SharePoint 2007: How to track time taken of column value changes?

Question

I'm working in SharePoint 2007 Document Library, where there is a Choice column named Status, with a value of Assigned, In Progress, Closed.

I wanted to capture the time taken of document status change.

for example:

time taken to change from Assigned to In Progress

time taken to change from In Progress to Closed

workaround I can think of at this moment is either using SharePoint Designer workflow or Event Handler to trigger the item created event and item modified event, then stored the item into a Custom List and calculate the time different.

any better approach to implement the requirement above?

thank you in advanced :)

Answer 1

If you must avoid creating WFs or event handlers, then another option is to use a Calculated field with bunch of new columns (AssignedOn, TimeToInProgress, etc.).

For the first duration:

time taken to change from Assigned to In Progress

The first time the user changes the status of the document to Assigned set the AssignedOn column to current date and time.

If the AssignedOn column has a value and the status is now changed to In Progress set the TimeToInProgress = Current datetime - AssignedOn

You get the idea. You can do the second duration similarly.

This site gives you more info about Calculated Field Formulas.

Answer 2

Quick and dirty solution is to Enable versioning and it will give some level of delta.