One log for all app changes?

Ask for Help
1

Hi all,
So, I’m coming back to my old post, which has been solved by @Darren_Murphy.

It is actually also connected to this great post:

Both posts are somewhat limited in the sense that they’re “tracking” a single table/sheet. They are rather custom-made which makes them look great, but also makes it very unpleasant to expand them to track more tables/sheets.
In many cases, we don’t need such elaborate logs, or even elaborate update screen to support these changes. We can use the native EDIT option by Glide. Is there any way to log changes made by this native edit? Something like “Cell History” in Google Sheets.

Any other ideas for one unified change log are more than welcomed.

Thanks!

2

Hi, in one app I am allowing data add/mods/dels by users (of certain tables), and I needed to track those. My solution was to simply write to a “history” table which contains the user id, the table name, the action (add/mod/del) and the data. For the data, I construct a template column which appends all the columns together and write that as a delimited string.

The only maintenance headache I have is when I add a column (or remove a column – more rare), I have to update the template for that table. I’d love to have a “Joined List” column type that joins the values for every COLUMN rather than for one column in every ROW.

This history allows me to roll back changes when necessary (even of row deletes).

Then my method would be a piece of cake as far as app maintenance is concerned.

3

Thanks.
Are you using the native “Edit” or a custom form?
If native, how do you track it and/or control where it writes to once done editing?

4

I use a custom action on add or edit which writes to the log and then does the save record.
image

For my delete, I like to provide a delete confirmation, so I have three buttons. When they click ‘delete’, it makes the “confirm delete” and “cancel delete” buttons visible. When they click the ‘actual’ delete, I log the row and then perform the remove row. I also set a column in the user’s record as to the last action they did and the timestamp.
image
image
image

2 Likes
5

Hi @David_Gabler , I’m trying to do something similar. Can you share how and where you’ve configured the template column with a delimited string? And are you creating a workflow or just an action?

I have multiple screens where edits happen and I’m trying to create a reueable workflow but I’m not sure how to fetch things like table name and other data in the workflow

6

It was just an action. Unfortunately at some point Glide decided to charge for every update, and I was forced to remove all the logic. Then they went and made updates free on Glide tables, but it was too much of a headache to put it all back in. Besides, I think I was tracking it in Sheets. And if you read this thread I had asked for the ability to append all columns in a row and I don’t believe they ever gave that capability either so it was too much of a maintenance headache as well, right from the start.

7

Right, yes appending all columns in a row would’ve been nice.

I managed to get something decent working. Added explanation here How can I create a log file for changes made by users? - #9 by Ramya_Venkatesh

But the overhead of modifying this every time a column is added still remains.

1 Like