A frequently-raised concern about using Worksnaps to track time is about privacy. As time being tracked and screen shots being taken, how can one protect his privacy and make sure that manager sees his work but not his private information, such as the web pages he visited when taking a legitimate break from work to deal with the personal matters?

Allocate time to process your personal things

It sounds quite trivial, but this good habit goes a long way. Just like working in an office, it is important to form a habit to allocate a chunk of your time to do personal things such as making doctor’s appointment, checking how your kids are doing, replying personal emails and etc. By having the time allocated for those, you can focus on work and not get distracted since you know when you will get to your personal tasks. The same principal applies when you work remotely. When you use Worksnaps to log time, you focus on the work related tasks. When it’s time to do personal things, you can suspend logging time and screen shots.

Set Privacy Filter(s) in Worksnaps

Worksnaps allows you to set up filter to exclude the unwanted information to be submitted to the server therefore viewed by others. There are two kinds of filter — Screen Filter and Application Filter.

Screen Filter allows you to use one of more keywords to filter out the screen shots. For example, you set up “Bank” and “Facebook” as your screen filter keywords. As a result, whenever a screen shot is about to be taken, Worksnaps client will examine the active window you are using. If it contains “Bank” or “Facebook” in its title, the screen shot will be skipped. If a screen shot is skipped due to the filter, you will loose 10-minute of time logged to the server.

Application Filter works similarly. Worksnaps client records the title of the active application you are using every minute. If the title of active application matchs one of the Application Filter keywords, it will not be recorded. Application Filter does not affect your logged time. It is a auxiliary filter to give user extra protection of privacy.

This is an example of the result of the effect due to screen filter. The user was using application that has word “Bank” or “Facebook” when the screen capture took place between 10:20am to 10:30am and between 10:40am and 10:50am.

Log Your Time in Privacy Mode First

Worksnaps provides another way to protect your privacy — Privacy Mode. You can turn on Privacy Mode by going into a project, then select “Preferences” under “Project Space” tab. You can set the “Privacy Mode” to “ON”. By doing this, the time logged by Worksnaps client will only be viewable by yourself. Via the Worksnaps web application, You can review the logged time and screen shots periodically (e.g., at end of a day), then make them visible to your manager. In this case, you need to remember to manually make the time visible, otherwise you manager will not know that you have worked the hours you logged.

Here is the result of turning on your “Privacy Mode”. The marked screen shots are private to you. Again, you are responsible for making them viewable so that your manager knows that you have been working, and pay you for the logged time.

Choose an option that suits your working style

Worksnaps is designed to respect users’ privacy while tracking time and work. It is never intended to be a stealth program that takes away users’ privacy. To the contrary, we feel that Worksnaps can help build trust and promote transparency within a team. Each of us has a different working style, wisely using the various options in Worksnaps can make your work more efficient and productive.

This is part of our Tips and Tricks thread in the Product Blog.