Activity log

The activity log is the system-wide feed of data-changing actions that passed through CairnCMS. Use it when you need to answer questions like:

• who changed this record
• when was it changed
• what collection was affected
• which client or user performed the action

It is an auditing and accountability surface, not a general-purpose reporting tool.

How to open it

The activity log is reached through the Activity Log button at the bottom of any page’s sidebar. It opens the Activity Feed, with built-in filters in the navigation pane for All Activity, My Activity, and common action types (Create, Update, Delete, Comment, Log in).

What you see depends on your role:

• administrators see activity from every user
• other users see only their own activity

The Activity Feed has its own route at /admin/activity but is not pinned to the module bar by default.

From there, the feed behaves like a regular collection page — you can search, sort, filter, and open individual entries.

What an activity entry contains

An activity entry can include details such as:

• user
• action
• timestamp
• IP address
• user agent
• collection
• item identifier
• comment data when applicable

The exact shape depends on the event, but the purpose is consistent: enough context to understand what happened and who did it.

What the activity log can and cannot see

The activity log only records actions that go through CairnCMS itself.

That means:

• API writes made through CairnCMS are tracked
• app changes made through CairnCMS are tracked
• direct database writes that bypass CairnCMS are not tracked

If your team changes the database outside the platform, the activity log will not reconstruct those events after the fact.

Filtering the feed

The activity log becomes more useful once filtered.

Common patterns include:

• only one user
• only one collection
• only updates or deletes
• only recent changes

This is often the fastest way to debug an unexpected record change or confirm the sequence of events around an incident.

Relationship to revisions

The activity log is system-wide. Revisions are item-specific.

Use the activity log when you need a broad audit trail across collections. Use revisions on an individual item when you need to inspect its history in detail.

These features are related, but they answer different questions.

Editing after inspection

If an activity entry leads you to a non-system item that needs correction, an administrator can reopen the underlying record from the activity detail and make the fix there. The correction is then logged as a new activity entry.

This preserves the audit trail instead of mutating the existing entry in place.