The audit trail keeps a record of changes made to the contact information in a folder. You can turn the audit trail on and off at a folder level. It only applies to the contacts in the audited folder. To see if a folder is audited, select the folder from the folder list and choose Folder > Properties.
The audit trail keeps track of changes made in both the Windows Client and in the Web Client. However, the audit trail entries recorded can only be viewed in the Windows Client. Web Client users and InterAction for Microsoft® Outlook® users can view similar information about changes to contacts as alerts.
This section covers the following topics:
- Information Tracked by the Audit Trail
- Audit Trail Versus Alerts
- Viewing the Audit Trail for a Contact
- Viewing the Audit Trail for a Folder
- Guidelines for Using the Audit Trail
- Deleting an Individual Audit Trail Record
- Purging the Audit Trail
Information Tracked by the Audit Trail
InterAction’s audit trail keeps track of the following information:
- Changes to the contact’s name
- Changes to the associated company for people contacts
- Additions, changes, and deletes to addresses
- Additions, changes, and deletes to phones
- Additions, changes, and deletes to electronic addresses
- Changes (setting and clearing) to additional field values
The audit trail tracks changes to global data for the contacts sourced in an audited folder. It also tracks changes to the folder-specific data for contacts linked into an audited folder. You can view this information in the Windows Client from the Audit Trail view for the contact (see Viewing the Audit Trail for a Contact).
On a folder basis, InterAction also keeps track of moves, deletes, and delete links in the audited folder. See Viewing the Audit Trail for a Folder.
For both contact edits and adds/deletes in folders, the audit trail works with the Data Change Management rules defined in your environment. Changes that are allowed will record entries in the audit trail immediately. Changes that are submitted for approval will not appear in the audit trail until the change is approved. In all cases, the audit trail records the name of the user who made the change, not the data steward who approved it.
For example, note the following scenarios:
These scenarios are not intended to explain all about how Data Change Management works. For a brief overview, see About Data Change Management.
- A user changes a phone number for a contact. The Data Change Management rules that apply to this contact allow the change with no further review. In this case, the change is applied immediately and recorded in the audit trail.
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A user changes a phone number for a contact. The rules for this contact stipulate that such changes must be reviewed. In this case, the change is applied immediately and recorded in the audit trail, and a change management ticket is sent to the data steward.
If the data steward rejects the change, the phone number is returned to its original value. In this case, a second entry is added to the audit trail noting that the data steward changed the value back.
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A user changes a phone number for a contact. The rules for this contact stipulate that all changes must be submitted to the data steward. In this case, the change does not take place immediately, so nothing is added to the audit trail.
If the data steward approves the change, the change takes place and is recorded in the audit trail. The original user appears as the person who made the change in the audit trail record, not the data steward.
Note that when proxies make changes on behalf of another user, the change appears in the audit trail with the proxy’s name.
Audit Trail Versus Alerts
The audit trail is not the same as alerts, although both track similar information. Alerts are intended as a tool professionals can use to monitor activity for their contacts. The audit trail is primarily used as an administrative tool when maintaining data quality.
Users can use the Web Client or InterAction for Outlook to display the set of recent activities for the contacts a user has chosen to monitor. In addition to activities that users add to the system, many of the activities displayed in as alerts are automatically generated by InterAction when information in the system changes. For example, if a contact’s phone number or address changes, an activity is created to record this event.
[A] This activity was automatically generated when a user edited the contacts
InterAction records the activities for all contacts in the system, regardless of which folders they are in; the audit trail only tracks changes for contacts in audited folders. The following table lists the difference between alerts and the audit trail.
