Automatic System Events
Cornerstone automatically creates diary entries when significant changes happen elsewhere in the application. These events give you a chronological audit trail of your project without any manual effort.
How It Works
When you perform certain actions in Cornerstone -- such as changing a work item's status, creating an invoice, or triggering a schedule recalculation -- the system automatically generates a diary entry recording what happened. These entries appear in the diary timeline alongside your manual entries, sorted by date.
Event Types
| Event Type | What Triggers It |
|---|---|
| Work Item Status | A work item moves to a different status (e.g., "Not Started" to "In Progress" or "Completed") |
| Invoice Created | A new invoice is added to a vendor |
| Invoice Status | An invoice status changes (e.g., "Pending" to "Paid" or "Claimed") |
| Milestone Delay | A milestone's projected completion date moves past its target date |
| Budget Breach | Actual or projected costs for a budget category exceed the allocated amount |
| Schedule | The project schedule is recalculated (e.g., after auto-scheduling or dependency changes) |
| Subsidy | A subsidy program's status or amount changes |
Reading Automatic Events
Each automatic event includes:
- Title -- A summary of what changed (e.g., "Work item 'Install kitchen cabinets' moved to In Progress")
- Body -- Additional context about the change (no "[Source]" prefix -- the body contains plain descriptive text)
- Related item link -- A "Go to related item" link that navigates directly to the entity that triggered the event (work item, invoice, milestone, etc.)
Automatic events do not have metadata, weather, or photo attachments.
Filtering
On the diary page, use the filter chips to isolate automatic events:
- Select the Automatic chip to show only system-generated entries
- Additional type-specific chips appear for finer filtering:
- Work Item -- Work item status changes
- Invoice -- Both invoice creation and invoice status changes
- Milestone -- Milestone delay events
- Budget -- Budget breach events
- Schedule -- Schedule change events
- Subsidy -- Subsidy change events
Limitations
- Automatic events cannot be edited or deleted -- they are system-generated records
- Events are created at the time the triggering action occurs; they are not retroactively generated for past changes