Creating a New Version of Map Each Time Edits Are Made (An Update Log)

DaltonAiken1

This may be a stupid question, but I'm trying to figure out how to create an "Update Log" of all the edits made to a map. We work with cities to map their systems. There is a lot of back and forth, and updates are routinely made about the placement of infrastructure. I would like to save an original version of a map, and then save a new map each time edits are made with the date they were made. 

I tried creating a map package, making edits, and saving a new map package, but the edits are reflected on both. I understand that a map package is creating a "snapshot" of the original data at the time that it was packaged. So if you edit using a layer in a map extracted from a map package, then you are editing the feature class that is in the file geodatabase that was part of that map package. 

So is there a way to accomplish what I am trying to do? Storage space is not an issue, I would just like to have a record of all updates, and be able to go back to a previous version if necessary. Open to any suggestions.

Thank you, 

jcarlson

By "edits made to a map", do you mean the map itself, or feature layers within the map?

If the latter, how are users accessing the data? Is it a server resource, a shared file directory, something else?

I would strongly encourage looking into Versioning, if you have the server infrastructure in place to do it. Whether you go Branch or Traditional, it allows you to separate your users' edits into dedicated versions, which you can then compare to the "Default" version before merging the changes. This also gives you the ability to look at archived versions of a dataset at defined points in time.