Get Started with Tracked Fields

Tracked fields help you and your sales reps review how a field evaluated in approvals has changed over the history of the record submitted for approval. For example, let’s say your approval rule fires when the quote’s Partner Discount field is 10% or greater. A sales rep submits a quote with a Partner Discount of 10%, which is rejected, and then resubmits with a partner discount of 9%, which is approved. Your quote has a Tracked Values related list that shows two Tracked Value records: one for the 10% submission, and one for the 9% submission.

Setting up a Tracked Field configuration requires a few components. We can use a flowchart to view how they’re related. In this example, we want to track the Partner Discount field on the CPQ quote object.

When your approval rule evaluates a tracked field, it creates a Tracked Value record to store information about the field's value. The Tracked Value record looks up to the record containing the evaluated field. By default, it contains an Opportunity lookup field. If your tracked object isn’t an opportunity, go to the Tracked Value Custom Object page and add a custom lookup field for that object. In this example, your tracked object is a CPQ quote, so your Tracked Value object needs a CPQ quote lookup field.

Advanced Approvals makes the tracked value records on its own. The only record that you must make is the Tracked Field record on your approval rule. It has four fields.

Tracked Object

The object containing the field that you want to track. This field contains only the Opportunity value by default. To use a different object, add its API name to the picklist.

Tracked Field

The field that you’re tracking on the tracked object. Contains only the Type and Amount fields by default. To use a different field, add its API name to the picklist. In this example, you add SBQQ__PartnerDiscount__c.

Record Field

This field establishes a relationship between the tracked value and your tracked object so that the Tracked Values related list appears on your tracked object. To establish the related list, make sure that the Record Field value uses the API name of the object referenced by the custom lookup field that you added to the Tracked Value object: in this case, a CPQ quote.

Important While other Advanced Approval fields require the SBQQ__ prefix when referring to a CPQ package field, the record field doesn’t. For example, to refer to a CPQ quote, use Quote__c.

Tracking Type

Defines when Advanced Approvals create a Tracked Value record. If Any Change is selected, Advanced Approvals creates a tracked value only if the tracked field has changed from the last time the approval rule evaluated it. If All Values is selected, Advanced Approvals creates a tracked value whenever the approval rule evaluates the tracked field, even if the tracked field’s value hasn’t changed.

When the approval rule evaluates the tracked field for the first time, it creates a Tracked Value record. It also populates the tracked value record’s custom lookup field with the record that was submitted for approval—in this case, Quote 01205. If the approval rule evaluates the tracked field again, it creates another Tracked Value record. Because your Tracked Field record has a record field, the Tracked Values related list appears on your quote with both tracked values.