View project or experiment change history

  • Updated

This topic describes how to:

  • View the change history for your projects
  • Troubleshoot by identifying changes that might have caused problems with your experiments

Optimizely Experimentation logs most actions you can perform for a project, like creating a page, modifying a variation, and adding and removing audiences. These actions are listed in the change history, which shows the record of user activity for each of your projects.

If an experiment starts to behave strangely or stops working correctly, you can troubleshoot by checking the change history to see which changes have been made, when, and by which collaborator. The detailed change history creates an activity trail that provides additional security to individuals and teams with multiple collaborators.

In Optimizely Experimentation, change history is available for

Viewing project history

Change history is located in the same location within the Optimizely Experimentation App for Optimizely Web Experimentation and Optimizely Feature Experimentation. The following images uses Optimizely Feature Experimentation, but the steps are the same in Optimizely Web Experimentation.

Each project’s history is listed under History:

history.png

If details are available for a change, you will see a Show details drop-down list. Click the drop-down list to view the change details:

show-details-history-page.png

Use the drop-down lists at the top of the page to filter the History displayed according to the Type of change or select Date to view the history within a specific time frame. 

type_and_date_filter.png

 

 

View a project's change history in Optimizely Web Experimentation

Changes saved for Optimizely Web Experimentation

Here is a list of the changes Optimizely Web Experimentation saves in each project's change history:

Feature

Changes saved

Audience

  • Created

  • Archived

  • Unarchived

  • Modified name, description, or conditions

Page

  • Created

  • Modified

Event

  • Created

  • Modified

Experiment

  • Created

  • Archived

  • Unarchived

  • Modified name or description

  • Changed variation:

    • Changed element

    • Inserted HTML or image

    • Added redirect

    • Changed variation CSS or JavaScript

  • Changed shared code (JavaScript or CSS)

  • Added or removed page

  • Added or removed event

  • Changed primary metric

  • Changed traffic allocation

Project JavaScript

All changes

Change detail examples

In general, the change history detail panel displays the original (before changes) in red on the left side and the updated code (after changes) in green on the right side.

Here are some change detail examples to demonstrate the information listed for changes to different features.

Audience Conditions

For each audience condition, you will see type and value keys. Check the values for these keys for the specific changes made to the audience.

Extensions

Change history displays changes to Apply JS, Reset JS, HTML, and CSS in the extension builder.

Variation changes made with the Visual Editor

For changes made to elements using the Visual Editor, a full code representation of the Visual Editor change is visible, so you will look for the property or attribute that was actually modified. In this example, font-weight was set to "bold."

In the example below, the value for the html key was changed from "Gear for Fall" to "Gear for the cooler months."

Variation changes made with the Code Editor

Change history displays changes to CSS and JavaScript code made with the code editor.

 

 

View a project's change history in Optimizely Full Stack or Optimizely Feature Experimentation

Refer to the developer documentation for the complete list of changes saved for Optimizely Full Stack Experimentation or Optimizely Feature Experimentation.