Why ‘Created by’ and ‘Last updated by’ shows Unknown for a Custom Report

From Custom Reports version 5.6.0, the Manage Reports page includes additional metadata for each report:

• Created by
• Creation date
• Last updated by
• Last updated date

These fields are populated by reading historical records from the Activity Log (if enabled in the instance). Matomo then identifies who originally created each report, and the date it was created and last updated.

When creator or updater information is unavailable

Creator information is only imported if a matching activity exists in the Activity Log.

The Created by or Last updated by fields may display Unknown when it cannot determine who created or updated the report. This can happen for the following reasons:

• The Activity Log plugin is not enabled (for On-Premise).
• The report was created or updated before the Activity Log started recording activities.
• The original creator has been deleted from Matomo as a user. This shows as Unknown to protect user privacy so removed users are not identifiable in historical report metadata.

If no activity record exists, Matomo cannot recover this information and the field remains as Unknown.