Log of changes - who deleted a contact, registration, or changed data
Is there a way to find out which admin deleted or changed a contact registration or details.
For example we have an event which a company registered their attendees and paid online. One of the admins deleted the registration. Is there a way to find out which admin deleted that contact?
If this is not available could is possibly be added in the future? I like the fact that the 4.0 service will allow read only admin access which will help with this issue but I am still curious which of my admins deleted that contact.
Regards,
Alma AYala
THSOA
shared this idea
43 comments
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Denise Williams
commented
Being able to follow the trail of changes would be useful.
Thanks
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We are somewhat 3, but we do not log everything, just some updates - mostly finances. we're not afraid to share data, we just dont have one to share. To properly implement this request, we will have to do proper logging.
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MikeW commented
Here's another vote. This has been top complaint about WA in general. Yes, it is important to to be able to determine who deleted a contact or registration, but on a more abstract level, each and every change (insert, update, delete) that leads to the "current" set of information should be available to allow a complete transactional history of contacts, members, event sign ups, payments, ...
Here is an example of what I should be able to extract from the database:
List in chronological order all transactions for member x to include date their membership record was created, changes to membership status, membership invoices created, membership payment entered, .....
I've been involved with the development of online database systems for many years. All systems that I am familiar with fall into one of three categories:
1. System builds a transaction from user input and then applies it to the "current" records and keeps the transactions around as a complete history of how the "current" record got to its current state.
2. System uses user input to update the "current" record without first building transactions. The only history are any fields that on the "current" records such as "member record creation date". This is typically done by people who have no database experience and do things buy a copy of Microsoft Access and create a Members table to track their members.
3. System uses user input to update the "current" record as in number 2 above and also writes some basic information to a log file which is better that number 2 but not a robust as number 1.
So, I would like to know which of these WA is doing and hopefully if it's number one or number 3 I'd like an explanation why you won't make it available. Do you not have the transactional data to share, do you think your customers are not smart enough to use the data, are you afraid you competitors will somehow use this to your disadvantage, do you not have enough staff to implement?
Based on the thread, it appears that people have been asking for some time for this ability. Have you taken any action to "test the waters" or are you just relying on the number of people that post here?
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For Organization details - no, no way to see who did the change.
I'll keep this request here, so people can comment on it and eventually it will get into our development roadmap.
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Vicky Allen
commented
Thank you for the reply. We did have Event changes in Admin (photos replaced, addresses changed), also photos in Board of Directors page replaced. Under Dashboard in Admin, the Organization Details page was changed, listing a name of one of our officers and their data. Is there a way to see who changed this page? Thank you so much for your help with this, Vicky, Past President, ATD Florida Suncoast Chapter
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Mia Schober-King
commented
Same here. A log of changes would be helpful given varying levels of computer expertise and competency.
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kolarsmmj
commented
This is a critical enhancement. Right now we only have a few admins, with one person making most of the changes. We are all volunteer, so we want to add more admins to spread out the work, but we are concerned that when something gets changed that shouldn't have, we wouldn't be able to figure out who, when, and how.
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Anita Passionista
commented
As the Past President of the Central Florida chapter, I, too, would love a feature like this that tracks or keeps a log of whoever made any changes to the site, to events, to contacts, to registration. This would a huge help with any auditing processes we may do. Thank you!
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nickelkins
commented
I'd love to see something like this. We have so many administrators within our group that I'd love to know who made changes to certain things. Thank you!
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Hi Clara, welcome!
You just did it - your comment to this post is considered as a vote for this feature. As I mentioned before, posts with 10 and more votes in them will go into our roadmap at some point - see http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8827717-roadmap-2015-plans-releases-expected-dates for details.
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What kind of documents do you mean? Web pages or something else?
If these are webpages, then each web page has History of changes list and it shows what was changing this page, when and even showing you how it was looking before.
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Clara Rose
commented
I am new to the community and not seeing a way to leave a comment on this subject except reply to you :)
We would love to have this feature for our chapter... there have been some concerns and we need to ability to see who is making what changes.
What can we do as a chapter to request this feature?
Thanks,
Clara Rose
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Vicky Allen
commented
ASTD Florida Suncoast Chapter has had numerous unauthorized changes to documents on the website and no way to discover who made the change, the date or the time the change was made. Most systems have a logging feature built into the website to track all incoming http and ftp traffic. This allows users to get a date time stamp to associate with these 'changes' and a user ID associated with this transaction. We need this ability to be able to track/discover who is making unauthorized changes to posted information to members on the website. I notice other users are requesting this same tracking ability. Please let us know when this feature may be available and thank you.
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Thank you for the comment. It also goes well with the similar one about events - http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8825932-track-who-adds-an-event-10137
We still do not have enough votes here yet (we decided to focus on ones that have 10 or more people commented - see http://forums.wildapricot.com/forums/308932-wishlist/suggestions/8827717-roadmap-2015-plans-releases-expected-dates ), but I personally find this idea very important and I would really appreciate if other people would comment here so we can prioritize it higher.
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Sparkin
commented
We are currently evaluating WildApricot and I have to strongly agree with Becky. I'm surprised that a system such as this, where there is the potential for multiple people to change a lot of data, does not have a simple activity log of changes.
The log does not need to be elaborate (and arguably shouldn't be), but does need to identify the field changed, by whom and when. The nice to have beyond that would be the old value before the change.
I would love to see this feature in the Roadmap so that WildApricot gets a qualified tick in that box rather than a cross.
Cheers
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Dmitry Buterin commented
Becky, thank you, your ideas are much appreciated.
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Becky Parsons
commented
I'm thinking of abbreviated history info, not too much detail. For example, a listing that can be searched by date range, admin name, account name, webpage name, and a short 2 or 3 words about the action taken, such as:
Date Admin Account/Web Page Action Taken
6/14/2013 Sue Jones Sam Smith, contact #101234 Email changed
6/15/2013 Bob Taff Issues, web page #96878 Revised
6/16/2013 Sue Jones Pete Green, member #68445 New membership
6/16/2013 Sue Jones Pete Green, member #68445 Pmt posted
6/16/2013 Sue Jones Grace Sims, contact #32198 Donation deleted
6/17/2013 Bob Taff About Us, web page #36721 Revised
6/17/2013 Sue Jones Rose Miller, member #50922 Mbr Renewal, invoice
6/17/2013 Sue Jones Rose Miller, member #50922 Pmt posted
6/17/2013 Tom Davis Ben Brown, member #99622 Mbr Renewal, no invoice
6/17/2013 Sue Jones Mary Adams, contact #101675 New contactWith a list like this it would be easy to scan and identify areas to investigate. In this case, the assumption is that Bob Taff can make web page changes. The areas to check would be the actions on Grace Sims' account (why was a donation deleted?) and Ben Brown's account (why was a membership renewed without payment?).
Or, simply a static list that can be exported to Excel for sorting.
Becky Parsons
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Becky, there are different ways to track database history depending on the intended usage. What would really help us is a a detailed example of a couple of situations of how this might be used in your organization.
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Becky Parsons
commented
I'm adding to a thread that is 2 years old. But this triggers a question I've had in my mind for a long time.
Wild Apricot is the only software system I've experienced that has no history of database changes. When there are several people who can access the database, or just to identify a mistake, it is valuable to have such a history.
We should be able to search the database history by: admin name, change date range, contact/member name, contact account number.
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You're right - we have been talking about for a long time but without any practical results. Too many other thing we focused on.
I think that it is not enough to just know who deleted something and when but also there should be a way restore this information somehow. Or you think it's enough to start from just logging admins activity and do not focus on restoring?
