Report History

Note: This option is only available to users with the Admin or Pros permissions.

To simplify investigations concerning changes to reports (for example a report is edited and the user wants to know when and by whom the change was made), an administrator or Pros user can open a page that contains a complete list of all the changes that have been made to a report since it was first created. You can open a history for the entire report or for an individual component in the report.

1. To open the history for the entire report, go to the Quality Control > Report History menu item.

The Report History page opens.



Figure 1 - Example of the Report History page

2. To open the history for an individual item in the report, in the Report toolbox expand the tree until you can see the item you wish to view the history for, then right-click on the item and select History from the drop-down menu.

The Report History page opens for that item.

Figure 2 - Example of a history list for an item in the report

In both cases, the columns are as follows:

• Component type - the type of report component to which the change was made, for example a page or a component on a page.
• Action - the action that was performed on the component, for example it was created, deleted or updated.
• Component Name - the name of the component in the report on which the change was made.
• User Name - the user name of the user who made the change.
• Timestamp - the date and time when the change was made.

For example, the first item in the report (currently sorted by Timestamp so it is at the bottom of the page) states that the report Root was created at 14:16:00 on 21.01.2011. In other words, that was when the report was created. Later items indicate, as the timestamps are so close, that the user made use of the Report Wizard to create the various pages in the report.

Up to 50 items can be displayed on a page. If the list contains more items than can fit on one page, use the Back and Next page arrows in the lower-right corner of the page to switch between pages and browse through the list. To sort the list by one of the columns, click on the column header; an arrow within the header indicates in which direction the list is sorted, ascending or descending. You can also search for particular items based on the action that was performed (all actions "in use" in the list are listed in the drop-down), or by the time the change was made.

Click on a blue Component Type link to open a Report Event Details overview for that item.

Figure 3 - Example of the Report Event Details overlay for an item in the report history

The upper area of the overlay details the component to which the change has been made, while the lower area details what has been done. Select two items in the Report History and click Compare to open event details overlays for both items simultaneously, allowing you to compare the details in the items. Any differences in the two lower details areas are highlighted.

Figure 4 - Example of comparing report events

Note that the illustration above shows very simple events; the lower details areas can contain several hundred lines of data depending on the complexity of the change.