Report on how many times a piece of content has been downloaded

Querying Download History Using ContentVersionHistory

Download history is stored in the ContentVersionHistory table. To retrieve download records, query this table using a filter on the field column equal to contentVersionDownloaded. The ContentVersionHistory.CreatedById field identifies who downloaded the file, and ContentVersionHistory.CreatedDate records when the download occurred.

To get the count of downloads per user for today, query ContentVersionHistory filtering by Field = 'contentVersionDownloaded' and CreatedDate = TODAY, grouping results by CreatedById. This returns one row per user with a count of their downloads.

SELECT
    count(id) DownloadCountByUser,
    CreatedById
FROM
    ContentVersionHistory
WHERE
    CreatedDate = TODAY
AND
    Field = 'contentVersionDownloaded'
GROUP BY
    createdbyid

Querying Content Delivery Downloads

For content delivery download tracking (external sharing), query the ContentDistributionView object. Filter by today's date to retrieve content delivery events. This table includes the distribution ID, the creation date, whether the event was a download, whether it was an internal access, and a parent view ID.

Select DistributionId, CreatedDate, IsDownload, IsInternal, ParentviewID From ContentDistributionView where CreatedDate is Today

Performance Considerations

The ContentVersionHistory table can grow very large in active orgs, and unoptimized queries may be slow. To improve performance, always include a restrictive WHERE clause. The most effective approach is to filter by CreatedDate using an indexed date field, such as CreatedDate = TODAY or a specific date range. Avoid broad queries without date filters on this table.