Agile Central: Portfolio Item - What does "State Changed Date" mean? Why is inconsistency with its value?

Products

• Rally On-Premise
• Rally SaaS

Issue/Introduction

There appears to be an inconsistency of the values displayed for "State Changed Date".
What is the meaning of this field?  Why the inconsistencies?

Environment

Release:
Component: ACSAAS

Resolution

The "State Changed Date" is a built-in field of Portfolio Item. It is defined as a Date.

This field is mainly intended to be used in a Portfolio Kanban board. There it automatically converts the stored date value and displays how long the card is in the column (or state) it's in on that board. For example, you will see it reads: "12 weeks in this column" (where column is the kanban column that corresponds to the card/portfolio-item's state).

However, this field can be included in the Portfolio Items page. There it also will display the converted message, see below:

And yet, if included in a Work View then it will actually display the actual stored date of its value, see below:

 

To Summarize:
This field is meant for a Portfolio Kanban. The product's code already optimizes the display taking into consideration an easier display on the board. This field is not meant to be used in the Portfolio Items or Work Views pages. It can (and probably should) be hidden and not displayed on these pages. However, if displayed on these pages it will behave as explained above.