Entity History | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

Overview

Entity History displays the historical updates made to entities. The entity history can be accessed by navigating to Content > Configuration > Entity History in the Yext platform, or via the Logs API.

Below are the main differences between Entity History in the UI and via API:

See the Events and Actors sections for lists of the events and actors that can be displayed in Entity History.

Entity History UI

The Entity History page displays a table of past entity updates. Each row in the table corresponds to a single update, or event, on a given entity.

By default, updates are listed in descending chronological order. Update details can be viewed by clicking the View button on a given row.

Default Columns

These columns appear as part of the default view on the Entity History page:

Additional Columns

These columns can be added to the Entity History table by selecting them from the Columns dropdown. Click Reset Columns to restore the default view.

Restore Field Values

In the Entity History UI, you can restore field values on entities to the values reflected on a given row in the entity history. This applies only to Field Updated type events, and can only be done in the UI.

Restoring field values is not supported for these cases:

• Any event type besides Field Updated (note that the FIELD_UPDATED_INHERITED event type is not supported for restoring field values)
• Multiple changes on the same field for the same entity
• Newly created entities whose ID shows “Value Pending”
• Field values cannot be restored on the following fields:
  • Country Code
  • Coordinates (Display, Dropoff, Pickup, Routable, Walkable)
  • Locale
  • Any image fields

Entity History via API

Entity History can be accessed by querying the entityHistory table in the POST query endpoint of the Logs API. Before doing this, you will need to configure an app in the Developer Console and set the Logs endpoint permissions to read-only.

To do this, follow the steps in the Create an App in the Developer Console guide.

For details on a sample request and payload, and a sample response, see the Logs API documentation.

Events

These are the types of events that can take place on entities, and how they appear in Entity History:

Actors

An actor is the source responsible for an event in an entity’s history in Yext. In addition to the actor, Entity History includes actor details, which is further information about the exact source of the event. For example, an event could have happened due to a change made by a User (the actor), specifically via Entity Edit (the actor details).

An event in an entity’s history can be attributed to any of these actors:

• App
• Yext System
• Yext User
• Yext Account Team
• Connector

Most Yext System updates appear as a separate action triggered by a Yext User event. For example, if a user updates the Address field on an entity, the backend system would then need to geocode that new address. The update would then appear as two rows in Entity History (one with an actor of Yext User for the field edit in the UI, and one with an actor of Yext System for the geocoding).

Actor Details

An actor responsible for a particular event can be further specified by any of these actor details:

Legacy Actor Details

You may see these actor details when reviewing past entity history, but they will not appear on new entity history events moving forward:

Limitations

Global

• Entity History is limited to the last three years (1,095 days). Events older than three years are deleted from the history.
• Newly created entities will appear in the Entity History UI with an undefined entity type and an ID of “Value Pending.” It may take up to one hour for these values to sync. Field updates cannot be restored for these entities until these values are resolved.
• It may take up to five minutes for new update logs to appear in Entity History.

UI

• The ability to export logs is not currently supported. Field Updated (Inherited) events cannot be restored.
• Field values cannot be restored on the following fields:
  • Country Code
  • Coordinates (Display, Dropoff, Pickup, Routable, Walkable)
  • Locale
  • Any image fields

API

• Field values cannot be restored.