File activity and traffic

Open a file's Activity tab to see how it is used. A folder's Activity button includes its descendants. Traffic in the app navigation ranks files by views, downloads, edits or recent activity and filters by shared space, folder and owner.

What the numbers mean

• Audience views count successful page opens. Public links and restricted links have separate totals. These are requests, not unique people or proof that someone read the page.
• Downloads count successful attachment requests. Supporting styles, scripts and images do not add page views. Media range continuations are excluded.
• Known-account views are opens associated with a verified, active account in the file's workspace. Other visitors remain anonymous to that workspace. No visitor fingerprint or cross-workspace identity is stored in activity.
• Internal opens include app previews and recognized editors opening their own work. Detected bots and link previews are separate from audience traffic; detection is approximate.
• Edits and permissions include content changes, access requests, decisions and grants. The detailed timeline also shows publication, comments and settings changes.
• Form response activity appears on the response database: drafts started, subsequent progress saves and completed responses. Save operations are not distinct respondents. Answers are never copied into analytics.

An app sign-in on one domain does not automatically identify a visitor on another. Opening from the app can transfer a verified viewer identity; a direct public link may remain anonymous. Page opens served entirely from a browser cache are not counted. Traffic is written in the background and may take a few seconds to appear. Measurements are best effort, and start when this feature is deployed; older request logs are not backfilled.

Who can see activity

Owners and people with edit access can see totals. Detailed identities and IP addresses require permission to manage sharing as well. Being in a workspace alone gives no access to a personal file's analytics. Folder totals and rankings filter out inaccessible files before adding anything up. View and comment access do not include analytics.

IPs are masked by default. Owners and sharing managers with retained detail can select Show full IP addresses for diagnostics. These are the addresses reported by the server's proxy chain; they are not verified personal identities.

Form response statistics follow the response database's permissions independently of the page collecting them. Changing or removing access also changes what Activity, Traffic and MCP tools can return.

Retention by workspace plan

Daily totals contain counts, not viewer identities or IP addresses. They are saved alongside each event, so pruning detail does not lose the totals. Cleanup runs every 15 minutes in bounded batches; totals are also removed when their own window ends. Lower plan limits apply to queries immediately, with stored rows removed by cleanup. Upgrading cannot recover pruned history.

Deleted or expired files disappear from activity views. Permanently purging a file also removes its activity tables. Existing backup copies expire on the backup schedule. Workspace security and change audit records have a separate purpose and lifetime; legacy viewer records follow the activity detail window.

Ask your agent

Which proposals had the most audience views this week? Chart the daily totals, keep internal opens separate, and show which files had access requests.

Summarize activity in our Engineering folder. Include only files I can edit, and don't reveal full IP addresses.

Check whether this client's questionnaire has new saved or completed responses. Use the database's activity, and read the response records only if I have access.

Agents can use get_file_activity, get_folder_activity, list_high_traffic_files, list_file_activity_events and activity_status. See the developer reference for polling and pagination.