How do I add a comment to a page edit?

[Stuart_McGarrit]

After editing a page, but before roll-out and publishing, I want to save a text comment about what I did and why, to help with future troubleshooting or change tracking.

I see I can add a label/comment when saving a version. But I don't need to make a new version (although I know a new version is created on publishing). I see I can add annotations, but they appear to be associated with the page and not with the page versions.

What is the best way to do this? 

Thanks

[Kunal_Gaba_]

If you do not want to use versioning and annotation then add a custom property on the page to store your comments. 

[kautuk_sahni]

Your requirement is very custom.

But for sure it can be achieved by page versioning and adding label/comment there while saving the version. Why are you avoiding the versioning?

~kautuk

[Stuart_McGarrit]

Its not that I don't want to use them, its that they don't seem to do what I want. So the custom property would be a long string? A user would probably need save the date in the field with each they note a change. Perhaps. Sounds a bit ugly.

[Stuart_McGarrit]

I guess, I'm more used to the software development model: You add a comment when you submit a change. Its essential for trouble shooting. I understand its not as important for content edits but when you have multiple people working on the same page I think I can be difficult to track down what happened. Looks like versioning is the closest to what I want.

I would make a change, save a version, then publish, but the publishing itself would save another version and it would have not comments stored with it. A user in the future (who was trying to understand changes to the page) would just need to scan back in the versions to find ones with comments? That could work.

[Hemant_arora · Accepted solution]

Simply ask the developer to add a new tab/new fields to add changes done to the page properties dialog where you can specify what changes you did the page.

Secondly ask the developer to customize siteadmin and add another column to siteadmin to display the comments what work you did.

If the above doesn't suits then you should go with annotations and versioning.