Understand Audit Trail | Zoho Creator Help

Understand Audit Trail

This help page is for users in Creator 6. If you are in the older version (Creator 5), click here. Know your Creator version.

A typical organization has several users accessing its applications and services. Monitoring every user's activity is crucial to alleviate potential threats to sensitive data and prevent data misuse. The  Audit Trail  feature in Zoho Creator assists an organization by maintaining logs on the sequence of activities performed inside an application. This is helpful in case of security violations by identifying user behavior and the chronological order of events that caused them. You can customize what you review, by setting filters based on specific dates, actions performed, record IDs, and email addresses of users. This feature is form-specific and lets you view the history of the following action types performed in your application:
  • History of changes made to the records by you, your end-users, and the application workflows. For example, when a user updates a record with new values, or deletes a record, the updated or deleted record values are logged with details like the old value, modified value, the user who modified or deleted the record, modified time, and more. 
  • History of print and export actions carried out in a report by users. Here, you can filter and view the respective actions based on a form's report. For example, when a user prints or exports a report, the report details like the report name, exported format, form name, columns exported, IP address, etc., are also logged.
    Note : Export and print actions from pivot reports ( pivot charts  and  pivot tables ) will not be captured in our audit logs.

In short, the  Audit Trail  feature keeps track of the changes made in your application, as well as when data has been modified, how much, and by whom. This serves as documentary evidence for the sequence of activities in your application records and reports.

How long is data saved?

You can access the audit logs for record changes and report actions this far back:
Audit logData retention time
Record changes (edit and delete actions)1 year
Report actions (export and print)3 months



Configure the capture of IP Address and source information
You can capture the IP address and source information  of users who make changes to your application records, as well as export and print reports. By default, the option to  capture IP Address and source information  will be  disabled . You can choose to enable it in the  Settings  tab as follows:
  1. Navigate to  Operations  on the left pane and select  Audit Trail  under  Applications .

  2. Click the  View Audit Trail  button in the center. A popup will appear.

  3. Select the  Application  and  Form  for which the audit trail has to be recovered, then click  View .

  4. The edit history of the selected form for the  last 365 days  will be displayed.

  5. Navigate to the required tab —  Record Logs  or  Export & Print Logs .
  6. Click the  Settings  button at the top-right corner.

  7. Select the  Enable  option under  Capture IP address and source information , then click  Save .
    • When  enabled , the IP Address and source information will be captured in the  detail view  of the audit logs. 
    • Upon  disabling , the future audit logs will not capture the IP Address and source information. The previous logs will remain unchanged, i.e., they will display the IP Address and source information. 

View record edit history

  1. Click  Audit Trail  under  Operations .

  2. Click the  View Audit Trail  button in the center. A popup will appear.

  3. Select the  Application  and  Form  for which the audit trail has to be recovered, then click  View .

  4. The edit history of the selected form for the  last 365 days  will be displayed in the  Record Logs  tab.

  5. You can choose to capture the  IP Address and source information  in the detailed audit logs by clicking the  Settings  button at the top-right and enabling it.

  6. The audit history can be filtered using the  Filters  section on the right side of the page. The  Date  filter should be cleared off when switching between audit tabs.
    Note : The  Specific date  and  Date range  picker allow you to select an option from the  past one year  for every change that is audited.

  7. Click on an entry in the list to view the  detailed record log .

  8. To switch the view and see the record edit history of a different form, click the  Change Form  button at the top right corner. Then, select the  Application  and  Form  for which the audit trail has to be recovered and click  View .

Manage personal data and health information capture for fields 

When you're using fields in your Zoho Creator applications to capture any sensitive, confidential, or  personally identifiable information  ( PII ), you can add another layer of protection for them by enabling  Contains personal data.  When you're using fields to capture health-related information, you can enable the  Contains health info field  properties. Enabling the  Contains health info  field property also asks you to encrypt the collected data.

  1. Edit your app.
  2. Open the  form builder .
  3. Select the required field. Its  Field Properties  will appear on the right.
  4. Navigate to the  Field Properties > Data Privacy  section.
  5. Check the checkbox next to  Contains personal data  ( PII ).
  6. Check the checkbox next to  Contains health info  ( ePHI ).

  7. Click  Yes  in the respective dialog box appears to encrypt your data.

  8. The fields that are marked as containing  ePHI  (Electronic protected health information) and  PII  (personally identifiable information) data are captured in the detailed audit logs for export and print actions.

View report export and print history

Note: The following mobile apps will log export and print actions once the source code is updated from our side in the server.
  1. For code-signed apps ( Android and iOS), the export and print actions will be logged only after a new build is taken from our server.
  2. For SDK apps, the export and print actions will be logged only after the framework is updated to the latest version.

  1. Navigate to  Operations  on the left pane and select  Audit Trail  under  Applications .

  2. Click the  View Audit Trail  button in the center. A popup will appear.

  3. Select the  Application  and  Form  for which the audit trail needs to be recovered, then click  View .

  4. Navigate to the  Export & Print Logs  tab.
  5. The print and export history of all reports of the chosen form for the  last 90 days  will be displayed. 

  6. You can choose to capture the  IP Address and source information  in the detailed audit logs by clicking the  Settings  button at the top-right and enabling it.

  7. The audit history can be filtered using the  Filters  section on the right side of the page.

  8. All reports  of the form will be chosen by default. You can select the required report ( active  or  deleted ) of the form for which you want to view the print or export actions. 

  9. Check the checkboxes beside the required actions -  Exported  and  Printed  to view the respective audit logs.
  10. Select the required  date  or specify a  range  to view the audit information. The  Date filter  must be cleared off when switching between audit tabs.
    Note : The  Specific date  and  Date range  picker allow you to select an option from the  past one year  for every change that is audited.
  11. You can also type a specific user's email address to view the history of their export and print actions.
  12. Click on an entry in the list to view the  detailed audit record  for export and print logs.
  13. Below image shows how the  Detailed Export Log  looks like. The  ePHI  and  PII  fields are captured in the detailed audit logs upon enabling the respective field properties for fields that capture any sensitive, confidential, or personally identifiable information fields.

  14. Below image shows how the  Detailed Print Log  looks like:

  15. To switch the view and see the record edit history of a different form, click the  Change Form  button at the top right corner. Then, select the  Application  and  Form  for which the audit trail has to be recovered and click  View .

Export audit logs

The audit logs for both record changes and export and print actions can be exported by clicking the  Export as CSV  button in the respective tabs. You can filter the data to be exported by choosing the required option under the  Filters  tab and click  Export as CSV . The data will be downloaded into two separate CSV files. 

Note: The data will be exported from zohocreator.com on timestamp as per Audit trail terms.

Limitations

  1. Record Audit does not apply to the following field types in updated records:
    1. Subform
    2. Rich Text
    3. URL
    4. Formula
    5. Signature
    6. Text area
    7. File upload
    8. Image
    9. Audio
    10. Video
  2. Record Audit does not apply to the subform field type in deleted records.
  3. Records updated using script actions will not be audited.
  4. Audit trail data for past six months alone will be stored.


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