General Change Log

SBN records changes to an installation on the installation itself. Everything else — an agency's phone number, a postal-code correction, a translation table edit — has nowhere to leave a trace on its own. The General Change Log (#1749) is that place: one company-wide list of changes with no installation attached, partly written by SBN and partly typed by the people who made the change. The per-installation Change Log tab is the Creating Installations module; this module is about the central log.

How the module progresses

1. Choose the right log for the question you are asked.
2. Record a change SBN does not track.
3. Find a change in the log.
4. Read an entry — original value, new value, and who.
5. Correct or annotate an entry you find.

1. Choose the right log for the question you are asked

Task: decide, for a given change, whether the answer is on the installation's Change Log tab or in the General Change Log.

Two logs, two scopes. The installation Change Log holds every save made on one installation record in Data Entry (#559) — zones, action plans, schedules, CIDs, service tickets — on that installation's own Change Log tab. The General Change Log has no installation column at all: it is a flat company-wide list, and it answers questions about the system rather than about one customer.

What SBN writes here by itself. Options gclog1 to gclog14 decide, program by program, whether SBN posts a change to the General Change Log: Personnel (#1811), GUI Messages (#1606), Alarm Translation Tables (#1876), Queue Routing (#1738), Options (#1887), Required Fields (#1843) and Items (#1535). Each is a separate switch and which ones are on differs from site to site — check before you promise anyone that a change will be logged. A few changes post here whatever the options say, among them emergency routing being turned on or off, and credit-rating changes.

What is never written here. Nothing logs the agency register (#1546, #1547, #1552, #1717) or the postal-code table (#1718). Those changes leave no automatic trace anywhere — they are the ones you record by hand in section 2.

Reading field names in each log. The installation log names the changed field with an abbreviation in its Field column; entries from 2007 and earlier use an older set, listed on the Old Change Log Abbreviations page. The General Change Log has no Field column: a row SBN wrote packs the field names into the From and To text itself (Msgno:… Lang:… Cmpy:… Msg:…), and a row you wrote names the change in its Description.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): open the Change Log tab on the installation you built in the Creating Installations module and find the row for a zone you edited; then open #1749 and confirm that change is not there. Say why.

Guided practice: name the log that holds each of these — a passcard number changed on an action plan; the training police agency's phone corrected in #1546; a zone added to your commercial installation; the malformed M4A 2BB postal code fixed in #1718.

Independent practice: an auditor asks who changed the alarm translation table last month. State which log you would open, what has to be true for the answer to be there, and what you would tell the auditor if it is not.

2. Record a change SBN does not track

Task: create a General Change Log entry describing a change SBN did not log, with a reference number other people can search on.

Five fields you fill in. Description — what changed, in words. Program No — the program the change was made in; it takes letters as well as digits, so a change made outside SBN can be named here. From — the original data. To — the new data. Reference No — the service request or ticket number, up to 50 characters.

Five fields SBN fills in. Sequence, User ID, Change Date, Time and Server are stamped and cannot be typed, so an entry cannot be back-dated or attributed to somebody else. Server names the box the change was made on — in a replicated environment, that is what tells you which server was patched.

The Reference No is the search handle. It is the one field that pulls a set of related entries — several programs, several days, several people — back as a group later. Without one, an entry is findable only by date and text.

Steps:

1. Open the General Change Log (#1749) and choose New Record [F3].
2. Type the Description.
3. Enter the Program No the change was made in.
4. Enter From (original data) and To (new data).
5. Enter the Reference No.
6. Save, then read back the Sequence, User ID, date, time and Server SBN stamped.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): log the police agency you entered in #1546 in the Agencies module — Description naming the agency, Program No 1546, From blank, To the agency's abbreviation and name, a Reference No of your own. Save, then read back what SBN stamped.

Guided practice: log the postal-code correction you made in #1718, carrying the malformed code in From and the corrected one in To, under the same Reference No as your worked example. Then say why From earns its place here and not in the agency entry.

Independent practice: a colleague hand-logged "Fixed the fire agency" — no Program No, no From, no To, no Reference No. Rewrite it so it answers what changed, from what to what, and under which reference; then name the one field you would make mandatory, and defend it against the other three.

