How can I record users' activity in an app, such as tracking what which users viewed/edited which records?

Also known as: history, audit trail,

Let's say you want to track when a document record was viewed.

You will need to create two tables. Document and Activity.

Create a Document table. For this example, it will just have the existing short text name field.

Create a table called Activity with the following fields:

  • Activity Type - Static selection field, single seelction - Come up with some basic types for your activity type such as Document Viewed, Document Deleted, Email Sent, etc.
  • Created By - Database-driven (dynamic) selection field based on the User table. This field will store the current user at the time the activity record is created.
  • Created On - Date/Time Field - This will store the time the record was created.
  • Document - Database-drive (dynamic) selection field based on the Documents table. This field will create a relationship between the Activity record being created and the Document that was viewed. (The Documents table would have been created previously.)

Create actions:

Go to the View page for your Document table. Bring up the actions for the “View Document” link.

Add an action to create a new Activity record. Save the Activity Type as Document Viewed Save the Created By as the current user. Save the Document as the item the page is about.

On your Activity table, you will now see a new record every time someone clicks the View Document link.

best practices - user activity.txt · Last modified: 2016/09/14 18:19 (external edit)
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