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Microsoft has planned to tweak features in its Productivity Score, a tool that helps organisations measure and manage the adoption of Microsoft 365, after employees at some companies said the tool is used for workplace surveillance.
The tweak will change access to productivity data of company from individual employee to an aggregate group level tracking.
"We’ve heard the feedback, and today we’re responding by making changes to the product to further bolster privacy for customers," said Jared Spataro, Corporate Vice President for Microsoft 365 in a blog last week.
Going forward, the communications, meetings, content collaboration, teamwork, and mobility measures in Productivity Score will only aggregate data at the organisation level.
"No one in the organization will be able to use Productivity Score to access data about how an individual user is using apps and services in Microsoft 365," Microsoft said.
The company will also modify the user interface and improve privacy disclosures in the product.
"This change will ensure that Productivity Score can’t be used to monitor individual employees," Jared said.
The tool will continue to produce a single numeric score between 0 and 800 by adding up separate scores in 8 different categories each with a total of 100 possible points.
These categories are communication, meetings, content collaboration, teamwork, mobility, endpoint analytics, network connectivity, and Microsoft 365 App health.
The Redmond-based company believes that Productivity Score provides insights from data that can help people get the most from Microsoft 365.
