I need any notification when a date field on my custom form is changed? How to do this?

Hi Greg, I believe the issue is that Bennetta wants to report on custom date fields which have changed, however Note Reports don't include these type of updates (even though changes can be displayed on the Updates tab. It would be good if a Workfront Product Manager could give us their input here, but I think this would need a feature request to resolve. The ability to be able to access (e.g. for reporting/filtering) the date/time when an individual field last changed would also be very useful for us. At the moment you are limited to the last date/time change for the whole line, and then you need to go and look at the Updates tab to work out what changed. Regards, David

OK - I can see that on your report, but on our system no custom field updates show up on the Notes Report. Perhaps I've missed a setting somewhere, but I don't think so! Regards, David

Hi Greg, David, and Benetta. I might be able to explain what's going on. Back in the day, NOTES could be set up to record "pretty much everything". When Anaconda (R16) rolled out a few years back, Workfront introduced the JOURNAL object, which is where Update From Feed audit information goes (among other built in system events). Along the way, the ability to turn on the full NOTE auditing was removed from the Workfront user interface. So, if Greg is testing with a "legacy" object that was created back in the pre-Anaconda days (or "from one that was", such as a new Issue on an old Request Queue Project), the audit of the custom data changes would be grandfathered into the NOTES objects he's seeing. Conversely, if David and Benetta are working in post-Anaconda environments, the NOTES audit would be "off" by default, hence, no audit data. Regards, Doug

Thanks for the info, Doug. At the moment, you can't report on Journal objects via the UI (as far as I can see). However, as I'm sure you already know (and use) the Journal object is available via the API. I've tested it and I can read out the journal entries (including old and new dates). This doesn't help users in the UI however!

Well, before I initially responded to this thread, I did the test in my Preview environment - created a brand new Issue Custom Form and a brand new date field for the test and added it to an issue. We were using Workfront before Anaconda. Are you (Doug) saying that's why I'm seeing it?

Yes, that's my theory, Greg. Furthermore... If the Issue to which you added the new custom form was created off an "old" Project form with the grandfathered, I'd expect NOTES when you edit the custom data on the Issue. If, on the other hand, the Issue was off a "newer" Project (or, in the name of science, you created a brand new Project from scratch), I'd expect no NOTES when you edit the custom data on the Issue. Regards, Doug

I was up for the challenge. I created a new project, added a new issue, and attached the custom form to the issue and changed the date. I also did it to the project I had been testing with (which was an old project), and lo and behold (and I had no doubt :-)), Doug was right. The change in date did NOT show up for the new project, but did for the old. Well, that case is solved, and too bad it worked out that way!

Whilst the end result doesn't really help Bennetta, this cooperation is still an amazing example of why the Community is so valuable for us all. Thanks Greg and Doug.

Huzzah, Greg! Thanks for confirming my theory. As you, David, and another colleague of mine in a parallel conversation today all point out, the inconsistency leads to a Catch-22: you can turn on Updates From Feed and count on getting the audit data in the JOURNAL object but not be able to report on it via a Workfront report, OR create a Workfront NOTES report, but (as your test proved) risk certain audits being missed, depending on the vintage of the underlying objects. This was a big deal to me when I first noticed it a few years ago. Our Workfront-based vertical for the Oil & Gas industry (www.espsuite.ca) includes Health, Safety and Environment (HSE) information, and to keep workers safe (and mitigate liability), auditability is critical. So for our clients, we created "Audit Projects" and "Audit Tasks" solutions to effectively "turn on" the old NOTES auditing from pre-Anaconda days. That way, we can write Workfront based NOTES reports, AND rely on the audit information always being there. Ironically, we recently delisted those solutions (now Private, vs Public) because no one but us has run them in ages, and officially, Workfront no longer supports the old way. But for us, they resolved the Catch-22. So far... Regards, Doug