App & Website Categorization

Productivity scores are only meaningful if the underlying categorization is correct. A generic tool that marks all "work" apps as productive and all social media as unproductive misses the nuance of real workplaces. Deskify's categorization system lets you configure which apps and websites are productive for each department, making focus scores genuinely reflective of productive work.

Apps are organized into categories (Development, Communication, Design, Video Conferencing, etc.). Each category has a default productivity classification (Productive, Neutral, Unproductive) that applies to all apps in it. Individual apps within a category can have their own classification that overrides the category default. New apps are automatically classified based on their category.

Use the department dropdown in Settings > App Categories to configure per-department productivity classifications. When Engineering is selected, you can mark Terminal and Docker as Highly Productive. When Marketing is selected, you can mark social media platforms as Productive for the social team. These overrides apply only to the selected department — other departments keep their default classifications.

In addition to applications, Deskify tracks websites visited in browsers and applies productivity classifications. The Website Rules section in App Categories lets you add domains with their productivity classification. Add your company's internal tools, mark competitor research sites as productive for the sales team, or mark entertainment sites as unproductive. Domain-level rules apply to all pages on that domain.

When Deskify encounters an application or website it has not seen before, the AI suggests a category and productivity classification based on its knowledge of common software. Suggestions appear in the AI Suggestions tab in App Categories. Review each suggestion and approve or reject it. Approved suggestions are applied immediately and count toward your organization's productivity calculations.

When you make significant changes to app categorization (changing major categories' productivity classification, adding many new department overrides), use the Re-categorize button to reprocess historical activity data with the new classifications. This updates all historical productivity scores and focus scores to reflect the new categorization — useful when you first set up Deskify or when you substantially revise your categorization framework.