Overview
Etlworks automatically tracks changes for all artifacts: Connections, Formats, Listeners, Flows, Macros, Schedules and Agents. Thus, there is nothing to configure except the retention policy.
Version control is supported for the following artifacts: Flows, Connections, Formats, Listeners, Schedules, and Macros and Agents.
Using built-in version control, you can:
- View the history of changes or who-changed-what-and-when
- Compare any two versions
- Revert to any previous version
- Add comments to the commit when saving the artifacts
- Edit the commit message after saving
Access the version control UI
To access the version control UI, click @ at the bottom left corner of each screen.
Use version control
View version history
Click @ at the bottom left corner of each screen to view version history.
Compare any two versions
To compare any two versions, select the versions, and click View Diff between Selected.
The changes are displayed in a two-panel or unified view.
From this view, you can navigate back and forward in the version history and also revert to any version.
View a specific version and compare it with a previous one
To view a specific version and compare it with a previous one, click 👁.
Revert to any previous version
To revert to any previous version, you may follow the steps below:
Step 1. Click ⟲.
Step 2. Confirm that you want to revert to the previous version by clicking ⟲.
Step 3. Click Save or Save with message to complete the revert.
Add comments to the commit when saving the artifacts
When saving any change to any artifact, you have an option to add a message (comments) to the commit.
To add a message to the commit, click Save with message.
The commit message is displayed in the change history popup.
Edit the commit message after saving
Starting with Etlworks 9.8.3, you can add, replace, or remove a commit message after the save, directly from the change history dialog. This works for Flows, Connections, and Formats.
- Open the artifact's change history.
- Click the pencil (Edit Save Message) on the version row.
- Edit the message and click Update Message.
This updates only the message for that version — no new artifact version is created, and the artifact's contents, version count, modified user, and modified date are unchanged. Message edits are recorded in the audit trail.
You can edit a version's message when you have Edit permission on the artifact and you are either the author of that version or an Administrator / Super Admin. The rule is enforced by the backend; rows you cannot edit do not offer the action.
Note: the change history now also shows the artifact's creation state as version 1, and its initial save message can be edited the same way.
Configure the retention policy
By default, Etlworks only keeps the last 20 modifications to any artifact. Older changes are purged once a day by the scheduled maintenance task. This parameter can be changed.
Important: Only customers on the dedicated instance (including self-hosted) can configure the retention policy.
Go to Settings, click Maintenance, and then select Clean history records.
You can change the following options:
- Enabled flag: if this maintenance task is disabled, Etlworks will keep the history of changes forever. The default would be enabled.
- Schedule: is how often you want the system to run a maintenance task. The default is once a day.
- Keep # of history records: is the number of history records you want to keep. The default is 20.
- Remove deleted: If this option is enabled, the system will remove the history records for the deleted artifacts. The default choice is enabled.
- Keep deleted in the past N days: This is the number of days where the history records for the deleted artifacts are kept. The default is 30.