Someone in a meeting is working but producing no keystrokes. A tracker that only watches the keyboard will flag them as idle. Recognising a call (microphone or camera in use, a meeting app open, sound playing) and counting it, with a cap, fixes that without recording what is said.
The problem
Idle detection based on input sees silence during a call. For people in client calls and standups that makes reports look worse than the work was.
A fair approach
- Detect calls from signals, not content.
- Count them as active, so meetings are paid and billed.
- Cap consecutive minutes so a forgotten call does not count all day.
- Show call minutes in reports so managers can see the split.
In Clockgauge
Turn it on in Settings. The consent screen tells employees. See video call time.
A fair policy on calls
Tell people that calls count as active time, that personal calls should be done with the timer stopped, and that a cap exists so forgotten calls do not count indefinitely.
Questions people ask
What about phone calls?
The detection is for video calls through a computer's microphone or camera.
Try Clockgauge
Clockgauge is an employee and freelancer time tracker that runs on your own computer: timers, consented random screenshots, activity levels, clients, projects and tasks, budgets, payroll balances and reports, paid once instead of per user per month..