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Dissecting The New Audit Logs

The internal Change History / Audit Log code has been completely revamped.

Why? –

  • This provides a needed capability for the upcoming webhooks feature
  • Not every transaction was getting captured
  • It was sometimes hard to tell exactly what changed

MAJOR CHANGES:

The addition of a NEW Change Details page!  Now you can:

  • See both the original & changed values on the NEW change detail page
  • See where the change originated
  • View related changes – earlier a lot of stuff could be changed, but certain things weren’t logged, now each change is a separate entry
Find the Audit History under Reports Menu ➤ History

 

Previously, you would only see a large list, sorted by default by time-stamp of the change. Besides the time-stamp, the User, Type of change, Object affected, the change message itself, and a summary of the “Action”.

 Reports Menu History

On the old “History” screen, the Change message contained things like “Changed via api with values: …” or “Changed tags to”, while the “Action” heading showed “Add/Change(API)” and a generic “Change”, respectively, for the two aforementioned events.

Clicking on the object name filtered the above screen to only include events about the selected object, but provided no more detailed information about the change.

Many improvements have since been made.  The view has been renamed, no longer entitled “History”. The History moniker has been replaced with “Select Audit Log to view”, and duplicate information [“changed via API..”] has been removed from what was the “change message” (now just “Changed”).

A new column has been added after “Action”, called “From” – and this is where you will now find the source of the change, be it UI, Internal, Task, Import, or API_CALL. That information is no longer included with the change itself, nor is it duplicated anymore, either.

 

Furthermore, the date and time are now clickable. Following one of these links to an in depth look at a specific change:

View Audit Log

You’ll notice that following the complete changelog, which now includes not only the details of the change itself, but also the state of the changed item prior to the change, you’ll find a list of “Related Audit Changes”.  These changes are (aptly named!) related to the change you are currently viewing – Device42 intelligently groups them. These are all clickable, as well.

Going a bit deeper, you’ll notice the following new change details:

  1. D42 URL: Which page or process
  2. What was changed, exactly
  3. What it looked like BEFORE it was changed (the original value)
  4. Related Changes

The action categories are now standardized, which means easier reporting, too.

From the Device view, you can also view change history.  By default, “Direct Only” is selected, which only includes changes made directly to that device:

Change History

However, if “All” (Or “Related Only”) is selected, more audit history is revealed:

Audit History

You’ll notice in the case above, “All” was chosen, and now changes that were made during the same session are revealed.  This paints a fuller picture of the intent of the initiator.

These new audit features can prove useful while troubleshooting as well as when trying to answer the 5 W’s (who, what, where, when, why) about a change or group of changes that was made. We think you will find the new features useful, and we welcome your comments about how you are using Audits, as well as any other feedback or suggestions you might have!


Download a 30-day free trial of Device42 here, and check out our new Audit functionality today!  Existing users, go here to update.

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