Are field values deleted from a field in a custom form deleted from old projects as well?

[RyanMcGee]

The use case:

We have product names that change/retire over time. We update the values in the product field via an integration with our data governance platform Collibra, but could also remove values manually as well.  

While trying to write some code to alert users if any products had changed between the last project and the new one, we noticed that the old value simply isn't anywhere in Workfront anymore, including the last project. This seems to me a huge audit gap in that we are required to show the project data at a point in time. But it's possible we are missing something pretty basic.

Are we understanding this functionality correctly? What do people do if their audit department asks for data on an old project but the values therein have been retired/removed?

[ChrisStephens · Accepted solution]

I'm assuming you're talking about changing a picklist, i.e. radio button, multiselect, etc.? My opinion, someone feel free to tell me I'm wrong, but I would suggest not changing any selections, because of this exact problem, where removing the option from the list removes it everywhere, or renaming something renames it everywhere. What I would recommend instead is in the event you need to add more options, add those options, and if you need to deprecate options, to actually hide the option. If you just hide the option, it won't be available for someone to pick it, but it will still be preserved on old objects where that value was already picked.

[Madalyn_Destafney]

@ChrisStephens is correct - if you rename custom form fields/form field options (or delete them) the old name is not preserved. If you HIDE an old option, say in a checkbox, radio button or dropdown field, any object that has that answer associated in the past will have it preserved, it's just not an option for your users to use moving forward.

Based on your situation, it sounds like hiding an old option and making a new one doesn't suffice bc it's not telling you X is now Y in reports, it'll just seem like a different option. If you need to see in reporting that X is now Y, perhaps you could have a naming convention that for a certain amount of time you rename X to 'Y (FKA X)' for short-term reporting and then after another amount of time you just rename it to Y?

If you are looking specifically for seeing when a project changed values, you could hide the old options, create your new options, and have a journal entry report that filters to that field to show you old vs new value and when it changed...