Enabling the change history for approved and canceled task groups

To maintain the change history for approved or canceled task groups, configure how the change history is recorded for changes that are made within a task group.

About this task

By default, workspace change history is enabled when you enable the WorkspaceChangeHistoryEnabled property as part of enabling workspaces for your environment. When this basic workspace change history is enabled, a change history record is created whenever an object is created, updated, or deleted within a workspace. This recording maintains a log at the task group level of all changes that are made to business objects in a task group that is not approved or canceled. The change history records are stored in the CMPRMYOBJ database table for the workspace where the changes occurred.

If you enable only this basic history recording, the history records for task group changes are deleted when the task group is approved or canceled. While the task group is not approved or canceled, the change history records for the task group are visible within the properties view History tab for the task group. The records in this tab can be opened, undone, and compared to approved content while the task group is not approved or canceled.

To improve the change history recording for a task group, you can enable the base change history recording and audit history recording for task group changes. To enable these history recording options, you can enable the following configurable properties:
BaseChangeHistoryEnabled
When you enable this property, change history is recorded whenever an object that is approved content is created, updated, or deleted with Management Center or the Data Load utility, not just within a workspace. The base change history is also recorded when a workspace task group is approved and changes for the object are merged into the approved content data. The base change history records are stored in the CMPRMYOBJ database table. The workspace for these records is specified as IBM_WC_BASE to represent approved content.

The setting for this property is independent of the workspace change history settings. The base change records do not display in any user interface.

WorkspaceChangeHistoryAuditEnabled
When you enable this property, the list of change history records in the properties view for a task group remains visible after the task group is in one of the following approved or canceled states:
  • Complete
  • Published
  • Publish failed
  • Canceled
Users cannot open or undo the history records for task groups that are in one of these states, or compare the records to approved content. The change history records remain until the task group is removed or deleted from the workspace or the entire workspace is deleted. The change history behavior for task groups that are not approved or canceled does not change from the default behavior.
If your enable the BaseChangeHistoryEnabled and WorkspaceChangeHistoryAuditEnabled properties, the change history for approved or canceled records remain visible in the properties view for the task group. The base change history records are also created for the approved task groups. The change history behavior for task groups that are not approved or canceled does not change from the default behavior. When the task group is deleted, the change history records are also deleted, regardless of the properties enabled.

Procedure

  1. Go to the following directory and open the master copy of the WebSphere Commerce wc-server.xml configuration file for editing:
    • LinuxAIX WC_installdir/instances/instance_name/xml
    • Windows WC_installdir\instances\instance_name\xml
  2. Optional: Enable the base change history recording for workspace task groups.
    1. In the wc-server.xml file, search for the <BaseChangeHistoryEnabled /> configurable property.
    2. Set the value for this property to "true" to enable recording the base change history for task groups in your database. To disable this change history recording, set the value to "false".
  3. Optional: Enable the audit change history recording for approved or canceled workspace task groups.
    1. In the wc-server.xml file, search for the <WorkspaceChangeHistoryAuditEnabled /> configurable property.
      If this property does not exist, you need to add the property to the file. The default value for the property is "false".
    2. Set the value for this property to "true" to enable recording the change history for approved or canceled task groups in the properties view History tab for the task group. To disable this change history recording, set the value to "false".
  4. Save and close the file.
  5. Deploy the updated master copy of your wc-server.xml file to the following directory in your WebSphere Commerce EAR.
    • LinuxAIX WC_eardir/xml/config
    • Windows WC_eardir\xml\config

    After manually changing the master configuration file, ensure that you properly deploy it to the WebSphere Commerce Java Platform, Enterprise Edition application that is running on WebSphere Application Server. For detailed steps, see Propagating changes to the WebSphere Commerce configuration file

    For more information about updating and deploying the WebSphere Commerce configuration file, see Updating the WebSphere Commerce configuration file.