The User Activity Report Explained

The User Activity Report lets you view activity on your site so that you can analyze your user base and the state of your content. You can find actions performed by specific users, actions related to specific articles or other types of content, and can even filter your search by date range or IP address.

Note: Report functionality only works when scheduled tasks are turned on.

What reports I can generate?

The User Activity report is very flexible. Here are a few examples of what you can find:

• users who logged in this week
• users who did not log in this week (use the “Invert Result” checkbox)
• articles that were updated last week
• articles that were created this month
• articles that were created this month by specific user
• all of a specific user’s actions
• all actions by a user with a specific IP address

What report data is available?

For every entry type, the system logs different actions. The “Actions” dropdown menu in the filter report varies by entry type. For example, the “Publish” action is only available when the entry type is Article Draft or File Draft. As a more extended example, for the User entry type the system logs the following:

• Create – Someone created a user
• Update – Someone updated a user’s details
• Bulk Update – Someone updated user details in bulk
• Delete – Someone deleted a user
• Login – Someone logged in

What are the report filter options?

The Report filter is on the left of the screen, and you can use one or all of these filter conditions:

• Entry type – Choose from the available options: __ (all), Article, File, User, News, Article Draft, File Draft.
• Action – Choose from the available options: __ (all), View, Create, Update, Bulk Update, Delete, Move to Trash, Login, Publish.
• Period – Choose from the available options: All, Previous Day, This Week, Previous Week, This Month, Previous Month, This Year, Previous Year, Custom period.
• User ID – Enter the numerical ID for a user, or click the + button to select a user from the Users popup. For results already displayed, you can also click on a user’s name in the User column and select Report filter.
• Entry ID – Enter the numerical ID for the entry type, or click the + button to select an entry from the popup.
• User IP – Enter an IP address to filter by user IP.
• Invert Result – This checkbox extends the report’s powerful functionality by displaying the inverse of the results that the currently selected filters would display. For example, you might search for users who have not logged in since the middle of last month, or you might want to know which articles have not been updated this year.

How are the results displayed?

If there are a lot of entries, the list at the right is broken up into pages, with the number of entries displayed at the top left. Use the navigation options at the top right to move through the list.

The main display shows the following for each activity log item:

• the time
• the entry type
• the action
• the entry ID
• the user’s last name and first initial
• the user’s IP address

Can I export this report data?

Yes! See our article about exporting reports for more information.