If the Status is assigned the value it already has, this is considered a Status update and will change the Status History values. Otherwise, this behaviour is not what I have seen. Check that workflow does not make an assignment to the Status field including a redundant assignment. Run logging. Also, the modified date field should reflect the same time as the status history update.
In any event, this field is generally of limited use since it does NOT track status changes but rather only tracks the last change to any particular status. Cheers Ben Ben Chernys Senior Software Architect Software Tool House Inc. Canada / Deutschland / Germany Mobile: +49 171 380 2329 GMT + 1 + [ DST ] Email: mailto:ben.cher...@softwaretoolhouse.com Web: http://www.softwaretoolhouse.com A free notepad for Diary fields: http://www.softwaretoolhouse.com/downloads/DiaryFieldEditor.htm An ARS API scripting tool used for migrations, integrations, imports, reports, extracts, batch jobs: http://www.softwaretoolhouse.com/products/SthMupd -----Original Message----- From: Action Request System discussion list(ARSList) [mailto:arsl...@arslist.org] On Behalf Of L G Robinson Sent: June 18, 2009 3:40 PM To: arslist@ARSLIST.ORG Subject: Unexpected updates to the Status-History field Hi All, I have a question about the Status-History field. Specifically, I am confused about when this field gets updated. My system: ARS 5.1.2 Patch 1313 on Solaris 8 (Sun OS 5.8) ARSperl 1.71 (API 4) and Perl 5.006001 (solaris) According to the BMC documentation: "The Status field (Field ID 7) enables you to track the different states a request moves through in its life cycle. The meaning of each individual state helps define the workflow process and you can define any number of states. In addition to keeping track of each state of a request, AR System keeps additional information with the Status field called status history. Status history includes the user name of the person who last changed the state of the request and the date and time that the change occurred." The way I read this, the Status-History for a particular status should only be updated when the value of the Status field (state, as used above) changes. However, I am seeing that the Status-History for a particular Status value is being updated even when the Status has not changed. Example: The Status was manually set to "Owned" (from "Assigned") using the Windows client and the Status-History shows the following correct entry: Owned.Time: 6/18/2009 8:31:36 AM Owned.USER: nlil A couple of minutes later, I added some text to a long text field and updated the record. I did not change the value of the Status field, yet the Status-History field now contains: Owned.Time: 6/18/2009 8:34:05 AM Owned.USER: nlil As part of our normal processing, a Perl script ran a few minutes later and sent an email acknowledgement to the customer. The Perl script uses ARSperl to read various records to collect the relevant information and updates the call log (long text field) to note that the ack. was sent. Subsequent to the Perl script completing, the Status-History field has been updated yet again, even though the Perl script did not update the Status field: Owned.Time: 6/18/2009 8:39:37 AM Owned.USER: Demo It was my belief (up until this behavior was pointed out to me) that neither of the last two updates to the call record should have updated the Status-History values for the Owned status unless the call had moved out of the Owned status and then back into that status again. But that is not the case here. The Status has remained "Owned" through each of the two updates and yet the Status-History continues to be updated. Is this expected behavior? Can anyone point out what I am missing? Thanks. Larry Larry Robinson n...@ncsu.edu Office of Information Technology NC State University 919-515-5432 Voice Raleigh, NC 27695-7109 919-513-1893 FAX ____________________________________________________________________________ ___ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor:rmisoluti...@verizon.net ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are" _______________________________________________________________________________ UNSUBSCRIBE or access ARSlist Archives at www.arslist.org Platinum Sponsor:rmisoluti...@verizon.net ARSlist: "Where the Answers Are"
