Record Recall

  • A user must have (or be a member of a group that has) the daRecall permission in order to use the Record Recall facility.
  • See Recall Skip Columns Registry entry for details about specifying fields that should not be updated when applying a recall.

The audit trail functionality in Vitalware maintains a complete history of changes to a record. Record Recall is a natural extension to this functionality as it enables suitably authorized users to update a record with data from an earlier version of the record. It is envisaged that this functionality will be particularly welcome in situations where a user may, for instance, have:

  • changed and saved a record only to want the record back as it was before saving it;
  • performed a global replace only to find the changes were not exactly what was required.

Note: It is important to understand that although Record Recall enables a record to be returned to an earlier state this is not in fact undoing changes to the record: a complete linear history of changes is always maintained and using the Record Recall function to change a record is itself an amendment that is added to the record's audit trail.

Record Recall allows a single record to be recalled to the data it contained in a previous version and also provides a batch mode for a group of (one or more) records to be recalled to their state at a given date and time.

The Record Recall facility is accessed from the Edit>Recall menu and can be selected while viewing or editing a record.

To recall the data for a single record:

  1. Select Edit>Recall>Current Record from the Menu bar:

    Note: Dates in this example are shown in dd/mm/yyyy format. Vitalware will display dates using the format defined for your implementation.

    The Current Record sub menu lists:

    • The date and time of the last five modifications of the current record
    • The user who made the changes

If there are more than five modifications:

  1. Select Edit>Recall>Current Record> All... to display the Recall box.

    The Recall box lists all save dates and times for the current record:

  2. Select the required date and click OK.

    Note: Click View to invoke the Audit Trail module with the update audit records for the current record displayed. Note that only the audit records related to data changes will be shown; other audit records (e.g. insertion, searching) are not shown.

When you select one of the entries, the current view is changed to Detail View and the data is updated to reflect the values in the record as at the date and time selected. The record is left in Edit mode and you may save it to affect the recall, or cancel the changes.

Once a date and time is selected all modifications to the current record from the most recent to the entry selected are undone. For example, if you selected 04/28/2008 16:27 (vw) from the list above, the data changed by the following records would be reversed in the order listed:

04/28/2008 16:28 (vw)

04/28/2008 16:27 (vw)

Note: If you make changes to a record while in Edit mode and then recall a previous version of the record, data that you have just added (i.e. for which there is no prior history) will not be affected by the recall. If you have amended a value for which there is a previous value during the period you have recalled, the previous value will replace the amended value.

The Record Recall facility is accessed from the Edit>Recall menu and can be selected while viewing or editing a record. In this case the records are updated and saved without the need to recall each record individually.

To recall the data for a group of (one or more) records as a single batch

  1. Select the records to be updated.
  2. Select Edit>Recall>Selected Records from the Menu bar

    When the menu option is invoked you will be prompted for the date and time to which the selected records will be recalled:

  3. Enter a date and time and click OK.

    Vitalware will begin updating each record to reflect the values in the record at the date and time specified. As with recalling a single record, you must have permission to modify the fields that are recalled. If not, the recall process will pause and a message will indicate which field in which record will not be updated. Click OK to continue updating the other records.

    You must also have permission to update the record itself (via Record Level Security). If you do not have permission to modify a record, an error is displayed indicating that you do not have update privileges for the record.

    In this case you can cancel or attempt to continue the recall. Once the operation is complete a summary dialog is displayed:

    Recalling

    After the batch recall has finished, the selected records will be updated with the recalled values.