Overview: Audit trail module

The Audit trail module keeps track of changes and actions in the system. By doing this, the module assists the transparency and the accountability in larger teams and organizations. For example, a page disappears because it was deleted or moved, content of a page is broken, because a widget on it was updated, an image reference is broken. The Audit Trail module addresses the need to quickly resolve content related incidents by reviewing the logged information.

PREREQUISITES: To use the Audit trail module, you must have an enterprise license. For more information, contact sitefinitysales@progress.com.
By default, the Audit trail module is disabled. To use the module you must install and activate it. For more information, see Activate and deactivate modules.

As of version 7.1, Sitefinity CMS allows development of additional custom loggers and integration with external reporting systems. It also provides the following built-in audit loggers:

• JSON logger
  By default, the Audit trail module logs users' activities in JSON format records in textual log file. JSON logging is enabled by default. For more information, see Administration: Configure the Audit trail module. 
  The JSON logger writes the audit information in the ~/App_Data/Sitefinity/Logs log directory. It uses the audit logging category and writes to Audit*.log files.
  To facilitate parsing and custom tooling, log entries are serialized as JSON objects. The logger creates a new file when one of the following conditions is met:
  • The current file exceeds a certain size
  • The date changes
  • The default file is locked by another process

    NOTE: For changes to take effect, after turning the JSON logger on or off, you must restart the Sitefinity CMS application.

  • Elasticsearch logger
    Sitefinity CMS has a built-in integration with Elasticsearch server for storing the logged records and Kibana for visualizing the data and retrieving advanced reports in custom dashboards. For more information, see Integrate Audit trail module with Elasticsearch and Kibana.

  For more information, see Tutorial: Create and enable a custom trace listener.