We're testing out the use of Field Groups for an upcoming project. As we learn how this works on our 10.3.1 development server, there are some concerns that we have come across.

1. When we make certain fields within the group read-only that it prevents users from adding new entries to the group. The fields are pre-populated with the username and current datetime so they shouldn't be changed by the user. The other fields in the group are values that they need to enter as they view the document. Since we have to keep all fields within the group editable, we're going to have to rely on the Audit Trail to help us determine if someone changed values they shouldn't have. It would help if this was configurable to allow read-only fields to not block adding more items to a Field Group.

2. In looking at the Audit Trail for how changes to these Field Groups are tracked, it appears there is an entry for each item in the group which contains all of the values for the field. An example is if the group has 3 different entries/records/items in it, and the value of one of them is changed, it will result in 3 entries to the Audit Trail for the changed same field as if 3 changes to the same Field were made. The screenshot below shows when the 3rd item in the group was added. In the 2nd Audit Log all I did was change the value in the "Reason" field of the 3rd item and it shows 3 entries in the Audit Trail that all look duplicated.

This seems like it will get out of control if there are 10, 20 or 30 entries in a Field Group and be very difficult to decipher later on when an audit is performed. Can Audit Trail track the Adding/Deleting/Modifying items within a Field Group as an Event to filter reports?

3. Field Groups are nice and were a needed thing for some processes we've held off on. It seems like they are more of a display option of the existing Fields within a Template. It formats the previously available Multi-Value Fields into a cleaner display, but that's about all it offers. Are there plans to expand on the security and/or functionality available to Field Groups?

Overall Field Groups will help us in our processes, we're just now starting to explore them and trying to set the expectations of our users who want to use these in some higher security processes.