Differences Between the Alerts and Audit Trail
| Alerts | Audit Trail |
|---|---|
| Tracks changes to contact names. | Tracks changes to contact names. |
| Tracks company association changes. | Tracks company association changes. |
| Tracks phone number changes (phone, fax, etc.). | Tracks phone number changes (phone, fax, etc.). |
| Tracks address changes. | Tracks address changes. |
| Tracks electronic address changes. | Tracks electronic address changes. |
| Does not track changes to additional field values. | Tracks changes to additional field values. |
| Does not track adds or deletes for phones, addresses, or electronic addresses - only changes. | Tracks adds and deletes for phones, addresses, and electronic addresses. |
| Does not track removing contacts from folders. | Tracks removing contacts from folders. |
|
Generated changes are stored in activities. For more information, see Automatically-Generated Activities. |
Changes are stored in audit trail records. |
| Shows activities manually entered by users. | Only tracks the changes listed above. |
|
Events can be purged by purging expired activities. This can be scheduled to run on a regular basis. For details, see Automatically Removing Activities. Note that the automatically-generated activities are configured out-of-the-box to be purged fairly quickly. |
Must be purged manually using InterAction Administrator. For details, see Purging the Audit Trail. |
| Displayed on a page in the Web Client and in InterAction for Microsoft Outlook. | Displayed in the audit trail view in the Windows Client. |
Viewing the Audit Trail for a Contact
To view the entire audit trail for a contact, open the contact details for the contact and choose the Audit Trail view.
You can sort the Audit Trail view by any of the columns by clicking on the column heading. Click the column heading again to change the sort order from ascending to descending (or vice versa).
To view the details about an item in the audit trail, double-click on it or select the item and choose the View Details button to open the Audit Details dialog box.
View Details toolbar button:
You can view the history of changes to contacts since the last time the audit trail was cleared. This history includes the original value, the changed value, the current value, the date/time of the change, and the person who made the change. Note that the current value may not reflect the actual change if the item has been changed multiple times - the current value is always the most recent value.
Remember, if the contact was deleted or moved from an audited folder, you need to view the audit trail for the folder in order to see the deletion or move.
Viewing the Audit Trail for a Folder.
To view contacts that were moved or deleted (source or links) from a folder, you must view the audit trail for the folder. To view the audit trail for a folder, select the folder from the main view and choose Folder > Audit Trail. For any individual audit trail item displayed in the dialog box, you can choose to display further details.
Guidelines for Using the Audit Trail
Use the following guidelines when determining which folders should be audited:
- All of the folders that come automatically with InterAction are set to be audited by default.
- Highly-restricted folders, such as a marketing folder only accessible by the marketing team, generally don’t need to be audited.
- Other folders used by small groups of users, such as working lists, don’t normally need to be audited.
- Never turn on the audit trail for the Duplicates folder. Once a contact is in the Duplicates folder, it is frozen and should not have any changes to track.
- Purge the audit trail on a regular basis. For details, see Purging the Audit Trail.
Turn on the Audit Trail for a Folder
The System Administrator User can specify which folders to audit.
- Log in to InterAction as the System Administrator User.
- In the folder list, select the folder to change, then choose Folder > Edit Folder.
- From the View list on the left side of the dialog box, select Options.
- Select the Contacts sourced in this folder are audited check box, then choose OK.
Deleting an Individual Audit Trail Record
In rare cases, you may need to delete an audit trail record to protect sensitive data. This may be necessary if a change left sensitive information in the audit trail.
You can clear just the individual audit trail record containing the sensitive data. This clears all information out of the record and replaces it with the text “Details deleted by InterAction Administrator.” The record itself remains in the system, and all other audit trail records remain intact.
You must log into InterAction as the System Administrator User to delete an audit trail record.
- Log into InterAction as the System Administrator User.
- Find the contact containing the audit trail record and open the Audit Trail view.
- Select the audit trail record to delete and choose Audit Trail > Delete Details.
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When prompted, enter Yes to confirm the delete and choose OK.
The details for the audit trail record are cleared and the Comments field is changed to “Details deleted by InterAction Administrator.”
Purging the Audit Trail
You can periodically clear out all entries in the audit trail. If you have several audited folders, the audit trail will probably get rather large. Therefore, clearing it out on a regular basis is an important step.
Depending on your organization’s needs, you should purge the audit trail at least every six months to one year. Purging the records more frequently (such as monthly or every three months) is preferable; however, many organizations like to keep the audit history for a longer period of time. Balance the need to keep the history with keeping the database smaller and faster.
You can purge all audit records older than a specified date. You use InterAction Administrator to purge the audit trail.
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In InterAction Administrator, choose Administer > Purge Audit Trail.
Caution: You cannot restore the audit information after purging the audit trail!
- Select the Purge all audits before date.
- Choose OK.