How does keep track of changes to the data work? How to view who made changes to a hosted feature layer.

[MaximilianLWaechter]

Hello, I'm attempting to keep track of changes to the data, and keep track of who edited the data in ArcGIS Online. Although when I check 'Manage change log' nothing appears and this is after I have made several changes and saved the layer. I know you can grab the log data through the ARCGIS REST API, which is something I would like to pursue down the line to keep track of which edits were made, and have a database stretching back. But, right now I just want a basic log of events to show when someone makes any type of change. Please help me out 😄

[David_McRitchie]

Hey Maximilian,

For this level of change tracking you will need to do this through the REST API with an ExtractChanges call. This information is not presented on the ArcGIS Online frontend when the capability is enabled.

I would question if we need to know every add, update and delete within a layer, or if we just want to know who created a feature, and who was the last person to edit. If so then the Keep track of who edited the data (editor name, date and time) setting will meet the requirement.

I only flag this as the Keep track of changes to the data (add, update, delete features) setting  is a heavier capability that does build a series of backend tables against the service, which can result in a service increasing significantly in size depending on the volume of edits.

An alternative that you may want to also look into, is using Webhooks, such as with Power Automate to write out to a csv what Object IDs have been edited, timestamps and by who. This would keep this outside of the service, and could save you on storage credits, or potential considerations with having a larger service size.

Hope that helps,

David