History/Record of edits in ESRI - Ideas for maintaining a sacred timeline. (edited)

The question quoted below is from Amy Roust, GISP also tagging Cody M. Erwin as mentioned in the comments he is curious about the answer also. You can find a link to the post from Amy below please give her original post and the comments a read also. I wanted to do this article to have enough room to expand beyond what a simple comment allows. I will pick up below the quote:

I've got a few projects that involve collecting "snapshots" of the official record every year. As an example, we're looking to track changes in zoning districts over time. How do you handle historical spatial data? One feature class with definition queries? One feature class for each year? I'm looking for pros and cons.

These types of workflows and questions are quite common. Kudos to Amy for asking the question without worry as to how it might be looked upon by others. Simply put there is no "this is always the best way to do this" answer. What I will give here are some basic guidelines for how to build out a blueprint for not just this workflow but others you may need. I will also highlight the differences when working between ArcMap and ArcPRO. I will be using links throughout the rest of the writing and ask you to please use them to get a deeper understanding of the topics under discussion here. This is not intended to be a step by step guide. Rather I hope to get you thinking about the tools available and how to apply them to the work needed completed and the workers who will be completing that work.

Initial assumptions:

1) - you have an enterprise deployment of ESRI software

2) - You have a need to track and report historical edits to your data

3) - you have a desire to learn and grow and a good understanding of the work processes and questions needed answered

FOR ALL ENTERPRISE USERS:

Step one: Turn on Temporal data - see the link from the 2018 Arcuser article here - Working with Temporal Data.

As you will learn turning on temporal data will track the history of changes. You will not have to have someone remembering to take that snapshot before starting to edit. The article gives a great overview of using temporal data and applying it to your work. ESRI help documentation will cover the rest. I am also available to help explain and walk you through examples of how it might work if you need further assistance.

Step two: Now that you can look back in time you need to take a few precautions. You do not want a worker to go back into the historical data and forgetting to come back to the present to start making edits. Think variations from the sacred timeline for any Loki fans reading this. As in Loki those "variants" will end up needing to be "pruned". The longer it takes you to discover them the harder they may be to remove.

You will need to build in a method of ensuring no one looking back in history can edit that history. Achieving this task can be approached in various ways, the decisions will be based upon your particular setup.

FOR ArcPRO USERS:

Look into using Task. Task are a great way to "automate" workflows and especially ones that are not preformed all that often. They can help both new and seasoned users recall steps in a process.

FOR ArcMap USERS:

Look into using Task Assistant. Task Assistant Manager is like task in PRO above.

FOR EVERYONE:

After enabling and setting up some of the above recommendations you are now in a position to generate ongoing standard reports or one off reports of data as needed. You can have layers generated that only show changes for high growth. You can save just the changed areas without saving a large area that has no changes. This allows for multiple long term gains. If there are questions on this. Improvements? Observations. Please comment, DM, call. Always up for further discussion desired on how to leverage your deployments to get the most of them for you.

https://www.dhirubhai.net/posts/amy-roust-gisp-54871821_ive-got-a-few-projects-that-involve-collecting-activity-7194371309114470402-uxBr?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_desktop

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