You are correct. Last activity includes everything from creation, comment/reply, like, and upvote. 

@Jeanie Lee does it include last visit as well? 

@DannyPancratz 

Last activity only tracks the actions listed above.  There is a separate column in the export that tracks last visit: 

Thanks, @Jeanie Lee. 

Are you sure last_visit isn’t actually last login? The answer to this previous question seems to suggest otherwise. 

And that’s in line with what I’m seeing: a lot of empty last_visit columns in our data export (we just launched 10 days ago and many are still on their first login, which doesn’t register in the last_login column), but a last_activity date/time that’s more recent.

Here’s an example: 

So based on @Shane1’s answer to the above question, I’m thinking that last_activity also includes last visit. 

@Jeanie Lee along the lines of my last comment, the discrepancies in the data labels from User Overview (Control > Users > User Overview) and the User Data Export is causing a lot of confusion for our team. 

In User Overview, the terms used are Registration Date and Last Login. 

In the User Data Export, those terms do not exist, but join_dates (why plural?) and last_visit seem like they’re probably the same thing. And then we add last_activity which I’m trying to get a clear picture of. 

Hi @DannyPancratz,

I could see how my answer above did not include all information and can be confusing. Indeed, “last visit” is actually “last login”, which can remain blank because a user would have to be logged out in order to log back in and have their login tracked. Our platform does not actually track an actual “last visited” date, so if the user has remained logged in and not interacted with any posts, you could not accurately track them, if they’re only lurking. 

A good way to understand how many users are returning to your community on a monthly basis would be by using Google Analytics. There is a tracker for “monthly returning users” that will track the user’s IP address. However, you would not understand exactly which users are returning, just the number of how many are. 

I agree that there are discrepancies in the export feature, and I would love to see improvements. I’ve noticed a lot of unrelated, great ideas for our export feature. Since the ideas a broken down into many smaller ideas, I feel like the topics have not received enough attention. 

I feel like this is a great conversation to have in our next internal meeting (combining many smaller ideas into a larger project to improve exports), so I appreciate your feedback here. 

Hi there, we always understood “last_activity” the last moment in which we could record any activity, even just a pageview, while being logged in.

For practical purposes, we consider the field “last_activity” like a “last login” 

(“Last Login” not in terms of the act of logging in but the act of browsing the community while being logged in. It also does not necessarily signify an activity like liking, posting, commenting.)

@Daniele Cmty My understanding is that it’s very close to what you assume. The documentation I referenced above was outdated at the time (not sure if they’ve fixed). 

I don’t know if it counts every single page view, but I believe it’s the last activity “event” registered for the Salesforce integration (which tracks and record each new “Visit” that’s more than 30 minutes since the previous one).  

I’ve experienced what both @Daniele Cmty and @DannyPancratz describe. I reached out to support as it was leading to some confusion and Tom let me know if was a user who had previously logged in, still had an active session, and then at a later time viewed the community. 

Would be worthwhile to update the documentation or labels in the exports!

So, because some of the communities doesnt kick out user after certain max idle time, that is the reason why we need column “Last activity”?

Yeah these columns are confusing:

• Join dates
• Last visit
• Last activity

Generally speaking, this cant be so difficult. Our former supplier Khoros´s data is simple and this is how it should be:

• Registration date = Registration date
• Most recent signin = Date when user have logged in last time, no matter did user something else during the session

What does this mean:

User havent been idle for 5 years because our community kicks users out after 30min idle time.

I presume last time when user is logged in, is 24.5.20213 12:13, but why that date cant be seen on last_visit column?

Now I am more confused:

1. When I look from Control / Analytics /  User → “User with least 1 post”, there is number xyz
2. When I export User data, using same timeframe, there are way less users listed

I think we have much more users, who just have logged in, than users who posts.

What I dont understand now and is this really so difficult? I just want to find out how many users have logged in in given timeframe.

@revote over time, I’ve come to appreciate Last Activity as I got comfortable with what it is (what Daniele mentioned in the reply I marked as the answer). Because our community doesn’t kick anyone out after X period of idle time, Last Login has no meaningful use to me: I want to know when they were last active on the site, which Last Activity gives me. 

I believe Last Visit is new (I very likely would have referenced it in this question if it was around) and I agree that it’s confusing as to why your data isn’t matching up. 

My hypothesis is that Last Visit is still a work in progress / part of the Data Lake feature they’re working on. I’d imagine they want to give us all the relevant info: 

• Last Log in event - likely to be the oldest date/time
• Last Visit event - only recorded when visits start and only within 30+ min intervals (so activity can happen after this time stamp)
• Last Activity event - most recent activity time stamp (visit or action during an active visit: like, reply, etc) 

Yeah I totally understand this.

But:

I hope that when they are building something new for us, they do it in a way what doesn´t make us confused. Meaning, I hope they launch new features when they are ready (enough).