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Auditing Changes in Business Central

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A common challenge in many business management applications is avoiding unwanted changes in data. It could be anything from an incorrect customer telephone number to an incorrect posting to the general ledger. This topic describes the capabilities for finding out what changed, who changed it, and when the change was made.

About the Change Log

The change log lets you track all direct modifications a user makes to data in the database. You specify each table and field that you want the system to log, and then you activate the change log. The change log is based on changes that are made to data in the tables that you track. On the Change Log Entries page, entries are chronologically ordered and show all changes that are made to the values in fields on the tables you specify.

Tracking changes can impact performance, which can cost you time, and increase the size of your database, which might cost you money. To reduce those costs, keep the following in mind:

  • Use caution when choosing the tables and operations.
  • Do not add ledger entries and posted documents. Instead, prioritize system fields such as Created By and Created Date.
  • Do not use the All Fields tracking type. Instead, choose Some Fields and track only the most important fields.

Also for performance reasons, the change log is turned off during the process of upgrading Business Central to the next version. In addition to speeding up the upgrade process, this also helps reduce clutter in the chance log. As soon as the upgrade is complete, the log starts tracking changes again.

Important

Changes display in the Change Log Entries only after the user's session is restarted, which happens as follows:

  • The session expired and was refreshed.
  • The user selected another company or Role Centre.
  • The user signed out and signed in again.

Work with the Change Log

You activate and deactivate the change log on the Change Log Setup page. When a user activates or deactivates the change log, this activity is logged, so you can always see which user deactivated or reactivated the change log.

On the Change Log Setup page, if you choose the Tables action, you can specify which tables you want to track changes for, and which changes to track. Business Central also tracks several system tables.

Note

You can monitor specific fields for changes, such as fields that contain sensitive data, by setting up field monitoring. If you do, to avoid redundancy the table that contains the field will not be available for the change log setup. For more information, see Monitor Sensitive Fields.

After you have set up the change log, activated it, and made a change to data, you can view and filter the changes on the Change Log Entries page. If you want to delete entries, set up a retention policy, where you can set filters based on dates and time. To learn more about retention policies, go to Define Retention Policies.

About activity logs

From some pages in Business Central, you can view an activity log that shows the status and any errors from files that you export from or import into Business Central.

Work with activity logs

The information is displayed in the Activity Log page according to the context that it is opened from. For example, you can open the page from the Document Exchange Service Setup, Incoming Document, Posted Sales Invoice, and Posted Sales Credit Memo pages. You can empty the list of log entries, or just clear the list of entries older than seven days.

Monitor sensitive fields

Keeping sensitive data secure and private is a core concern for most businesses. To add a layer of security, you can monitor important fields and be notified by email when someone changes a value. For example, you might want to be notified if someone changes your company's IBAN number.

Note

Sending notifications by email requires that you set up the email feature in Business Central. For more information, see Set Up Email.

Set up field monitoring

You can use the Monitor Field Change Setup assisted setup guide to specify the fields that you want to monitor based on filter criteria, such as the data sensitivity classification for the fields. For more information, see Classifying Data Sensitivity. The guide also lets you specify the person who will receive an email notification when a change occurs, and the email account that will send the notification email. Specify both the user to notify and the account from which to send the notification. After you finish the guide, you can manage settings for field monitoring on the Field Monitoring Setup page.

Note

When you specify the email account from which to send notifications, you must add either the Microsoft 365 or SMTP account types. Notifications should be sent from an account that is not associated with an actual user. Therefore you cannot choose the Current User account type. If you do, notifications will not be sent.

Over time, the list of entries on the Monitored Fields Log Entries page will grow. To reduce the number of entries, you can create a retention policy that will delete entries after a specified period of time. For more information, see Define Retention Policies.

When you set up field monitoring, or change something in the setup, entries are created for your changes. You can specify whether to display entries related to the monitoring setup by showing or hiding them.

You can manage settings for field monitoring, such as whether to send an email notification or just log the change, for each field on the Monitored Fields Worksheet page. The page is also where you can add or remove fields to monitor.

Note

After you add one or more fields and start monitoring, you must sign out of Business Central and sign in again to apply your settings.

Work with field monitoring

Entries for all changed values for monitored fields are available on the Monitored Fields Log Entries page. For example, entries contain the following information:

  • The field for which the value was changed.
  • The original and new values.
  • Who made the change, and when they did so.

To further investigate a change, choose a value to open the page where it was made. To view a list of all entries, choose Field Change Entries.

View field monitoring telemetry

You can set up Business Central to send field monitoring activity to an Application Insights resource in Microsoft Azure. Then, using Azure Monitor, you create reports and set up alerts on the gathered data. For more information, see the following articles in the Business Central Developer and IT Pro help:

Define retention policies

You can create retention policies to delete unneeded data in logs after a period of time that you specify. For example, over time the number of entries in a log can build up. By cleaning up old entries you can make it easier to focus on more recent, and probably more relevant, entries. To learn more about retention policies, go to Define Retention Policies.

See Also

Change Basic Settings
Sorting, Searching, and Filtering
Finding Pages and Information with Tell Me
Assign Permissions to Users and Groups
Work with Business Central
Define Retention Policies

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