 
  • Project ID 
  • Project Name 
  • Status (Active/Inactive) 
  • Screenshots (Enabled/Disabled) 
  • Managers (Users with full control over the project) 
  • Employees (Team members contributing to the project) 
  • Viewers (Users with view-only access) 
 

To modify project details, simply click on the project name, then select “Update project” to modify details; 

  • Project Name: Update the project name 
  • Status: Change the project status between active or inactive 
  • Screenshots: Enable or disable Screenshots 
  • Manage Roles: Assign roles to team members, categorizing them as: 
  • Managers: Users with full control and oversight of the project. 
  • Users: Regular team members who contribute to the project. 
  • Viewers: Individuals who can only view project details. 

 

User Management

In StaffTracker, user management involves assigning roles and permissions while managing project access. 

Managing Member Roles and Permissions 

  • Project-Level Permissions: Admins and managers can control project-specific access, ensuring that team members only access relevant projects. 
  • Disable Tracking: Time tracking can be disabled for specific members if needed. 
  • Change Roles: Modify a member’s role within the organization or on a specific project. 
  • Assign Roles: When adding members, assign them a role (e.g., Admin, Manager, Employee) to control their access and permissions. 
  • Remove Members from Projects: Administrators can remove members from projects when necessary. 

User Roles & Access

StaffTracker includes four distinct user roles, each with specific permissions and access levels to ensure streamlined workforce management. The roles are: 

Super Admin

The Super Admin has full control over the system and can manage all users, projects, and configurations. Their capabilities include: 

  • Viewing dashboards and managing user profiles. 
  • Managing members, including adding, editing, and removing them. 
  • Viewing, editing, and deleting timesheets for all members. 
  • Filtering and viewing all members’ screenshots. 
  • Accessing insights and analytics. 
  • Managing projects, including creating, editing, and deleting them. 
  • Viewing and exporting reports for all members. 
  • Viewing system activity logs, including log levels. 
  • Manage system configuration settings. 

The Admin role provides high-level control over system operations but with some restrictions compared to the Super Admin. Admins can: 

  • View dashboard metrics. 
  • Manage members by adding, editing, or removing them. 
  • View, edit, and delete timesheets. 
  • Filter and view all members’ screenshots. 
  • Access and analyze insights. 
  • Manage projects, including creating, editing, and deleting them. 
  • View and export reports for all members. 
  • Access system logs. 
  • Manage user profiles. 

The Manager role is designed to view own and assign team activities and project progress. Managers have the following permissions: 

  • View dashboard metrics. 
  • View and export timesheets. 
  • View screenshots for themselves and their assigned team members. 
  • Filter and analyze insights for themselves and their assigned team members. 
  • Search and view assigned projects. 
  • View and export reports for themselves and their assigned team members. 
  • Manage their own user profile. 

The Employee role is designed for individual contributors, allowing them to track their time and manage their work effectively. Employees can: 

  • View their own dashboard and timesheets. 
  • Track time for assigned projects. 
  • Generate reports related to their work. 
  • Submit manual time entries if required. 

StaffTracker Permission Table

Category 

Feature 

Organization Roles 

 

 

Super Admin 

Admin 

Manager 

Employe 

Dashboard 

 

View Dashboard 

  •  
  •  
  •  
  •  

View Logs 

  •  

 

 

 

Members 

View Organization Members 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Add Members 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Change User Roles 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Manage Assigned Projects 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Enable/Disable Screenshots 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Remove Users 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Timesheets 

View Timesheets 

  •  
  •  

Self & Assigned 

Self 

Add/ Edit Time Entry 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Activity 

View Screenshots 

  •  
  •  

Self & Assigned 

Self 

 

View Apps 

  •  
  •  

Self & Assigned 

Self 

 

Projects 

Create Projects 

  •  
  •  

 

 

View Projects 

  •  
  •  

Self & Assigned 

Self 

Edit Projects 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Delete Projects 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Add Project Members 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Edit/ Remove Members In Project 

  •  
  •  

 

 

Insights 

View Insights 

  •  
  •  

Self & Assigned 

Self 

 

Reports 

Generate Reports 

  •  
  •  

Self & Assigned 

Self 

User Profiles 

Manage Accounts 

  •  
  •  

Self 

Self 

Settings 

Access Configurations 

  •  

 

 

 

Compatibility

StaffTracker desktop app is lightweight and compatible with Windows, macOS, and Linux, allowing users to start and stop time tracking with a single click. 

The following are supported operating systems for StaffTracker. 

Supported Operating System (OS) 

  • Windows 
  • Mac 
  • Linux 

Application Infrastructure

StaffTracker Application consists of 3 components; the database, the API and the admin dashboard for management. Currently, we are using AWS as the cloud provider, and all 3 components are hosted in a single VM. The VM is in a separate VPC isolated from other instances. Currently, automatic snapshot creation is enabled for every 4 hours and retaining the last 12 snapshots maintaining a RPO of 4 hours. Currently the team is in the process of rearchitecting the application infrastructure to segregate the application components to remove any single point of failures based on the testing’s performed. As part of that plan, the database will be moved to a separate service and the API will be implemented as a separate service making the application more resilient for high workload handlings.