Ch-ch-ch-changes! Keeping a changelog (with bonus song lyrics)

Amy_Goldfine
Level 10 - Champion Alumni
Level 10 - Champion Alumni

Any Marketo Admin who has worked with me has heard me scold them to "Make sure to log it in the changelog!" many times. A changelog is a shared spreadsheet where you log any changes made in Marketo that have a global impact—operational programs and smart campaigns, Admin, global smart lists, and segmentation. The key to a changelog is not just what was changed, but why. You can get the what by looking at Audit Trail. But Audit Trail won't tell you why the change was made, which can the key to understanding your instance in the future. Think of it as a gift from current you to future you (and your team).

 

Prop Tip: fill out the changelog before you make the change—that way you have to slow down to explain to yourself what you are doing, and you'll make much smarter changes to your instance.

 

To get you started, below is my changelog template!

 

P.S. If you find yourself constantly reminding your teammates to fill out the changelog, please feel free to sing The Changelog Song to them, to the tune of "We Are The Champions":

 

🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶

We have a changelog, my friend
And we need to use it, to the end
We have a changelog
Fill out the changelog!
No, you can’t skip it
Because we need a record ... of the change

🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶  🎶

 

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4 Comments
Natalie_Kremer
Level 5 - Champion Alumni

I'm so excited about this. We just implemented our own change log in Marketo and I'm so excited to have that long term tracking for operational changes!

Carrie_Chandle1
Level 6 - Community Advisor

Couldn't agree more with the "why." We made that shift last year - including the why and not just the what in our change logs - and it makes it so much easier and clearer, especially when you're referencing the change 1-2 years down the road. It also helps when sharing the changes across various levels of Marketo expertise. Thanks for this, Amy 🙂

Darshil_Shah1
Level 10 - Community Advisor

Great idea, maintaining change logs can be very useful for the updates/changes made to assets like RCM model changes which are not captured in Audit Trail. Thanks for sharing it.

Milena_Volkova
Level 2

Can't agree more! You can't make new changes without understanding the justification for what has been done before. Unfortunately, many people are making changes in our instance without logging anything, our change log is desperately out of date. 

 

Where do you keep that spreadsheet, somewhere in Sharepoint or Google Docs, or is there a way to keep it in your Marketo instance?  

 

Thank you, great post. And a great song. 🙂