Joomla!® is evolving to improve existing features and introduce new features.
Here, UsingJoomla.com wants to explain a little about a new feature of Joomla since Joomla version 3.9
Sometimes you may have more than person who is looking after your Joomla website - maybe another Administrator, an author, or a Manager.
These multiple people can be "doing things" - updating an extension, uninstalling an extension, installing an extension, writing or editing an article - the list could go on.
Or, maybe there is one person - yourself - doing all of these things.
Over time you may want to know who did what and when.
Now, since Joomla version 3.9 there is a new feature - "User Actions" Logs.
The User Actions component provides an audit log of User Actions.
Extensions are able to link into this User Actions system.
There are a number of Plugins associated with the User Actions feature:
- System - User Actions Log - When enabled, you can set within this plugin how many days to store logs for - for example logs for the last 5 days;
- Action Log - to record the actions of users for core extensions, this needs to be enabled;
- Privacy - Actions Log - when enabled, this combines with the new Joomla in-built feature of Privacy agreement. This Plugin allows the export of User Action Logs for a user's data request;
User Actions Log Module - This is an Administrator Module - which can be set up and displayed in your site's Administrator area - when you log-in to the Administrator area of your website you can see at a glance the latest actions that have been carried out on your website.
Within the component you can choose which events to log from a provided list:
- Articles;
- Banners;
- Cache;
- Categories;
- Configuration Manager;
- Contacts;
- Installer;
- Media;
- Menus;
- Messaging;
- Modules Manager;
- News Feeds;
- Plugins;
- Redirects;
- Tags;
- Templates;
- Users;
You can also choose whether or not to log the IP address used at the time of the event.
When viewing the log containing the User Actions there are a number of tasks you can undertake:
- Purge all of the actions;
- Export the selected actions in CSV (Comma Separated Variable) format;
- Export the whole log in CSV format;
- Delete the selected action(s);
If you are a "Super User" you can also set to receive email notifications of User Event Log events - this is set up through your own (Super User) profile.
This core Joomla component is still quite new, at the time of writing this article - Joomla extension developers are currently in the process linking their own components into this core Joomla component.