More User Friendly Change History Tracking for Records
1. Automate the change tracking process, something that I could turn on for a particular object just to track changes made regardless of where the change was made. I realize there is a process to track changes when an edit form is used, and while it is a cumbersome process to set up, it's nice to know it's possible.
2. Capture inline edits in record history. Making changes in-line in a table is really convenient and some edits are made directly in the builder, neither of which are captured by the current edit log process. Allowing change tracking especially in in-line editing means we can allow in-line editing for our staff for a more convenient Knack experience. Currently if I need to track changes to objects I would have to force them to make all changes through an edit form, even though often in-line editing is quicker and more intuitive for the user. Tracking in-line edits allows the organization visibility while giving the user the best experience making changes in the app.
Agree with the comments above. In-line editing is a great feature from the user perspective, but we also need the ability to document when changes were made. +1
That's useful additional information. For one of my projects I'm using Knack to crowd-source contributions to a large research screening project. I need to be able to credit people for the work they do towards this project. In line editing would speed this work up (improving the experiences of our volunteers) but I wouldn't be able to keep a record of what work each contributor completed. So - again - I support your comments above.
I'm glad you responded William because I had meant to reply to Jessie on the forum- we have the Pro plan but the history versioning is extremely limited and doesn't actually solve our issues. The built in log can't help you find recent changes to a certain kind of record (you have to know what record to look at), it's extremely clunky for objects with lots of fields, and the major issue is that it's only viewable in the builder and not to users. It's good to have as a backup though.
An alternative is their process to create a "version history" record (here https://support.knack.com/hc/en-us/articles/231630567-Create-a-Version-History-for-Records) but has its own limitations I've been trying to get fixes for. The big advantage is that this can create a list of recent changes across objects, I even have it set to track categories of changes based on which edit fields were used, which is very helpful. It's also visible to users and you can use this without a pro plan.
The major drawbacks of creating a "version history" record is that A) it cannot capture changes from in-line editing, and B) it doesn't *actually* track what field was changed by the user- it only tracks what was in particular fields at the time the change was made. So, for large complicated edit fields, it's very difficult to track what the user actually changed. Additionally for a complicated app with many edit fields (which we have) it gets extremely cumbersome to set this up and keep it maintained as we add fields
In short I'd like Knack to take a closer look at their tracking capabilities especially for in-line editing.
Hi,
I have lots of positive experiences with Knack, but are not yet at a stage where I can justify moving to the Pro plan. Just a quick note to say I agree with Joshua's comments and would be interested in seeing this feature made available as well.
This request has been around for a while, but want to confirm that what we are talking about here with version history is essentially the record history, and that does include changes made via inline editing.
If you want to set up your own version history, that can be done using this guide: Create a Version History for Records - Knack Knowledge Base
Note that you would need to add rules to all places those records are added or updated.
Hope that helps!