What is the most important tip for working with Activity History?

ActivityHistory has no report type and no list view of its own. Report on the Task and Event objects, or a custom report type over them, and treat the related list as a reading surface.

Core CRMBeginner

Activity History

Q: When do organizations use Activity History?

A mid-market manufacturer: Service managers read the Activity History list on an Asset record before dispatching an engineer, so the technician arrives knowing what was already tried.

Q: In Lightning Experience, which standard objects ship with the Open Activities and Activity History related lists on their record pages by default?

Only Case and Asset get them out of the box. On every other object an admin has to place the list on the page deliberately.

Q: How do you retrieve ActivityHistory records in SOQL?

Put the parent object in the FROM clause and nest the ActivityHistories relationship inside it. The other three fail. There is no direct SELECT against this object, queryAll is about archived rows rather than this relationship, and SOQL takes one object per FROM clause.

Q: An org sets the Activities organization-wide default to Private. What can a rep who has read access to an Account do with activities they do not own?

Private is a weaker privacy control than the name suggests. It narrows who can change or remove an activity. Read access on the Account still carries the right to open that activity and pull it into a report.

Activity History is the read-only Salesforce related list of closed activities on a record.

Hear it

§ 01

Definition

Activity History is the read-only Salesforce related list of closed activities on a record. It holds past Events plus Tasks sitting at a closed status, which covers logged calls and sent emails. It is the counterpart to Open Activities, the list holding everything still ahead of you.

The name also belongs to ActivityHistory, a read-only object in the API. You cannot query it on its own. It comes back only as a child subquery through the ActivityHistories relationship on a parent record. It also includes activities from the contacts related to that parent.

In Lightning Experience the picture is messier than people expect. Case and Asset record pages carry the list by default. Account, Contact, Contract, Lead, Opportunity and activity-enabled custom objects do not, because the Activities component covers that ground instead.

§ 02

In plain English

👋 Study buddy

“Think of a Salesforce record as a folder for one customer. Activity History is the part of that folder holding things that already happened: calls you made, meetings that finished, emails you sent. Anything still coming up sits in a separate pile called Open Activities.”

§ 03

Worked example

scenario · real-world useActivity History

A rep at a regional freight company opens an Account the team has served for two years. The Activity History related list shows three rows. An Event dated 18 June 2026, subject 'QBR with ops team'. A Task with a Status of Completed and a TaskSubtype of Call, logged 29 May 2026. A logged email from 14 April 2026. What is missing tells you more. A meeting held in January 2025 has crossed the 365-day archive threshold, so it now comes back only through queryAll in the API. The renewal quote due 04 September 2026 is absent for a different reason. It is still open, so it sits in Open Activities.

§ 04

What lands in Activity History, and what quietly falls out of it

What counts as a closed activity

Two things land here: any Task whose status is flagged closed, and any Event whose date has passed. Completed is the out-of-the-box closed status, but custom closed values you add to the Task Status picklist count too. Events need no completion step, since Salesforce reads the date on the record. Open Tasks never appear at any age, which is why a three-year-old task can still sit in Open Activities.

The timeline is a different component with different rules

The timeline on a Lightning record page is a separate component. It carries open and closed work in one stream rather than splitting them across two lists. Admin control over it is thin. Salesforce fixes the first two rows of every timeline entry, so the subject line and the summary under it are not yours to change. Only the details row is configurable, and you set it by editing the compact layout for the object.

Querying ActivityHistory from Apex and the API

ActivityHistory is read-only and cannot drive a SOQL statement. You reach it as a subquery from a parent record, pulling fields like ActivityDate and Subject through the ActivityHistories child relationship. The object also rolls in activities belonging to contacts attached to that parent, so the row set runs wider than a plain Task filter. Shared Activities widens it again, relating one Task or Event to up to 50 contacts.

