Entity History | Yext Hitchhikers Platform

Overview

Entity History displays the historical updates made to entities. The entity history can be accessed by navigating to Knowledge Graph > 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. By default, entity history is displayed by operation. You can toggle the table to view entity history by individual events.

Each row in the table corresponds to a single operation or event on a given entity.

View by Operation

These columns appear on the Operation view:

The table can be filtered by:

• Date
• Actor Type

Click on a given operation to view the operation details.

This will display additional information about the operation:

• Hero metrics: entities updated, created, and deleted; expanded actor details; fields updated
• A table of individual events in the operation
• Options to undo or reapply the operation (see Undo and Reapply Field Updates for more detail)

View by Event

These columns appear on the Event view:

The table can be filtered by:

• Entity
• Entity Type
• Actor Type
• Event Type
• Date
• Advanced: Operation ID, Field Content, Language, Field

Click on a given event to view the event details.

This will display additional information in a side panel about the event:

• Expanded information about the entity, event type, actor, language, and operation ID
• The previous and updated field values (for “field update” events). Toggle to view this as it appears in the UI or JSON.

Undo and Reapply Field Updates

In the Entity History UI, you can undo operations and events to restore field values on entities. You can also reapply the updates that were applied by a previous operation or event.

This applies only to Field Updated type events, and can only be done in the UI.

Undoing and reapplying updates 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

Operations can be undone or reapplied via the operation details page or by clicking the three-dot icon on a given operation.

Events can be undone or reapplied by clicking the three-dot icon on a given event.

See the Undo Changes to Entities guide for complete steps on restoring entity field values.

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 updates cannot be undone or reapplied.