Gmail Activity

Gmail Activity Tracking Overview

Gmail activity in WorkSights provides visibility into outgoing email work without accessing message content. Because Google does not expose email events through the Workspace Admin API, WorkSights supports email signals through a secure forwarding rule that sends only header-level metadata for sent messages. This gives teams useful insight into communication patterns while maintaining strict privacy protections.

What WorkSights Receives

WorkSights ingests header metadata only for outgoing emails. This includes:

• Sender and recipient addresses
• To / CC / BCC fields
• Subject line
• Timestamp of when the message was sent
• Indicator for whether the email included an attachment

WorkSights does not receive:

• Message bodies
• Attachments
• Drafts
• Incoming email
• Labels, threads, or content of any kind

This provides enough information to reflect the workflow without accessing user content.

How Email Activity Appears in WorkSights

Email activity appears as small red entries on the user’s day.

Each entry represents one outgoing email.

The subject line is displayed as the event title.

Duration defaults to five minutes (WorkSights's standard estimate for outbound communication).

Email activity contributes to the overall visibility of a user’s day without increasing noise.

Only emails sent after the forwarding rule is enabled appear in WorkSights.

Data Notes

Gmail events are available only when the Gmail forwarding rule is configured by a Google Workspace administrator.

WorkSights receives outbound messages only. Incoming email is never processed.

Header metadata is forwarded via Google’s Content Compliance framework and processed securely by WorkSights.

Activity appears only for users who are active in WorkSights and included in the forwarding configuration.

Privacy

WorkSights's Gmail integration is designed for privacy from the ground up:

• No message bodies
• No attachment content
• No ability to read inboxes
• All data is processed as immutable headers used solely for activity visibility

Email forwarding can be disabled at any time from the Google Admin Console.

Setup

For configuration steps, see Gmail Forwarding Setup (Google Workspace).