Controlio

Controlio, which starts at $7.99 per user per month on an annual subscription, is an employee monitoring solution from EfficientLab LLC, which also makes Work Examiner, a monitoring product we previously reviewed. The biggest difference between the two, aside from pricing, is that Controlio is a scalable cloud-based solution licensed by concurrent user sessions. While a gamut of employee monitoring solutions offer invasive tracking methodologies and can capture screens, keystrokes, and even video, only a handful of the solutions we've tested have graduated into productivity tracking and scoring. Editors' Choice selection ActiveTrak and InterGuard both feature productivity scoring as well.

Work Examiner is a Windows client-server application. The client module is installed on employees' computers, while the server module is installed on the manager's or network administrator's computer (on premises). Work Examiner is licensed for each client computer (seat). Like many employee monitoring solutions leaning more towards productivity tracking, By contrast, Controlio's focus is automatic tracking of productive and distracting activities, and the generation of a corresponding productivity score. Controlio offers real-time surveillance enabling managers to check which employees are active or away, and the corresponding apps running on their desktops. Controlio offers continuous screen recording which offers gapless video of employee activity that is far more useful for forensic analysis than screenshots.

Controlio is similar to Editors Choice selection Teramind, which also records video continuously. However, Teramind also applies Optical Image Recognition (OCR) to decode text captured on video and even make this text searchable. Still, Controlio provides web filtering, keylogging, app and web tracking functionality and can be installed transparently or in stealth mode, so employees are unaware they are being tracked. Having had the benefit of learning from Work Examiner, EfficientLab was able to build a web-based Software-as-a-Services (SaaS) cloud solution that offers real time insights and monitoring. Similar to other vendors in the space, Controlio's key focus is employee monitoring, insider threat detection, and productivity optimization.

Now that most of the workforce is remote, Controlio's web and cloud-based installation makes more sense than WorkExaminer's on-premises monitoring solution. With a focus shifting towards employee productivity, Controlio is better suited for gauging remote worker's productivity, detecting internal data leaks, as well as managing remote employees and contractors remotely.

Controlio Pricing

Controlio starts at $7.99 per user per month or $79.90 for a yearly subscription under the Cloud tier which is geared towards small to midsize businesses (SMB). A 14-day trial is available for checking out the various features to see if it suits your businesses' needs. Controlio's Cloud tier includes live screen monitoring, video screen recording, data storage for six months, web filtering, remote agent installation (within a LAN), real-time session info, web and apps tracking, attendance, snapshots, keystrokes, files usage, behavior rules and alerts, as well as monitoring profiles.

Controlio is also being made available as an on-premises solution, but pricing for this option is provided on request as it will vary depending on a businesses' needs. On-premises is better suited to medium sized businesses and enterprise clients and it features everything that the Cloud tier provides but has no limit on data storage. There's another tier specific to Amazon Web Services (AWS), which similarly lists all the Cloud features and also has no limit on data storage. Pricing for this tier is also on request as it is an enterprise focused offering that requires consultation for customization.

Setup and Installation

Accessing Controlio for a demo is quick and easy. Their website provides a form where you can enter your name, email, company name and number of employees for the company. Submitting this creates an account at Controlio.net. Once you log in, you can download and install the client agent one employee's PCs.

If installed in stealth mode, Controlio will be invisible to employees and will not have icons or event task manager entries on the PC. Installing on PCs is similarly straightforward. Download the client from the website, run the wizard on each PC, and it automatically begins sending data to your console accessible through the web. Once you set up an account, expect an email from one of Controlio's customer experience managers asking if you need assistance or have any questions.

Managers can access the Controlio web console on a PC, tablet, or even a smartphone to monitor their employees. We ran our demo on a PC using Microsoft's Chrome-based Edge browser on Windows 10, since that would be the optimum way to compare Controlio to competing solutions we've tested.

Layout and Design

Controlio's layout and design may be built-for a scalable cloud infrastructure but it retains the design of a classic desktop application. Logging into the console reveals key metrics in dynamic dashboards and charts. We can see a total active time as well as productivity score (including a percentage change from the previous period, which is a useful reference point). A breakdown of categories shows the applications that employees engage with the most this can include Communication and Scheduling, Business, Reference and Learning, and Utilities and Threats.

Controlio's dashboard also lists who the most productive employees are by their time and productivity scores. It also shows the Top Violators in a separate chart and outlines which employees have become unproductive or have shown risky behavior. A list of alerts spells out their offenses which could be visiting social media websites that are unrelated to their work. Filing nonproductive employees under a 'violators' designation, seems harsh and could be a cause of tension with employees.

