Displaying Non-editable Previous Workflow Comments

I was asked the following question:

"I am looking for suggestion to best capture and display approvers' comments in a SharePoint integrated environment.

I tried to use ListForm that stores the comments in SharePoint columns. However, right after a file is uploaded, the user is alway redirect to the editform page that allows him to edit all the comment columns.

Then I tried the out of the box approval form. However, it seems the AllParticipantCommentsHtml attribute can only be used in email, not in the processviewer or a web page.

Any suggestion is greatly appreciated."

I suggested the user to use WFComment that comes with Developer. (See Page 220, under WFComment section in the v5.0 User Guide for more details)

Alternatively, if something more customized is needed, AgileReports may be the next thing to consider. It not only allows you to pull the comments of a process instant, but also let you to query other process data to make a customized report that suits your needs.

But the user prefers something out of the box without much configuration. So, I suggested the following:

If you just want to keep the past comments not editable is SharePoint, you may use the out of the box feature from SharePoint. Make sure the type of your comment column is 'Multi Line of Text' and select 'Yes' for 'Append Changes to Existing Text' for your comment column.

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