Use case

When an automation rule uses the "Object updated" trigger, it's currently not possible to know which attribute was edited to trigger the rule unless you manually check the Activity tab of that specific object.
There are many use cases for accessing this information:

1. Alerting regarding important Attribute Changes such as via Send Email, Send Slack, etc.
2. Working around the Object Trigger Update function's Limitation to check which Attribute was Updated
3. Verifying Changes against policies or procedures
4. Etc

Suggested Solution

Provide an activity or history Smart Value for an Object whenever relevant (such as for the Lookup Objects Action and the Object Trigger, etc) that allows access to the information shown in an Object's Activity tab. i.e. object.activity.first would return the first entry, so something like:

{
  "actor": {
    "avatarUrl": "https://avatar.url/av",
    "displayName": "Big John",
    "name": "John Doe",
    "key": "112233aabbcc",
    "emailAddress": "john@doe.com",
    "isDeleted": false
  },
  "id": "321",
  "affectedAttribute": "Test Attribute",
  "oldValue": "",
  "newValue": "this is a value",
  "type": 1,
  "created": "2024-11-08T16:59:09.412Z",
  "objectId": "123"
}

Such that object.activity.first.newValue would return "this is a value" in that example.

Jira Issues have something like this with the changelog Smart Value though that Smart Value has the added usage of specifying by Custom Field, which would be nice to have for activity, such as object.activity.Label to only check entries related to the Label for an Object, or object.activity.Attribute for any given Attribute.

Workaround

Use the Object History API Endpoint to get the Object History using the Send Web Request Action. This is talked about here:

• How to Automate Logging of Asset Value Changes External to Assets