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Change Monitoring

Change Monitoring

Owned by Sean Kullman
Jul 01, 2024

Change monitoring identifies additions, deletions, and modifications in a bot’s data set, and optionally sends alerts for changes and maintains a historical record for auditing purposes.  

There are three ways to access Change monitoring results: 

  1. Bot grid view mode: Viewing changes directly within the data grid to visually track updates and modifications 

  2. Email Alerts: Receive changes by email 

  3. Change monitoring API: Using the Get-RbChangeMonitoring cmdlet in another bot to retrieve the data changes. 

Change monitoring in Readibots involves: 

  1. Direct Data Table Observation: This feature allows users to immediately see modifications within the data table, ensuring easy access to data changes. This is enabled simply by selecting Enable Change Monitoring in the general tab under Properties.  

  2. Automated Change Tracking: Utilizing the Get-RbChangeMonitoring command in another bot enables systematic tracking of changes from the data table. This command can specify parameters such as TaskName or DataSetName to efficiently manage and retrieve detailed logs of data changes.

Configuring 

To enable change monitoring: 

  1.  Go to the General tab in the bot you would like to monitor and click the checkbox next to Enable change monitoring. 

 

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  1. Run the bot once.

  2. View the data grid for which you want to enable change monitoring.

 

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  1. Select Edit change monitoring from the right-hand menu.

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  1. Choose the column that comprises the unique key for each row.

 

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  1. Choose the data elements to be monitored for change.

 

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  1. Add email addresses if you want copies of the changes to automatically be sent out to specific recipients.

 

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  1. click apply when done.

The next run of the bot will detect any of the selected changes.

Viewing Changes

Changes can be viewed:

  • In the grid - three view mode buttons are available on the bot’s data grid. 

    • image-20240628-133428.png Current Data: This display shows the most recent data collected in the data grid

    • image-20240628-133459.png Changed Data: This display shows only the changes that have occurred in the data grid. 

    • image-20240628-133522.png Overlaid Data: This display shows the most recent data collected, with any changes highlighted.  

  • By Email - Each time the bot runs and changes are detected, a copy of the changed data will be emailed to the email addresses provided in the edit change monitoring window.  

Change Monitoring Formatting 

Changes detected between the current run and previous run are indicated through formatting on the data: 

  • Red: record deleted 

  • Green: record added 

  • Yellow: record changed 

  • Blue: value(s) that changed; hover over blue cell indicates previous value.

cm5.png

Example Use Case: Monitor Changes in Data 

To retrieve the latest changes in data, use the Get-RbChangeMonitoring cmdlet with parameters specifying the target bot and data set.  

  • -TaskName: Path to the bot 

  • -DataSetName: Name of the data grid 

  • Eg: 

    Get-RbChangeMonitoring -TaskName 'data' -DataSetName 'Raw Data-0'