If the timer runs while you are not at your desk, the hours are not really yours. Idle detection catches that.
How it is detected
The app watches whether your keyboard and mouse are being used. Not what you type, only that something happened. Go long enough with no input and the stretch is marked as idle. Your organization sets the threshold, and a few minutes is typical.
What happens next
Your organization chooses one of four behaviours:
- Keep idle time. The stretch stays on your timesheet. Sensible where reading, design review or long calls are normal work.
- Discard idle time. The stretch is removed from the entry. Your total for the day is lower by exactly that much.
- Ask the user. When you come back the app asks whether to keep or discard the gap. You decide, per occurrence.
- Stop the timer. Tracking ends at the point you went idle, so nothing accumulates while you are away.
Nobody but an administrator can change this. It is an organization-wide rule, not a personal preference.
If you keep going idle while you are working
Long reading, watching a recording, a phone call or a meeting away from your desk all look identical to "away" from the app's point of view. If it happens often, the honest fix is one of these:
- Ask your administrator to raise the threshold.
- Stop the timer for away-from-desk periods and add that time manually with a reason.
Getting discarded time back
Once discarded, the minutes are gone from the entry. They were removed, not hidden. Add them back as a manual entry, with a reason describing what you were doing. That leaves an honest, reviewable record instead of a silent gap.
Idle time and activity are not the same thing
Idle detection decides whether time is counted. Activity levels describe how busy the counted minutes were. A quiet but not idle hour still counts fully, and grades as low activity.