Activities
Display an audit-ready timeline of record activities, including changes, users, timestamps, and before/after values
Specs
Version
5.0.0 (updated on 2024-06-10)
Developer
Labii Inc.
Type
Section
Support Configuration
Yes
Overview
The Activities widget brings Labii's audit trail directly into a record section by displaying a chronological list of changes and user actions related to one or more records. Each activity entry captures the event type, user identity, timestamp, and the relevant before-and-after values, helping laboratories review who changed what and when. This makes the widget useful for quality review, deviation investigation, record oversight, and regulated documentation workflows where traceability matters. It provides the same core activity content as the Activities tab in the record detail view, but keeps that audit information visible inside the document itself.
Use Cases
Record review: Review recent updates to an experiment, protocol, or quality record without leaving the section view.
Deviation investigation: Trace who changed a value, section, or status when investigating unexpected results or workflow issues.
Multi-record oversight: Monitor activity across several related records by configuring the widget to display a broader record set.
Audit preparation: Present a clear change history for internal QA review or external regulatory inspection.
Operational transparency: Show customer, project, or sample activity history directly inside a working record for easier collaboration.
Interface
Read-only View
In read-only view, the widget displays a vertical timeline of activities in reverse chronological order. Each entry shows the elapsed time, timestamp, activity icon, event description, and user attribution. When an activity is associated with a versioned record state, the version label also appears in the entry.
Timeline Display: Shows a chronological activity feed with icons and timestamps.
Change Context: Includes activity messages describing the action and the affected record content.
User Attribution: Identifies which user performed each action.
Version Visibility: Displays related version information when the activity is tied to a saved version.
By default, the section loads the 10 most recent activities. Users can continue loading older entries from the timeline when they need more history.
Edit View
The Activities widget does not provide direct editing of activity records. In edit mode, users can configure which records the section monitors, but the activity timeline itself remains read-only because audit events are captured automatically by Labii in the background.
Input Methods: Select one or more records in the widget configuration when you want to display activities beyond the current record.
Formatting Options: No content formatting is available because audit entries are system-generated.
Validation: Activity records cannot be manually changed through the widget.
Collaboration: Multiple users can review the same activity history, but no one can overwrite the audit entries displayed.
Configuration
The widget works without any required setup for single-record use. By default, it shows the current record's activity history. If needed, you can configure the widget to aggregate activities from additional records.
Initial Setup
Open the record and add the Activities widget to a section.
If you want the widget to display only the current record's activity history, save it without changing any settings.
If you want to monitor more than one record, open the widget configuration and select the desired records in the Records field.
Click Save to apply the record scope.
Required Settings
The Activities widget has no required settings for standard single-record usage.
Optional Settings
Records: Choose one or more records whose activities should be displayed. If left blank, the widget uses the current record.
When you include multiple records, the timeline can become much longer and more varied. Use this mode only when cross-record monitoring is actually helpful for the workflow.
Additional Functions
Load More Activity History
The widget initially loads the 10 most recent activities in the detail view. Click Load More to retrieve older activity entries and extend the visible audit history.
Search Activities
When using the same activity interface as the detail-view Activities page, users can search activities by keyword to find specific events more quickly.
Filter Activities
The activity interface can also be filtered to narrow the visible results, such as viewing all activities or only activities created by the current user.
Print View Coverage
The print view loads the complete activity history rather than only the initial on-screen subset, making it more suitable for full audit review or exported documentation.
Best Practices
Data Organization
Use the widget on records where audit visibility matters, such as experiments, quality events, approvals, or controlled procedures.
Keep the widget near signatures, versions, or other regulated sections when review workflows depend on change history.
Configure multi-record activity views only when users need a combined operational timeline rather than a single-record audit trail.
Performance Optimization
Leave the Records field empty for the default current-record view when possible, because this keeps the timeline more focused and easier to review.
Use Load More only when older history is needed instead of treating the widget as a full archive browser during routine use.
Avoid combining too many unrelated records in one activity stream, which can reduce readability and make investigations slower.
Security and Compliance
Treat the Activities widget as review evidence, not as a place for manual annotation or correction.
Use it alongside signature and version controls for a more defensible regulated workflow.
Rely on the automatically captured timestamps and user identity for traceability instead of maintaining separate manual change logs.
The Activities widget is most effective when paired with records that already use structured approval, versioning, or locked-document workflows.
Common Pitfalls to Avoid
Avoid using a multi-record activity feed when users only need the history of the current record, because unrelated events can obscure the audit narrative.
Avoid assuming the first 10 visible items are the complete history; use Load More or print view when a full review is required.
Instead place the widget where reviewers naturally check changes, such as near signoff, deviation, or release sections.
Maintenance and Troubleshooting
Review the configured record scope if the timeline seems to show too many or too few activities.
If expected activities are missing from the visible list, load more entries before concluding the event was not captured.
If a review requires exhaustive output, use print view because it loads all activities instead of the default limited subset.
Workflow Integration Tips
Combine the Activities widget with Signers when reviewers need both approval state and the underlying change history in one record.
Use it with Versions when teams need both event-by-event history and explicit saved record versions.
Pair it with Visitors when you want to distinguish between edit activity and read/access history.
Related Widgets
Versions: Displays saved record versions and change history snapshots that complement the event-by-event activity feed.
Visitors: Shows who viewed a record, which complements edit and modification history from Activities.
Signers: Adds controlled approval and signature workflows that often need audit-trail review alongside them.
Visitors: Choose Visitors when the key question is who accessed a record, not who changed it.
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