Need help with create "Change History" interface

Question

Looking for some help on an interface I am working. Just to give some background, the basic requirement of this page is that users need to be able to see any edits and changes that have been made by other users in the company. The main variables that are shown in the change history is the lab test name in which the change was made, the user who made the change, change that was made and the date it was made.

User can search for specific changes by entering the name of the lab test, and by selecting how many days back he/she wants to see changes. By default, the recent change history is shown from the most current day to descending order.

I was wondering if anyone had any better solution in how to display this? I would appreciate and alternative solutions that are creative.

Attached is screenshot. Obviously, I left the nav structure and other components as this is a client project and not looking to give away who it is.

Answer 1

This depends on the most desired and/or practical result. I have a wireframe to demonstrate some quick updates to your content.

On the left are two sample boxes for quick-access to groupings, one being "this week" and the specific test types... the boxes could be filled with whatever quick-access micro list you want.

The search box is now full-width, with the pre-set search ranges as stylible links below, and an alternative layout to the search results list.

I didn't add the next idea to the image, but you could replace the search result list with a calendar month-style view. Or have photographs associated with most-recent tests below search box and links that disappear after entering specific search terms.

Hope this gives you some good food-for-thought!

Answer 2

I think this could be done using one tree view and one list box. Tree view displays change history records but grouped by one of criteria selected in list box.

For example, you select to group your record by date. The first level of tree shows dates so it's simple to find particular date if all dates are collapsed. Expanding some date you can see all changes made in this day.

Another example is selecting option to group records by user. So the first level contains users, expanding particular user you can see all his changes listed at the second level by date.

And so on, you can use as much grouping option as you need.

Usually change history doesn't contain too much records, so they could be filtered with tree grouping and then easily findable inside subtree. If number of records is big or you need to search inside descriptions, you may add search box, but also present search result in tree collapsing all branches which don't contain text searched.

UPDATE

Here are some screenshot just to illustrate what I mean above. They are made from Transactions frame of SmartSVN (version control system client). They show how it looks with several different groupings.