SECTION EDITING: How can I view a section's version history?

Mara Elise Koval

Modified on: Mon, Feb 10, 2025 at 4:57 PM

Table of Contents

Overview

Section version history enables users to visualize all changes to a section that were made by a user in Coursedog.
Any changes made in a school’s SIS, outside of Coursedog, to integrated fields in the section, will also be captured in version history.
There are two ways for Admins and Department Schedulers to view Section Version History: User Activity Log in the section editing modal and Section History CSV Report.

This Activity Log allows you to:
- Add filters so you can see which fields were updated, why, and by whom.
- Easily find/view comments.
- Maximize space within the section editing modal by hiding the sidebar.
- View a change in the context of its corresponding merge report.
To access the Activity Log:
- Navigate to Academic Scheduling > Section Dashboard.
- Click to open the relevant section.
- Click “Activity Log” on the top left of your page, next to “EDITING”.

Coursedog user activity and changes in the SIS brought through the integration are tracked and updated in real-time under the “Activity Log” tab.
If multiple users are looking at the same activity log, they won’t see changes until they refresh in the case where a different user initiates a change.
Each entry includes five data points, sorted by timestamp, with the most recent on top:
- Field Updated - You can select from the dropdown or save time by typing the field you’re looking for.
- SIS Value
- Coursedog Value
- Updated By
- Timestamp

Each change to the section will be a new entry, including user-updated fields, updates being sent to the SIS, and updates brought in from the SIS. For example, if the course name field is set to POST back and you change the name, there would be two entries: one made by the user and one from the integration sending the data to the SIS.
If a field contains nested fields, the nested updates will be shown in the “Actions” column on the right-hand side.
- Click the toggle to view changes made to nested fields.
- For example, for Meeting Patterns & Rooms, the entry would say "Meeting Patterns & Room (0)", and the time updates would be displayed in the toggle.

Color coding is enabled to understand what changes were made: red indicates the value was removed (with a strikethrough), and green displays the updated value.

For changes made by the integration, the associated merge report will be accessible in-line to understand the origin of the change.
- The report will appear in the “Actions” column.

30 entries are displayed at a time.
To show more changes, use the “next” and “previous” buttons available on the top left.

You can add and/or view comments in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the section editing modal. You can close this sidebar at any time by clicking “Hide Sidebar”.

If there’s an action associated with a field, that can result in changes being attributed to users who didn’t make a direct edit to the field – even if that user doesn’t have permission to edit the field in question.
- That’s because they edited the field indirectly by way of the value they input for a related field.
- In other words: If a user modifies one field in a way that triggers an action and causes another field to auto-update because of that action – and then they save the section – the edit will be attributed to them in the Activity Log.
If users are creating sections in Coursedog and those sections are sent to the SIS for integration purposes, the Activity Log will be maintained and displayed following this merge. In other words, the activity history will not be wiped following section creation and SIS merge.
See “Activity Tracking Exceptions” below. If permissions allows you to see the “SIS Sync” tool on this page, you can learn more about how it works here.

You can use our Reports Dashboard to find a holistic view of section version history for all sections.
The report details changes made to each section. Like the section activity log, it includes both changes made by users in Coursedog and changes made in the SIS brought through the integration, assigned to “Coursedog SIS Integration”.
For a breakdown of this and other reports, go here.
Some tracking exceptions apply (see “Activity Tracking Exceptions” below).

Step 1: Navigate to Academic Scheduling > Reports

Step 2: Select “Export” from the left-hand side.

Step 3: Find “Sections History Report” in the list and select “Download”.

Some changes to section data are not logged in Coursedog's Activity Tracking. These include:

Type of Exception	Examples
Custom “Yes/No” questions	Varies by institution
Some pre-built fields	Section Name Census Date Optimize Times Optimize Rooms Optimizer Priority Schedule Print Blind Grading Consent Requirement Group
Certain nested fields within pre-built cards	Relationships – All nested fields (these technically exist as a separate collection of data, and not on the section itself) Notes Lists – All nested fields Reserve Capacity – All nested fields Course Materials – All nested fields Exam meetings – Combined Exam nested field (NOTE: We do, however, track changes to other nested fields within this card) Credits – Lecture Hours, Lab Hours, Other Hours (NOTE: We do, however, track changes to Minimum Credit Hours, Maximum Credit Hours, Credit Hours, Billing Hours) Meeting Patterns – Print Topic On Transcript, Meeting Pattern Code, Free Format Topic, Ignore Double Bookings, Ignore Relationships (NOTE: we only track changes for Days, Start Time, End Time, Room, Start Date, End Date) Instructors – Instr. Meeting, Instr. Print, Instr. Contact (NOTE: we only track changes for Instr. Role, Instr. Percentage, Instr. Access, Instr. Employee Record, Instr. Assign Type, Instr. Load Factor, Instr. Workload)