ActivityMon

With most computers connected to the Internet it gets difficult to stay completely focused on work. If you want to keep employees on the right track without imposing restrictions, an alternative is to have activities monitored and applications like ActivityMon are just the tools to get the job done in a stealthy and safe manner.

The application wants to prove it means business. Throughout the installation you're asked to set up initial details, such as an administrator password which is the only way to gain access to its set of features, as well as users or computers to monitor. It's best you take the time to follow the advice because the only thing left to do once setup is complete is to sit back and watch whatever monitored users are doing.

Once the interface pops up, accommodation quickly becomes amongst the least of your worries. The visual layer is the popular and intuitive Office suite design, with the ribbon menu letting you easily access areas of interest, and the rest of the space being used to display corresponding info with options to analyze and sort.

Imposing restrictions is not found in the set of features, the application strictly being dedicated to monitoring. Different areas and activities can be analyzed simply by browsing through tabs like applications, windows, web, devices, calendar and screenshots.

However, gathered data seems a little shallow at first and web info leaves a little more to be desired. For instance, the application isn't capable of gathering visited websites from some web browsers, which has a considerable impact on practicality.

All areas have activities displayed in a well-organized table along with corresponding info like time, path, name, caption, keystrokes, hits, duration and more. Buttons pressed are recorded in real time, with options to view all text strings by navigating through the windows tab. You can also set the application to automatically take screenshots of the whole desktop and active windows at specific time intervals.

Every bit of detail is logged, with the possibility to have it exported under formats like XML and CSV. It would have been useful to see an email notification feature, or at least options to generate reports. What's more, screenshots are only taken based on time, with no function to have them triggered when a new program or activity is put in motion.

Bottom line is that ActivityMon is a pretty straightforward monitoring utility, with not a lot of power under the hood. Your attention is more or less required at all times, with little variety in generating reports or receiving alerts. It covers a decent amount of areas and level of detail suffices in most situations, but it lacks several features that keep it from being a pro of its kind, but it doesn't mean it's not worth a try.