How to Use Field History Tracking

About

When a record is updated, knowing who made changes and what they changed is critical. With Field History Tracking, all users on Enterprise level plans can review any changes that have been made to a record (if the grid was added to Page Layout). They can review changes that are up to 18 months old, but customers can request an extension to this limit by contacting Insightly's sales team.

In this Article

How it Works

Field History acts as an audit log, which registers and documents any user activity on a record's fields. Insightly admins can use this to supervise how users have interacted with records, as well as provide a chronological account of changes for informational or security purposes. Field History can also give an understanding of what behavior is normal based on the documented user activities. Any time a field is changed, admins can review these changes in an individual record’s Related tab or in the Field History and Field History Detail reports. If you delete a standard or custom object, the data will not be deleted. However, if your account is deleted, the data will be deleted.

When an object is linked to another object or a link between two objects is deleted, each object’s audit log will record the update. The entry will be logged as Related Link under the Field Name column and will capture the following fields:

  • Name of Other Entity Linked
  • Role
  • Details
  • Default Linked Organization (if a Contact - Organization Link)

This data will be under the Added column if a link was created or under the Removed column if a link has been deleted.

Limits

The changes to the following fields cannot be captured in the audit log:

  • Formula fields
  • Auto-number fields
  • Created by fields
  • Last modified by fields
  • Expected Revenue fields
  • Binary fields
  • Fields with values longer than 255 characters

Reviewing Changes Made on an Individual Record

  1. Open a record and select the Related tab.
  2. Scroll down to Field History. Here you will be able to see who made changes, the date the changes were made, and how many values were changed.
  3. To see what was changed, click the field under the Changed Values column.
  4. Here, you will be able to review when a change was made, what the new value is, and what the previous value had been. If the value is longer than 255 characters long, it will not appear in the audit log. They will, however, be marked as edited.

Field History and Field History Detail Report

Only Administrators can review changes in the Field History Report and Field History Detail Report located in the Other Reports section in Advanced Reporting. The default filter for both reports is Last 7 Days.

Field History Report

The Field History report tracks the number of changes that have been made to a record. Inline editing fields will create a new row for each field changed. If the record itself is edited and multiple values are changed, they will be consolidated into one row. To see what was changed, click the hyperlinked field under the Changed Values column. 

This report’s default fields are:

  • Changed Date - The date and time that the field was created, updated, or deleted.
  • Object Name - The object this field exists in.
  • Record ID - The specific record ID in which the field was changed.
  • User - The user that made the change to the field.
  • Operation - The type of change that was made: created, updated, or deleted.
  • Changed Values - The number of values that have been changed.
  • Application - Records whether the change was made from Insightly’s web application or mobile application.

Field History Detail Report

The Field History Detail report can be used to review any time a field has been changed within a specific record. The report displays the field’s new and old values, with one row dedicated to each individual field that has been changed.

This report's default fields are:

  • Changed Date -The date and time that the field was created, updated, or deleted.
    • This field cannot be removed.
  • Object Name -The object this field exists in.
    • Only one value may be selected from this dropdown menu. 
    • By default, the Users object will be selected. 
    • This field cannot be removed.
  • Record ID - Links to the specific record in which the field was changed.
  • User - The user that made the change to the field.
  • Application - Records whether the change was made from Insightly’s web application or mobile application.
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