updated_at does not get updated when relating items

rufus00

I have a problem that I think might end up being a feature request. When you relate items in SWSD (doesn't matter if it's relating incidents, changes, problems, whatever), this activity does not update the updated_at field for either related item, nor does it generate any audit log.

This is currently wreaking havoc for processes we have that periodically pull data into external systems using the updated_at field as the change signal to determine which items we need to retrieve that have changed since last we polled SWSD.

I know for certain this is affecting API processes we use for this, and I "think" it also affects the BI integration, which I believe also uses "updated_at" to incrementally pull relevant data.

I've searched high and low, and I cannot find any change signal for when items are related, which to me seems like a pretty fundamental flaw. Our reports generated through PowerBI or other systems that pull SWSD data are just flawed in entirely inconsistent and confusing ways because the relationships may or may not exist, depending on if someone made some OTHER change to one of the items that was related, thereby triggering the updated_at field to be updated, and therefore triggering any external system to re-pull that item, along with it's related items.

I've even looked at using automated rules to do something silly like rewrite the title of an item when anything is related just to force it to update updated_at, but the act of relating an item does not seem to be an available trigger for automation.

Hopefully others have maybe encountered this and come up with a solution? The only thing I can come up with is just periodically polling through our entire set of incidents, releases, changes, tasks, problems, etc so I can pick up and changes to relationships. In our system that's hundreds of thousands of records and from an API usage perspective, I'm sure that's not something SolarWinds would love, as that's a pretty massive data load occurring over and over and over just to look for changes. Or maybe there's something simpler I'm overlooking?

Purva.Ghadiali

Thanks again for outlining this in detail @rufus00 — your use case makes complete sense, especially for API and BI-based integrations that rely on updated_at for incremental sync.

You’re correct that today, relating or unrelating items does not update the updated_at field or emit a separate audit event, so relationship-only changes won’t be detected through standard incremental polling.

This isn’t something currently supported, but it’s a reasonable enhancement request. The best next step would be to log this as a formal Feature Request on THWACK .

Appreciate you raising it — feedback like this is valuable, especially for customers running mature reporting workflows.