The 365-day archive thins your history without asking

Salesforce archives old activities on its own. The default limit is 365 days, and the job runs weekly on Sundays from 5 AM local time. Events go once the activity date is 365 days old. Closed Tasks follow the same clock, and a closed Task with no date goes 365 days after creation. Open Tasks are exempt. Archived rows leave standard activity reports, list views and calendar views. In the API, queryAll returns them and isArchived flags them.

Einstein Activity Capture rewrote the reporting story

The old complaint about captured email was that it lived outside the Task table and never reached reports. That has changed. Under the Sync Email as Salesforce Activity architecture, Einstein Activity Capture stores captured email on the platform as standard activity records. Reports, flows, triggers and the API all reach them. Orgs configured before Summer '25 have to update. Activity 360 Reports, the Activities dashboard, Activity Metrics and Recommended Connections all retire in Spring '27.

Private sharing restricts editing, not visibility

The Activities organization-wide default holds one of two values. Controlled by Parent lets a user view, edit, transfer or delete an activity when they can do the same on the records it hangs off. Private is tighter in one direction only. The owner and users above them in the role hierarchy keep edit and delete. Anyone with read access to the associated record can still view the activity and report on it.

§ 05

How to put the Activity History related list back on a Lightning record page

The Activities component is not a replacement for the related list. If your users want a plain, sortable list of everything already closed, add it explicitly.

Open the record page in Lightning App Builder
From any record of the object you want to change, click the gear icon and choose Edit Page. That loads the Lightning page currently assigned to that object.
Drop in a Related List - Single component
Drag Related List - Single from the components panel to wherever the closed activities should sit. It renders as an empty placeholder until you point it at a list.
Set the Related List attribute to Activity History
Select the component and pick Activity History from the Related List picklist in the properties rail. Add a second component set to Open Activities if you want both.
Save, then activate the page
Saving alone changes nothing for users. Use Activation to assign the page as org default, app default, or app plus record type plus profile.

Key options

Related Listremember

Decides what the component shows. Activity History gives closed Tasks and past Events; Open Activities gives everything still ahead.

Related List Typeremember

Controls layout. Tile reads well in a narrow rail; List gives sortable columns and suits a long activity history better.

Number of Records to Displayremember

Caps the rows shown before View All. Keep it low on busy accounts, because a long inline list slows the page for everyone.

Gotchas

A profile without Read access to the Task object's Related To field will not see either related list, no matter how the page is built.
Running the Activities component and the Activity History related list on the same page shows every closed item twice.
Raising the archive limit past 365 days takes a Salesforce Support request and degrades report and list view performance.

Prefer this walkthrough as its own page? How to Activity History in Salesforce, step by step

§ 06

How organizations use Activity History

A mid-market manufacturer

Service managers read the Activity History list on an Asset record before dispatching an engineer, so the technician arrives knowing what was already tried.

A 200-seat nonprofit

Development officers audit donor Accounts by scanning closed Events and logged calls, catching relationships that have gone untouched for over a year.

A regional insurance brokerage

Compliance pulls a custom report type over Tasks and Events to evidence advice given, then raises the archive limit so older rows stay reportable.

Trust & references

Sources

Cross-checked against the following references.

Official documentation

Straight from the source - Salesforce's reference material on Activity History.

Keep learning

Hands-on resources to go deeper on Activity History.

Sales Productivity: Help Your Reps Use ActivitiesTrailhead · Salesforce (opens in new tab)

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About the Author

Dipojjal Chakrabarti is a B2C Solution Architect with 29 Salesforce certifications and over 13 years in the Salesforce ecosystem. He writes and edits salesforcedictionary.com, published by KineticBit Inc., to help admins, developers, architects, and cert/interview candidates sharpen their fundamentals. More about Dipojjal.

Test your knowledge

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Q1. In Lightning Experience, which standard objects ship with the Open Activities and Activity History related lists on their record pages by default?

Q2. How do you retrieve ActivityHistory records in SOQL?

Q3. An org sets the Activities organization-wide default to Private. What can a rep who has read access to an Account do with activities they do not own?

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