Whilst getting used to how things are done in QuickFile, I made a mistake (of several) and saw that there was an entry for this mistake in Recent Events. Being even more dumb, I thought that deleting this recent event might somehow mean that it had effectively never happened, i.e. would be like an “undo”. Of course, it didn’t work that way, and all I managed to do was delete part of my event history (with all the beginner’s errors along the way).
But it makes me wonder whether it should be possible for anyone (regardless of user privilege) to delete stuff from Recent Events? Surely it should be there as a definitive audit trail of what has been done, and locked down so that nobody can change it?
If deleting an entry from Recent Events doesn’t actually do anything useful (other than to erase it from the log), and in particular doesn’t have any effect on the state of anything (e.g. to undo a mistake) then what is the point in deleting it? Doesn’t it undermine the value of this feature?
It’s a feature that’s been there since the beginning. I’m not sure on the implications this would have if we were to change this now (either user experience or functionality).
But ultimately, the administrator (who has the rights to remove entries from the event log), can also remove team members and even delete the account, should they wish. It’s highly recommended that your admin is someone of authority within the business.
Then removing team members could/should appear in the event log, but the event log itself should IMHO be editable by anyone, including admin. There should be no need? For example if there were ever an investigation of the company by HMRC then I would imagine that having an events log that is untouchable by anyone (with warts and all) would give it more authority? Just a thought.
Of course, it would be really great if the events log acted as a historical timeline, to enable the user to click on any entry in the log to take the internal state back to that point (like an undo function on steroids).
What about the Auditors? Or the Finance Director? Or the Head of HR? Or the Serious Fraud Office? Not trying to be melodramatic but it’s not inconceivable that someone might want to look back and find out exactly what happened (surely that’s the point of the events log) but if the events log itself is editable then it does somewhat undermine its purpose? Can anyone explain why you would ever want to delete an entry from the events log?