Changing an Entry Link column source wipes all data from column

[Dave]

If you change the source database for an Entry Link column all data in that column is immediately wiped.

Due to no version history functionality, that data is gone forever.

Even if you select the same source database as was already there, the column data is wiped completely.

This could have a significant impact on the widespread adoption of the product - with this example its only ~100 rows, but for larger databases the ability to completely wipe an entire column with one click is a risk that if not mitigated would dramatically reduce the product's market appeal.

I think there should be in the minimum a helptext above the source picker to warn users this is what happens when that field is updated. Better - a dialogue, best would be versioning. 

I've locked the structure, but are there any other access controls I can implement so the end user can still add rows but can't unlock the structure or similar?

Has anyone else experienced this? 

[Rebecca Dai]

Hi @Dave 

Thanks for your feedback! The team has been thinking about version history and will explore the feature at a latter date. For the time being, if a source Database is accidentally changed by mistake, you can revert the change by pressing command + Z or use the "Undo" button in the dropdown menu illustrated by the screenshot below:

[Dave]

Hi Rebecca,

Thanks for the response! :) 

It's tricky to rely on Undo to prevent this from happening in the future - the user that did this on my instance had already refreshed the page before trying to retrieve the deleted data, meaning undo wasn't an effective mitigation.

Also, the value selected in the field was the same as the existing - this could be a quick win for the team by ensuring that if the value of the source database field is selected but not changed, the column data isn't recached.

A dialogue box, confirmation screen or even a basic field description/helptext would reduce the risk of wiping all column data with a single click of the button :)

I love the product, but I can foresee this specific issue being a significant hurdle to widespread adoption - on this example alone, it cost us roughly 2 hours of resource to fix. This caused a little bit of a headache on my end in justifying implementing it within our governance structure.

Dave

[Rebecca Dai]

Thank you for the clarification @Dave! I will raise the issue with the team so we can prioritize it and have it resolved. As always, we appreciate your feedback!  

[Rebecca Dai]

@Dave The team has merged a fix for this, please let us know if you have any questions! 

[Dave]

@Rebecca Dai The fix for selecting the same value is working on my end, thanks for the quick turnaround