Controlio also offers a view on app usage for a business, it is here that managers can view which solutions are being accessed and used most by employees and, conversely, which applications are being ignored by employees. Seeing which applications or subscriptions fail to engage employees can help a company cut significant subscription or software costs or make an argument for training employees to take advantage of these resources.

Organizing a Company's Activity

A drop-down menu on the main dashboard makes it possible to access the entire company, certain locations and departments, or individual users. Homing in on specific users brings up a slightly different view. This still shows active time and categories, now adds online session insights as well as the last snapshots taken from that individual's desktop. The snapshots, however, aren't simply screenshots but entire videos that capture minutes worth of activity. While screenshots may be sufficient for some businesses' employee monitoring needs, video snapshots are eminently more substantial for forensic investigations as well as for situations when office tech support may want to solve software issues and see what led to a problem. Controlio also supports multi-monitor setups and captures as many screens as are being used.

Controlio offers a wide range of dynamic reports. Simply choose from productivity, activities, categories, sessions, attendance, detailed, snapshots, keystrokes, searches, files, emails, printing, and online sessions from under Reports on the left hand-side. Each of these sections is packed with information and with details such as time stamps, details on the user, computer used, the operation, and even which drive on the PC operations were taking place from. While other employee monitoring solutions provide the same incisive tracking and user activity information, Controlio does a better job at organizing the information in a way that any user can get to it quickly.

Compared to other solutions, like HubStaff, which costs slightly less at $7.00 per user per month, Controlio doesn't feature job site or geolocation features or any time-shifting solution. Granted, HubStaff is more of a time tracking solution, adding value by providing basic task tracking functionality and some rudimentary project management capabilities. Controlio compares more to ActiveTrak's feature set. However, ActiveTrak does a few things better. For one, it can track productivity on a per-project level. Controlio does offer keystroke logging, which ActiveTrak does not. Moreover, Controlio can sync the keystrokes it records with recorded video fragments to offer dual verification of certain activities.

Looking at the more recent employee monitoring solutions, Controlio seems very similar to Editor's Choice pick Teramind, which also provides comprehensive tracking and even live video recordings. Teramind still excels with its OCR capability which can find text within recorded video, this potentially cuts down on investigation and monitoring time and makes Teramind an unsurpassed DVR for monitoring employees.

Businesses that value video recordings over screenshots will have to choose between Teramind and Controlio, even though it seems the whole industry will eventually need to offer video tracking and snapshots as a feature in the next few years. Controlio's user interface is less ornate than Teramind's, which offers substantially more information up front, and has a comprehensive automation component that seems oriented to larger enterprises.

Alerts and Scheduled Reports

Employee monitoring solutions track a ton of data, in the case of Controlio, much of this is in real time and encompasses volumes of screen and video files. This data could be cumbersome to categorize and comb through, especially since there's no artificial intelligence (AI) or universal search functionality that presides over this data. Automating alerts and scheduled reports, which can generate automatic reports and send them through email, is the next best thing to keeping an eye on productivity and threat detection remotely.

Creating Alerts in Controlio for specific events (i.e. visiting a specific website, keystrokes, or launching an application) is straightforward from the Rules section under the Behavior subsection. You're limited to those pre-existing events, however, so that seems rather stifling.

Businesses can streamline reporting by using Controlio's automated system. Scheduled Reports appears under the System section. A green icon to the left of the report name indicates that report is enabled, and it will be provided at the time specified in the “Schedule” column. A wizard makes it possible to create various reports based on certain triggers (i.e. attendance, emails, file names, keystrokes, printing, productivity, and many others).

These are the same reports that are offered by the web console but created in the background on a specific schedule and sent via email as .pdf attachment to any number of addresses. Create a job name, choose a report data range, set a schedule, report type, and select the emails and users to include for the report.

Some examples of the types of reports you can create include Weekly Web Usage report, Users Productivity Monthly Report, and Daily Reports on Active Sessions of Employees.

Deep Monitoring for SMBs

Controlio has many compelling features and starts at an enticing price point for SMBs who are seeking a balanced employee monitoring and productivity-focused solution. The inclusion of real-time video recording matched to keystrokes is a unique advantage as is the scalability of Controlio, which makes it a viable employee monitoring solution that can grow with a businesses as it adds more employees and locations.