Last month I posted about the preview for the Microsoft Productivity Score and how it can be used as a tool to measure successful adoption of Microsoft 365 tools. Since the release of the preview there has been a lot of feedback to Microsoft on the individual user tracking functionality in the tool. It is possible currently to report on the usage of different applications on a per user basis, the aim being to measure adoption and highlight areas where additional training may be required.

While these features are not meant as a “workplace surveillance” tool, it seems that’s how they have been viewed. In a response to the negative feedback, Microsoft have posted this blog post, announcing that they will be removing the per/user functionality and only the anonymized, aggregate data will be available. The interface of the tool will also be updated to put more emphasis on the organizational change management functionality.

Personally, I’m not too concerned with the changes to the Productivity Score as it is essentially just a dashboard surfacing data that is already available through other means. While it’s a nice way to give a high level overview, this was all possible through other technologies like Usage Reports, Power BI, Graph scripts and even third party tools dedicated to the same goal.

Productivity Score is useful for surfacing data we already have available but nothing more, the complaints that it is some new level of Corporate Spyware are pretty much unfounded and I don’t think the removal of certain aspects will hinder a good admin from getting the measurements required.