I want to share with you my experience of using REFOG Personal Monitor. In our department, we use several methods of work-time effectiveness control. One of them, a daily report, was our best achievement so far. Yet, I was unable to precisely determine the time needed by our employees to finish certain tasks. REFOG Personal Monitor looked promising and we gave it a try. Although the program can run in a stealth mode, we did notify our employees that we installed it. The employees and office managers were not worried about it. They obviously were not aware of the power of REFOG Personal Monitor.
After a week I have received all the log files collected by REFOG Personal Monitor and imported them into my spreadsheet. I grouped data by application name and calculated totals. Then I used simple rules to filter the time spent on useless Web pages, etc. Then we had a meeting and discussed the issues that had been discovered. This alone has increased the effectiveness of our department by up to 20%. I have never used REFOG Personal Monitor since that time. There is no need to use it again. Just knowing that all their time is logged makes our managers work more effectively. This is my story of how a few dollars invested in a small application can give you unbelievable results.
Here is how REFOG Personal Monitor works. The program works in a stealth mode. It is not visible in the Windows Task Manager and cannot be stopped by the user. REFOG Personal Monitor logs all applications running, captions of Windows opened, all user's keystrokes and grabs screenshots. The program also monitors the Windows Clipboard and addresses of pages opened in a Web browser. Log files can be automatically sent to an e-mail address or uploaded to an FTP folder on your server. The program can be used to monitor how your employees use their work-time and to log all textual data typed by them.
