Before discussing history layouts, it is important to understand the behavior setting named ABBREVIATED_HISTORY. A value of YES for this setting will show changed fields only in history records and will not use the history layout to display the audit trail. A value of NO will use the history layout to display the audit trail. The displayed results with YES are more concise than NO, but there is not a fixed layout to easily spot the changes.
The history layout is designed to show all changes made to each field of an issue as it moves through the process. The Report – History layout will show the fields that you want to see as part of your audit trail process. The following points are important with history layouts:
- The audit trail is kept on all fields, not just those on the layout. Thus you can add fields to the layout at any time, and the new fields will show the audit back to the creation of the issue.
- If you have a checkbox field on the edit layout, but not on the add layout, and do not make a change to its value on the first occasion you update the issue, the field will still show a change to N or whatever the off title is in the data dictionary. The reason for this is that ExtraView interprets the field as having moved from a null condition on the add screen to N on the edit screen. You can prevent this by making the default value for the field N in the data dictionary
- Before a field can be displayed on a history layout, it must have the Select for Reports attribute set to Yes in the data dictionary
- The field named RELEASE must have the Select for Reports attribute set to Yes in the data dictionary before you can display any repeating rows on the history layout
- You may not place any buttons on the history layout
- Use the behavior settings named HIGHLIGHT_COLOR, HIGHLIGHT_COLOR_ADD, HIGHLIGHT_COLOR_DELETE and HIGHLIGHT_COLOR_UPDATE to set the colors that indicate each of the conditions for a field within the history layout
Placing the Audit Trail for Related Issues on the History Layout
You may add an embedded layout prepared to display related issues to a History Layout. As explained in the section about preparing layouts for Related Issues, these layout types always begin with the character string RELATED_. This produces a related issue display at the point in time on the history record when the issue was updated, not at the current time.
