Orbit

Activity log

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Activity log

Every project-changing action across the app writes a plain-text ActivityLog row — "Changed Jane's role to admin", "Deleted the "Owner" role" — and it's read back in two places today: the Dashboard's "Recent Work Activity" panel (per-user, via ActivityLogService::paginateForUser()) and a project's Activity issue view (per-project, via paginateForProject()), both paginated. This category documents the write side (already used everywhere) and how to surface the read side in a third place.

Guides, in the order you'd actually need them

  1. Log a new kind of activityActivity logLog a new kind of activityThere's no enum, no registration step, no frontend map to update — logging a new kind of activity is a single method call, wherever the action already happ… — the one-line pattern every Service already follows; read this first since it's the pattern you're almost certainly already using correctly without realizing it's "the activity log system."
  2. Surface the activity log in the UIActivity logSurface the activity log in the UIActivityLogService::paginateForUser() already powers the Dashboard's "Recent Work Activity" panel, and paginateForProject() already powers a project's Acti… — worked example adding a third read surface (an issue's own activity), reusing the exact ActivityLogs/ActivityLogItem components the Dashboard and project Activity view already share.

The architecture in one paragraph

ActivityLog (app/Models/ActivityLog.php) is deliberately unstructured: project_id (nullable — null for account-level activity like a password change), user_id, and a single free-text body column — there is no type/action enum to extend, unlike notificationsNotifications (in-app & email)Orbit tells users about activity two ways: an in-app notification (the bell dropdown) and an email, per App\Enums\Notifications\NotificationType — per-user… or alertsUI alerts (toasts)The small, transient toast in the top-right corner of the screen — a one-line confirmation or error, auto-dismissing after a few seconds — is a completely…. ActivityLogService::log(?int $projectId, string $body, ?int $userId = null) is the one method every other Service calls as a side effect of whatever it's actually doing — $userId defaults to auth()->id() when omitted, which is why most call sites (see e.g. RoleService/ProjectMemberService) never pass it explicitly. On the read side, ActivityLogRepository has paginateForUser() and paginateForProject() (newest first with the id as a tie-breaker, eager-loading user, page size clamped to ActivityLogRepository::MAX_PER_PAGE), plus the unpaginated getRecentForUser() and getRecentForProject() (latest()->limit($limit)) for surfaces that only need a short list. DashboardController::index() maps paginateForUser($userId, 10) into an activityLogs prop, and ProjectController::show() maps paginateForProject($project->id, 20) into its own activityLogs prop for the Activity issue view (see ../issue-views/README.mdIssue views (List / Board / Calendar / Activity)A project's issues render as a sortable table, a status-grouped Kanban board, a calendar laid out by issue dates, or a chronological activity feed — the sa…). Those props are Laravel paginators ({ data, links, from, to, total, ... }, mapped with ->through()), and the pager reads its page and size from activityPage/activityPerPage (ActivityLogService::PAGE_NAME/PER_PAGE_NAME) so it doesn't collide with the issue list's page/perPage on the project page. On the frontend both pages render the shared Pagination molecule under the list, passing pageParam, perPageParam and defaultPerPage (ACTIVITY_PAGE_PARAM/ACTIVITY_PER_PAGE_PARAM in resources/js/utils/activityLog.ts). Both Controllers map to the exact same entry shape — { id, body, userName, createdAt }, createdAt already human-formatted server-side via created_at->diffForHumans() — typed once as ActivityLogEntry (resources/js/types/ActivityLog.ts) and rendered by the same pair of frontend components regardless of which page it's on: ActivityLogs (list + empty state) wrapping ActivityLogItem (one entry — a colored dot derived from the body text via getActivityLogVisual() in resources/js/utils/activityLog.ts, the user name, the body, and the timestamp). Reusing that exact pair of components is what makes guide 2's third surface a small change rather than a new UI from scratch.