Is it possible to view a list of what components you have worked on recently within the Tridion interface?

Question

I have had a request from a content editor on whether it is possible to see a list of components they have edited recently (maybe sortable by date). They have a large number of components to edit and thought it might be a good way to track which ones they have already worked on/completed.

I have suggested they can use the publishing queue to see what pages they have published recently (and therefore what pages/components they have likely worked on) and I also suggested they could leave the ones they have not yet worked on unlocalised and only localise once they are working on that component (meaning they can simply search for unlocalised components to see the ones that are still to be worked on but I am unaware of any way to do exactly what they want.

Does anyone have any suggestions or is this not possible?

Answer 1

I guess the easiest way to do this (i.e., without customization) is to create a search folder listing the components that were last modified by the user. Users can create this themselves by searching, then saving the search as a "Search Folder".

Otherwise, if development is an option, create a custom page that lists items last modified by %current user% - using a search query to get the results.

Answer 2

To be very frank If I am a content author, I might not be happy with you suggestions. And even I might not be happy with a Custom solution (as others have also suggested) for the requirement that you have given.

I would be in line with Nuno's suggestion of having a "Search Folder" for your search query in the Content Manager Explorer itself.

If your search query is getting changed frequently, may be you can train your content author to use the "Advance Search" feature of the CME as shown below:

The only Downside (I am not sure if it is really a Downside) is that your search indexes need to be maintained frequently as per the SDL Tridion Installation and Maintenance document

I hope it helps

Answer 3

You may consider using Tridion event handler to create an audit trail (as an XML file). Using Event handler, info such as modified by, modified date, published date and etc can be captured and logged.

Answer 4

As Nuno is mentioned in his answer other option is to create a custom page, the problem with a custom page is that you will need to write the logic to query and get the list that you are looking for. This kind of queries are expensive and sometimes difficult to accomplish via the API (Core Services or TOM .NET), check this post Analyzing Content Manager Data to get some guidance about how to get such information from the database.

UPDATE Accessing a the database directly is not documented and not supported, if a user creates queries that execute directly in the database they will need to take care of any upgrade or database modification between Tridion releases.