Activity

Overview

The Activity page shows a timeline of every change Filently (or you) made to your documents, newest first. Use it to see what happened, when, and who did it, all in one place. Activities are grouped by day under Today, Yesterday, and Earlier.

Activity types

Every document produces a stream of activities. There are five kinds:

• Added shows how a document entered Filently. The label tells you the source: Uploaded (a direct upload), Forwarded by email, or Found in inbox (you dropped a file into your watched inbox folder). The document lands in your inbox.

• Filed is when a document gets its name and moves out of the inbox into a home. It is attributed to an actor: Auto-filed (Filently filed it automatically) or You filed (you confirmed or filed it manually).

• Edited is a change to a filed document's name or folder. The label says exactly what changed: Renamed, Moved, or Renamed & moved.

• Deleted shows that you removed a document before it was filed. When you also move the file to Google Drive trash, the activity notes it; otherwise the file stays in your Drive.

• Reverted shows that a change was rolled back to an earlier state. The changes it undid appear struck through and tagged as reverted. If a revert could not be completed, an entry labeled No longer revertible appears instead, with the reason. A bulk revert appears as one entry for the whole run rather than one entry per document.

Each activity shows the before and after of whatever changed. A rename shows the old name struck through next to the new one. A move shows the old folder and the new folder. When filing creates new folders, a small note tells you how many, and you can hover it to see which folders were created.

Reverting a change

Revert lets you undo a change and put a document back to exactly how it looked just before that change: the same name and the same folder.

How to revert

1. Find the change in the timeline, or in a single document's history.

2. Open the menu on that activity and choose Revert this change.

3. A confirmation shows what the document will look like after the revert (its restored name and folder) and how many changes will be rolled back.

4. Confirm to run the revert.

Only Filed and Edited changes can be reverted. Added, Deleted, and Reverted entries cannot. History imported from before this feature was released is informational only and cannot be reverted. Revert is available only when your storage connection is active and your filing location is set.

What happens when you revert

• The document is restored to the exact name and folder it had before that change.

• Reverting a change also rolls back any newer changes on the same document. You cannot undo one change in the middle while keeping later ones, so the confirmation always tells you how many changes will be rolled back.

• If you revert the moment a document was filed, it returns to your inbox for review, so you get a second chance to decide what to do with it. If you had given it your own name, that name is kept.

• Reverting a later edit keeps the document filed, just at the earlier name and folder.

• The revert is recorded as a new Reverted activity, and the changes it undid show struck through.

Folders

Revert restores the document to the folder path it had at the time, and recreates any folders along that path that have since been deleted. It puts the document back where the timeline says it was. If you had moved or renamed the original folder somewhere else, revert does not follow that move; it may create a new folder with the original name instead. If a revert leaves a folder empty, Filently does not delete it, since it may now hold other files.

Files in Google Drive trash

If the document's file is in your Google Drive trash, revert restores it from trash first so it can be put back in place. This always happens as part of the revert — the confirmation tells you when it will — because reverting a file while leaving it in trash would not actually restore anything.

If you moved or changed things yourself

• If you moved the file somewhere else in Google Drive yourself, revert still returns it to its recorded original location.

• If you changed your filing location since the document was filed, revert rebuilds the folder structure under your current filing location.

The one thing revert cannot do

Revert cannot bring back a permanently deleted file, one that is gone from both its folder and your Google Drive trash, or a document that was removed from Filently entirely. There is nothing left to restore. When this happens, Filently records a No longer revertible activity with the reason, and revert is no longer offered for that document. Revert never deletes a file.

If Filently cannot access the file

Google Drive can refuse a change to a file that Filently is not authorized to touch. This usually means that access to it was withdrawn when the Drive connection was reconnected, or that the file lives now in a shared drive where Filently's role does not allow moving or renaming it. Filently records a Revert couldn't be completed entry saying it has no access to the file, and keeps the change revertible so you can try again once access is restored.

Unlike a permanently deleted file, this one is fixable, and how you fix it depends on the file. If it is your own file, reconnect Google Drive with full access, or move it back to where it was when Filently once filed it. If the file lives in a shared drive, reconnecting will not help; ask the drive's owner or administrator for edit access. Once access is restored, you can revert the change as usual.

Reverting many changes at once

When you want to undo more than one change, you can select several and roll them back in a single run. Bulk revert follows the same rules as a single revert; it just applies them to a set of documents.

Selecting what to revert

1. On the Activity page, choose Select to revert. The timeline switches to Revertible changes and shows only what can actually be undone, so there is nothing ineligible to scroll past.

2. Tick the changes you want. A bar above the list keeps a running count, with Clear to start over and Cancel to leave selection mode.

3. To take everything that matches, choose Select all N matching. This covers changes on pages you have not scrolled to yet, not just the ones on screen. You can then untick individual rows to leave them out.

4. Narrow the set first with the When and Type filters if it helps. Changing a filter clears your picks, because the list underneath has changed.

5. Choose Review & revert.

Confirming the run

The confirmation tells you how many changes will be rolled back and across how many documents, and lists where those documents will return to, with their restored name and folder. Long selections show the first 50 with a count of the rest.

If any of the files are in your Google Drive trash, the confirmation says so. They are always restored as part of the run, the same as with a single revert.

While it runs

The run happens in the background, so you can keep working or leave the page. An entry appears at the top of the timeline showing Bulk revert in progress, with a bar counting through the documents and a note of how many files have been restored from trash so far.

Only one bulk revert can run at a time. If you try to start a second while one is going, Filently asks you to wait for the first to finish.

When it finishes

The entry becomes Bulk revert: N files and marked Completed, with a summary of what happened:

• N reverted are the documents put back successfully.

• N restored from Trash were recovered from your Google Drive trash on the way.

• N skipped could not be restored because the file was permanently deleted.

• N failed ran into a problem. The report tells you which documents and why.

View report opens a panel listing every document the run touched with its outcome. The documents do not each get their own entry in the timeline; the run is one entry, and the per-document detail lives in the report. Each document's own history still shows its revert.

What gets rolled back

• Each document goes back to how it looked before its earliest selected change. If you tick two changes on the same document, the earlier one decides where it lands.

• As with a single revert, rolling back a change also rolls back any newer changes on that document, and a document reverted past the moment it was filed returns to your inbox for review.

• The set is fixed the moment you confirm. Anything that happens afterwards is not included, even if it would have matched your filters.

• Permanently deleted files are skipped and counted, and the run carries on with the rest.

Filtering

A filter bar sits above the timeline:

• When narrows by time: All time, Today, Yesterday, or a custom date range.

• Type narrows by activity kind: All, Added, Filed, Edits, or Deleted, or Reverted.

The live count next to the filters tells you how many activities match. Use Clear filters to reset.

A single document's history

To see just one document's history, open the document menu (the three dots on its card) and choose View history. A panel opens with that document's full timeline, from when it was added through its latest change.