Work activity collection is Laurel's automatic background system that captures your digital workday without interrupting your workflow. This article explains what gets collected automatically, how work activity collection works, and how to optimize your setup for the best results.
What is Work Activity Collection?
Work activity collection is Laurel's silent background system that automatically records your digital work throughout the day. The Laurel Desktop Assistant runs invisibly on your computer, capturing emails, documents, calls, and research with precise timing. You simply work normally while Laurel creates a complete record in the background.
Why is Work Activity Collection Important?
Traditional timekeeping interrupts your workflow—you have to remember to start timers and reconstruct your day from memory. Work activity collection runs continuously in the background without interruption. When it's time to bill your hours, you have a complete record ready to transform into accurate time entries.
How Work Activity Collection Works
Silent Background Capture
Once installed, the Laurel Desktop Assistant launches automatically and begins working invisibly. There are no timers to start or buttons to click. Laurel records every transition with precise timing while staying completely out of your way.
What Gets Captured
Laurel automatically captures:
Email interactions: Reading, composing, and sending emails with subject lines. Note: Laurel does not yet capture "new" Outlook. Please use classic Outlook for the best capture experience.
Document work: Creating and editing files with document names.
Calls and meetings: Video calls, phone calls, and meetings with participant names.
Research sessions: Website visits on approved research sites.
Application usage: Time spent in tracked programs with window titles.
Instant Day Recreation
When you open the Laurel Web App, your entire workday appears chronologically with perfect accuracy. Every email, document, and call shows up with precise timing and context, ready to become time entries.
Types of Work Activity Laurel Collects
Email Activities
All email interactions through Microsoft Outlook, including subject lines and timing. Mobile emails appear as 3-minute entries via the Exchange integration.
Note: Laurel does not yet capture "new" Outlook. Please use classic Outlook for the best capture experience.
Document Work
Microsoft Office applications (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) with file names.
PDF applications like Adobe Acrobat.
File management activities.
Communication Activities
Microsoft Teams calls and meetings with participant names. Note that only Teams calls and meetings that are hosted internally by your firm will track. Calls and meetings that are hosted externally will not.
Zoom meetings. Note that only Zoom meetings that are hosted internally by your firm will track. Meetings that are hosted externally will not.
Outlook calendar events.
Cisco phone calls with participant names.
Research and Application Usage
Legal databases like Westlaw and LexisNexis.
Court systems like PACER.
Business research sites like Bloomberg Law.
Example: A Typical Morning
Your actual work:
8:00 AM: Check Johnson case emails
8:25 AM: Teams call about strategy
9:10 AM: Research trademark cases
9:40 AM: Draft legal memo
10:55 AM: Email opposing counsel
What Laurel records:
Email: 8:00-8:25 AM (25 min) - "RE: Johnson case discovery"
Teams call: 8:25-9:10 AM (45 min) - "Conference with Sarah, Mike"
Westlaw: 9:10-9:40 AM (30 min) - "Trademark precedents"
Word doc: 9:40-10:55 AM (1h 15min) "Johnson_memo.docx"
Email: 10:55-11:03 AM (8 min) - "RE: Settlement conference"
Your entire morning is captured and ready to bill in minutes.
Optimizing Work Activity Collection
Stay Logged In
The most important thing is staying logged in to the Laurel Desktop Assistant all day. If you only see calendar events and 3-minute mobile emails, that's a signal you're not logged in properly.
Key Settings
Virtual machines: Install Laurel inside your VM, not on the host machine
Activity timing: Most work activity appears in real-time; calls may take 1-3 hours
Idle protection: Laurel stops collecting after 6 minutes of inactivity
Open Time: Appears when you work in untracked apps or go idle
Important Considerations
Things to keep in mind:
Laurel runs with no workflow interruption.
Only activity metadata is collected, never document content.
Digital work is captured automatically; offline activities need manual entries.
Overlapping activities are automatically deduplicated to prevent double-billing.