The AuditTrail package

Use the AuditTrail package to specify which records are to be audited when they are created or changed. When you enable a record type for audit trailing, all changes to records of that type are audited. You can also disable audit trails for any record type for which they have been enabled.

AuditTrail data

An audit trail describes the sequence of events that have affected a record that is being audited. For each event, the following information is recorded:
  • User identity. The AuditTrail package records the user name and group memberships of the person who made the change. The user full name (obtained from the fullname field of the HCL Compass user table) is also recorded.
  • Time of change. The time stamp of the change is always specified in Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
  • Action and state. The action that changed the record and the state of the record after the event is recorded.
  • Changed fields. For each data field in the record that was changed by the event, the audit trail records the name of the field, its old value, and its new value. For a multiline text field, the audit trail by default shows the full old and new fields. In an append-only field, such as the Notes_Entry field, the latest text is appended to the top of the field but old text is never changed. In this case, the audit trail displays only the latest text.
  • The database schema version that was used to describe the record.

Information is never deleted from an audit trail. When an audited record is deleted, an entry is made in the audit trail (which is separate from the record) with the action DELETE and the state DELETED.

Data display

Applying the AuditTrail package to a record type creates a tab that displays the audit trails for records of that type. The page contains no editable fields.

Data storage

Audit trail information is maintained by linking a separate, unique, log record to each audited record. These audit trail records are all managed as entries in a single database table, regardless of the record types that are being audited. The table links each record to every change made to the record.