3. Find a change in the log

Task: search the log by date range, program number, reference and text, and know why a search comes back short.

Every search runs over a time window. The search pane takes a From date and time and a To date and time. Leave a date blank and that end of the window is open; leave both blank and the search covers the whole log.

The program grid — up to ten, include or exclude. Enter up to ten program numbers. Put an X in the Exclude column beside a number to exclude it instead. Use the grid one way at a time — as a list to include or a list to exclude; a grid holding some of each does not do what it looks like it does. An empty grid means all programs.

Reference No and Text behave differently. Reference No matches what you type exactly unless you add the % wildcard yourself. Text searches the New Value only and already matches anywhere inside it — no wildcard needed, and it will not find something that changed only in the old value.

Searches are capped. The maxque option limits how many rows a search returns. A search that reaches the cap hands you the first rows, not the whole answer, so a narrow window beats a wide one. Clear empties the search fields and the detail pane with them.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): search for the two entries you made in section 2 by their Reference No, then repeat with the reference blank and today's date as the window.

Guided practice: search with 1546 in the program grid, then put an X in the Exclude column beside it and search again. Describe both result sets and say which question each answers.

Independent practice: someone claims nothing changed in #1876 last week. Design the search that settles it, then name the two results that mean "I cannot tell from here" rather than "nothing changed".

4. Read an entry — original value, new value, and who

Task: open one entry and read every column on it, including the marker line showing where the two values differ.

Get Record [ALT+F1] opens the selected row in the detail pane: Sequence, User ID, Description, Program No, From, To, Reference No, Change Date, Time and Server. Previous Record [F4] and Next Record [F5] step through the result set, and Print Selected Records [CTRL+F8] prints what you selected.

The difference marker. Between From and To sits a fixed-width line comparing the two character by character — - where they match, X where they differ, and X for the tail when one value is longer than the other. On a long packed value that line is how you find the one field that actually moved.

A blank value carries meaning. A blank From means the thing was created, a blank To that it was deleted — the same convention the installation log uses for new and deleted CIDs.

A blank User ID is not a fault. A change made by a system administrator account records no user, so the entry stands with an empty User ID. Say so when you report it.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): get your postal-code entry from section 2 and read all of it — sequence, who, when, program, From, To, reference, server — then use the marker line to point at what changed.

Guided practice: pick an entry whose From and To are different lengths, predict what the marker line will show before you press [ALT+F1], then check.

Independent practice: you are handed an entry with a blank From, an empty Description and a blank User ID. State what you can conclude, what you cannot, and where you would go next.

5. Correct or annotate an entry you find

Task: correct an entry's description or attach a reference number, and know which entries refuse to be edited.

Change Record [F2] opens the selected entry for editing. Description, Program No, From, To and Reference No can be corrected. Sequence, User ID, Change Date, Time, Server and the marker line are protected — the same fields SBN stamped in section 2 stay SBN's.

Entries SBN wrote itself are all but locked. On a system-written entry every field is protected except Reference No and Description. You cannot rewrite what SBN observed; you can only say what it was for — and attaching your service-request number is what makes the entry findable later by reference.

An edit overwrites in place. Changing an entry leaves no second entry and no record of the change. Correct facts and add references; do not reword an entry into a different story.

Worked example (Branch TRAIN): open your agency entry from section 2 with [F2], extend the Description with the agency's abbreviation, save, and get it again to confirm the stamped fields did not move.

Guided practice: open an entry SBN wrote itself, put your Reference No on it, and name every field that refused your input.

Independent practice: draft the two-line house rule your team would follow for #1749 — who may edit an entry, and which fields they may touch — then say what that rule costs when an entry is genuinely wrong.

6. Quick reference

One-liners: you fill in Description, Program No, From, To and Reference No — SBN stamps Sequence, User ID, Change Date, Time and Server · installation changes go to the installation's Change Log tab, everything else that is logged at all goes to #1749 · gclog1–gclog14 decide which programs post here, and they differ by site · agency and postal-code changes are logged only if you log them · every search runs over a date-and-time window · Text searches the new value and matches anywhere in it, Reference No matches exactly unless you add % · maxque caps the rows a search returns · blank From means created, blank To means deleted · blank User ID means a system administrator made the change · on a system-written entry only Description and Reference No can be edited.