Task mining

What is task mining?

Task mining captures how work on the desktop actually gets done. A recorder runs alongside the user on their computer and logs mouse clicks, keystrokes, window switches and which applications are open at any moment. That stream is stitched into a task log that shows the steps someone takes to finish a piece of work.

Compare it to a dashcam for office work: the recording sits on your screen and gets read out so you see patterns rather than isolated frames.

Difference with process mining

Process mining reads event logs from systems like ERP, CRM or ticketing. Every step a backend records ("order created", "invoice approved") joins into a process map. A lot of office work, however, leaves no backend event behind: an accountant who merges Excel files, or a support agent who hops between five tabs for one answer. Task mining fills that blind spot.

The two often run together: process mining shows where orders stall between approval and delivery; task mining shows what the approver is doing on screen in the meantime.

How does it work technically?

A recorder agent runs on the computer and hooks into the Windows accessibility APIs (UI Automation or MSAA). That way it knows which UI element gets clicked, which window is active and which text field gets filled in. The recorder knows not only that a click happened, but on which button inside which application.

For applications that do not expose their UI through that API, the recorder falls back to image recognition and OCR. Microsoft uses the Tesseract engine for this in Power Automate. The tool normalises the event stream and groups consecutive actions into steps like "open Excel" or "copy invoice number". The result is a task log built from desktop actions instead of system events.

When do you use task mining?

• Work in Excel, email and web portals: actions that never touch an event in your ERP or CRM, like an accountant merging three exports into one report.

• Automation candidates: repetitive tasks that always follow the same steps are candidates for a Power Automate flow or an RPA bot.

• Training and quality monitoring: compare the task log of an experienced employee with that of a new one to see where newcomers get stuck or take detours.

• Mapping fragmentation: lots of application switches per hour point to information that is not pulled together in one place.

Privacy and ethics

Task mining touches employee monitoring, so GDPR and the local rules on workplace oversight are the first reflex. In Belgium the Data Protection Authority holds three principles front and centre: purpose limitation (a clearly defined goal), proportionality (no more data than needed) and transparency (employees know up front what is collected).

• Scope of the recording: work with an allowlist of business applications and only add screen recordings if the analysis really calls for it.

• Legal basis: consent is rarely considered freely given in an employment relationship. Legitimate interest is more commonly used in practice, provided you document the balancing test.

• Consult worker representatives: consult the works council or the health and safety committee before you roll the recorder out. Belgian CAO 81 applies to oversight of electronic online communication and imposes a transparency duty.

Rule of thumb: treat task mining as a process improvement project, not a surveillance tool. Report at team level, not per employee.

Tools and vendors

• Microsoft Power Automate has a desktop recorder that captures mouse and keyboard activity via UI Automation or MSAA, with image-based recording and OCR as a fallback. Because the recorder sits inside the Power Platform, the bridge to automation is short.

• UiPath Task Mining records activity in pre-approved applications and domains and uses AI models to spot automation opportunities. Uploads are encrypted and scope is set per project.

• Celonis Task Mining runs as a client on the desktop and captures clicks, interactions and optionally screenshots for applications on the allowlist. Browser extensions for Chrome and Edge add extra per-site context. The combination with process mining inside the same tool is attractive if you want to tie both traces together.

The difference with a plain screen recording sits in the analysis layer. Task mining turns actions into a structured log that you can filter, aggregate and compare.