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Change Log System

Product versions:

EPiServer CMS 6.0 / R2

Document version:

1.0

Document last saved:

Introduction

The EPiServer CMS Change Log System (referred to simply as ”Change Log” in the rest of this tech note) is a facility where changes to an EPiServer CMS site can be logged. For example, all changes to pages, files and directories are currently logged in the Change Log to support the Mirroring and OnlineCenter features in EPiServer CMS 6 and also act as a general audit mechanism.

User Interface / Admin mode

The Change Log can be viewed from EPiServer Admin Mode. On the Config tab under the Tool Settings heading you will see the Change Log menu item. Select the View tab to view the Change Log. The Change Log can be filtered by change date, category, action and changed by.

  • The state of the Change Log can also be viewed and changed from the Status tab of this page. The Change Log has 3 states: enabled; disabled and auto:
    Enabled means that the Change Log System will start automatically when the site starts and will be available for read and write operations.
  • Disabled means that the Change Log System will not start when the site starts. Items written to the Change Log will be ignored but items may still be read from the Change Log
  • Auto means that the Change Log System will start as soon as any dependencies (i.e. a Mirroring Job) have been registered against the Change Log. If no dependencies exist then the system will not start or will stop if already running

The Change Log Auto Truncate scheduled job can also be scheduled and executed manually from Admin Mode. On the Admin tab under the Scheduled Jobs heading you will the menu item. This scheduled job will delete items from the Change Log that are over one month old and do not have a dependency registered against them by another part of EPiServer CMS (e.g. Mirroring).

Programmatic Interfaces

Due to probable changes to the Change Log API's in future releases of EPiServer CMS, no programmatic interface is officially support in the current release. For those of you who are curious the classes and interfaces for the Change Log can be found in the EPiServer.ChangeLog namespace (EPiServer.dll). Breaking changes are likely in the next version so if you use the API it is at your own risk.