Audit trail module

The Audit trail module tracks changes and actions in the system and thereby assists in maintaining transparency and accountability in larger teams and organizations.

A few examples of track changes that the audit trail maintains are when a page disappears because it was deleted or moved, when the content of a page is broken due to the widget having been updated, or when an image reference is broken. The Audit Trail module addresses needs such as above and quickly resolves content related incidents by reviewing the logged information.

The Audit trail module also logs changes in the configurations.

PREREQUISITES: 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.

The built-in loggers

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, and records these in a textual log file. JSON logging is enabled by default. For more information, see 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, or

  • 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 Create and enable a custom trace listener.