How to keep track of my changes

Introduction

All changes in Studio are tracked. It does not matter whether such a change is the creation of a module or an update of an element. Even changes in flow layout are tracked. If you are planning to use version management, you have to register your changes. Only then it is possible to merge changes from different branches.

As soon as you create a new project by using the new project wizard, there are already numerous changes in your repository. Among them are the creation of libraries and the creation of the module of your project. These changes can be displayed by opening your project and clicking on File in the menu. In the menu there is an entry 'Pending changes'. Click on it and the following screen will appear.

Pending changes

The pending changes screen consists of four areas:

Enter a message in the top left corner. This is a required field. This is typically a short description of what you changed, what kind of feature you have been working on or which issue you fixed. Although you can almost enter as much characters as you like, be concise in your description so it is clear to other team members what the change means.
The optional tags part can be used to add some keywords to a register. A tag could be used to mark an important register so that it can be easily found within all register change texts. If you are using the publisher to distribute a model over the DTAP street these tags are very important, as the publisher acts solely on these tags. The publisher cannot publish models that do not contain tags (working revision excluded).
In the middle of the screen the merges are shown which have been taken place since the last registered changes. If there are any merges shown, they are also included in this register.
At the bottom all changed element are listed. You have to select which changes are to be included in the register. In this list a few columns are shown:

A checkbox to select the change.
The type of change (create, update, delete).
The studio element type that has been affected.
Original identifier. This is the previous name of an element which has been renamed for example.
The current identifier, which is the name of the element, prefixed with the icon of the element type.
At the end there is a column showing the user (here named Author) that actually performed the change. It is possible to filter on users by clicking on the tiny funnel. This opens a dialog in which you can select the preferred users.

At the bottom you will find the 'Register changes' button. As long as there is no register message and there are no elements selected to be registered, this button is shown read-only.

Note that there are situations in which you have entered a register message and you have selected some changed elements but the 'Register changes' button remains read-only. In that case you almost surely have been filtering on author and you are missing an essential changed element which is not yet selected (because it had been changed by someone else). This situation occurs for example when you want to register an element change but you forgot to also include the creation of the module in which this element resides.

After registering all your changes, the window will close. If you reopen the pending changes window (and there are no open changes), the message "There were no changes/merges found to be registered" will be shown on the screen.