Productivity rules, categories and app names

Focus sorts time into three levels: productive, neutral and unproductive. Every app and website starts as neutral until a rule says otherwise. Classification is rule-based: you decide which level applies.

Productivity rules

Open Settings → Productivity rules.

1. Choose the scope: Company, or a team to override the company rules for that team.
2. On the Apps and Websites tabs, set the level of each item with the level buttons. Select several rows to change them together.
3. The Suggestions tab lists the most used apps and websites of the last 30 days that have no rule yet, with a suggested level. Select the ones you agree with and apply them.
4. To add a website that is not in the list, type or paste its address; Focus keeps the domain.

Each row shows where its level comes from, for example “from company” or “from the google.com rule”. Inherit removes a rule so the item follows the company rule or the neutral default again.

Owners and admins edit the company rules and every team’s rules; team admins edit the rules of their own team and see the others read-only.

How a rule is chosen

• A team rule wins over the company rule for the people in that team (their current team).
• For websites the most specific rule wins: a rule for mail.google.com wins over one for google.com, and a subdomain without its own rule follows its parent domain.
• Time in a browser without a known website follows the rule of the browser app.
• Without any rule the time is neutral.

Rules apply to past days as well: reports show the new levels right away, without recalculation.

Categories

Settings → Categories has 12 ready-made categories and your own. Assign a category to an app or website from its row in the productivity rules. Categories are company-wide and group time in reports; they do not change the level.

App names

The same program can report different names, for example on different operating systems. Under Settings → App names, owners and admins merge them into one app with a display name: pick the name to merge, then the app it belongs to.

After a change, the last 93 days are recalculated in the background (the page shows the progress of the latest recalculations); older reports keep the old name. Focus then offers to move the productivity rules of the old name to the new one.

Changes in the audit log

Changes to productivity rules, categories, category assignments and app names are written to the organization’s audit log in the new version of the dashboard, with who made them and when (audit log).

How the levels become percentages

• Productivity % = productive time ÷ worked time (active time on the computer plus approved offline time).
• Effectiveness % = productive time ÷ the daily minimum hours of the working day.

Meetings and videos without input in the company settings keeps time in listed meeting and video apps active instead of idle when there is no keyboard or mouse input. It is off by default, and the level of that time still comes from these rules (company settings).