It can be important to know who the creator of an element was, who last updated, or when either of these events occurred. The cognitive city automatically records this information about every element. There are a few neat ways to access this in a view.


Chronographical Filtering

The first is by setting up filters to show only elements created or updated in certain timeframes. This is done in the pattern builder of the Exploratory Viewer and using the createdAt or updateAt properties. For example, the following query will pull in elements created on or after January 1st, 2022:


You could make similar queries with updatedAt or you could combine them to create a range. For example, the next query would pull in elements updated in October or November of 2021.



Chronographical Styling

The second is by setting up style rules in a view based on the times when an element was created. The position styles for "x" and "y" are the best choices for this normally. You can do this by going to the view settings (cog icon on the left side of the screen), selecting "Styles" and either editing a Type Rule or adding a new Rule. You will add a style and scroll to the position section to choose "x" or "y", use the vertical ellipsis to change the type to "Lookup", and finally use the dropdown to select createdAt or updatedAt. 



Setting just one of these properties creates a histogram-like view of when they were created or updated, similar to the below:


Element Page

The last is by going to an element's "Element Page" which is essentially a full-page version of what you see in the detail panel when you click on an element in a view, but includes additional system information. Specifically who create the element and when as well as who last edited the element and when.


You can easily add an action button to elements in a view that will take a user to the element's page. This is also done in the settings cog, under "Action Buttons". Use the "+" next to an element type (or next to "All Element Types") to add an action button and choose "View".


This will create a "View" button on the detail panel when you click on an element in the view. This can be configured further from the Action Buttons settings, but by default will look like this:


Clicking that button will take a user to the appropriate element page. For example, the element above looks like this:


Note that it has the same properties that show up on a view (this can be configured with the planner), but with an additional information section that includes creation and update times and users.



Other Options

Note that we have not discussed any ways to see the Users who created or updated an element in the viewer itself. This is because doing so requires some additional information to record that information in the graph. There is an article that covers how to do this here: Connecting a User to the Elements They Create or Edit.