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Configure auditing and diagnostics in Unified Service Desk

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Applies To: Dynamics 365 (online), Dynamics 365 (on-premises), Dynamics CRM 2013, Dynamics CRM 2015, Dynamics CRM 2016

The Audit & Diagnostics Settings area provides centralized management for agent auditing and Unified Service Desk application diagnostic logging.

Agent auditing helps organizations analyze agent productivity, identify gaps in process, and provide coaching and training that can all be used to further improve the customer service experience. Audit data in Unified Service Desk is channeled to a listener that gives you control over where you channel audit logging, such as to a text file, windows event log, or data store.

Diagnostic logging helps you troubleshoot issues that may occur with the Unified Service Desk application.

When you configure auditing and diagnostics in Unified Service Desk, keep in mind the following functionality:

  • How Unified Service Desk auditing and diagnostics are configured and recorded is completely separate from the audit feature in Microsoft Dynamics 365.

  • Unified Service Desk auditing requires a Listener Hosted Control to record and save audit activity. Similarly, you can channel diagnostic logging using a Listener Hosted Control, but it’s not required, and by default, diagnostic logging is recorded on the local computer.

Audit and diagnostics configuration overview

  1. Developer writes the code used for the custom listener. Typically, the custom listener is an assembly. More information: MSDN: Define your custom listener

  2. Developer compresses the assembly into a .zip package file. More information: MSDN: Compress your custom code into a Customization File

  3. Developer creates the Listener Hosted Control, which includes information about the assembly created in step 1. More information: MSDN: Listener Hosted Control (Hosted Control)

  4. Unified Service Desk administrator creates an Audit & Diagnostics Settings record that defines what is audited or diagnosed. Additionally, the Listener Hosted Control is associated with the Audit & Diagnostics Settings record. More information: Auditing

  5. Unified Service Desk administrator creates a Customization Files record and attaches the .zip package file that was created by the developer in the previous step. More information: Distribute custom hosted controls using Customization Files

  6. Unified Service Desk administrator associates the Customization Files record with the appropriate Configuration. More information: Assign users to a Unified Service Desk configuration

In This Topic

Auditing

Diagnostics

Add user information to Audit & Diagnostics Settings logging

Deactivate or activate an Audit & Diagnostics Settings record

Auditing

You can configure auditing in Unified Service Desk in one of two ways:

  • Standard or custom auditing using an Audit & Diagnostics record. This audit feature is centrally managed, has several events to choose from, and allows you to add a custom listener that determines where audit data is sent.

  • Standard auditing by adding an audit flag and setting its value to 1 in the Options area. This audit feature has limited events and logs audit data in the UII_auditBase table in the organization database.

Note

If you enable both an Audit & Diagnostics record and an audit flag option record, the audit flag option record will be ignored and will not record audit data.

Create an Audit & Diagnostics record to use for auditing

  1. Go to Settings > Unified Service Desk > Audit & Diagnostics Settings.

  2. Click New.

  3. In the Name box, type a name that describes the purpose of the Audit & Diagnostics record, such as All events auditing.

  4. Choose Activity Tracking Enabled.

  5. Because this example is for tracking all events, leave all check boxes selected. Alternatively, you can clear the check box for any events you don’t want to audit for this record.

    You can also include diagnostics logging in this record. For more information see the Diagnostics section.

  6. In the Trace Source Settings area, add a Trace Source Setting record. The Trace Source Setting includes the Listener Hosted Control that is used to channel the audit and diagnostic activity to a data store, event log, or text file. To create a Trace Source Setting record, follow these steps.

    Important

    You must provide a Trace Source Setting record that contains a valid Listener Hosted Control that will be used to record the audit activity, or the audit activity will not be saved. For information about how to create a Listener Hosted Control, see MSDN: Use custom listeners for auditing, diagnostics and traces.

    1. In the Trace Source Settings area of the Audit & Diagnostics Settings record, click +, click the search magnifying glass, and then click +New.

      Create a new Trace Source Settings record in USD

    2. Type a name for the Trace Source Settings record, such as USD Agent Auditing Trace Source for Azure Data Store, and then click Save.

    3. Next to Listener Hosted Controls, click +, type the name of the Listener Hosted Control that will be used for agent auditing, and then press ENTER. Choose the Listener Hosted Control in the list.

    4. Click Save.

  7. Click Save & Close.

    Note

    Audit and diagnostics settings records are activated when they are created.

  8. Next, to begin audit logging, associate the audit & diagnostic record with a configuration. To do this, create a configuration or use an existing configuration, and then select the audit record in the Audit & Diagnostics Settings attribute on the Configuration form. More information: Manage access using Unified Service Desk configuration

Standard auditing by adding an audit flag

  1. Sign in to Microsoft Dynamics 365.

  2. Go to Settings > Unified Service Desk.

  3. Click Options.

  4. On the Options page, click New.

  5. On the New Option page, type an audit flag name in the Name field and an appropriate value in the Value field.

    Add an audit flag in Unified Service Desk

    You can use the audit flags listed in this table.

    Audit flag

    Description

    AuditCacheMaxSize

    When this flag value is set to 1, the number of audit records cached before saving to the server is 1 record.

    This option works only if the AuditNoCache is False.

    AuditFlagAction

    When this flag value is set to 1, audit records are created when an action is fired.

    AuditFlagAgentState

    When this flag value is set to 1, audit files are created when the status of the agent changes.

    AuditFlagHostedApplication

    When this flag value is set to 1, audit files are created when a hosted application is started or gets focus.

    AuditFlagLogin

    When this flag value is set to 1, audit records are created when an agent logs in.

    AuditFlagSession

    When this flag value is set to 1, audit records are created when a session is created or there is a session switch.

    AuditFlagWorkflow

    When this flag value is set to 1, audit records are created when a UII workflow is started or closed.

    AuditNoCache

    If this is set to True, audit records are saved dynamically to the server without any caching.

  6. Click Save.

  7. To view audit logging, sign in to Microsoft Dynamics 365, and then from a productivity area click Advanced Find. In the Look for list, select UII Audit, and then click Results to see all audit logging details.

Diagnostics

UTF-8 encoded text files that are named UnifiedServiceDesk-<date>.log are maintained at the following location on the client computer: c:\Users\<UserName>\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Microsoft Dynamics 365 Unified Service Desk\<Version>. The log files record operational events and errors in the client application, and are created or appended to when you first start the Unified Service Desk client application. By default, diagnostic logging is enabled at the error level for the Unified Service Desk client application. This topic describes how you can view and change the client diagnostic logging characteristics.

Create an Audit & Diagnostics record to use for diagnostics

  1. Go to Settings > Unified Service Desk > Audit & Diagnostics Settings.

  2. Click New.

  3. In the Name box, type a name that describes the purpose of the auditing and diagnostics record, such as Diagnostics information-level logging.

  4. Click Diagnostics Tracking Enabled.

    Although you can configure both auditing and diagnostics in a single record, the procedure here configures only diagnostics in the Audit & Diagnostics Settings record. See Auditing for the procedure to configure auditing.

  5. Because this example is for tracking information-level events, choose Information as the Diagnostics Verbosity Level. The available logging levels are described here.

    Log Level

    Description

    Error

    Reports only error events.

    Warning

    Reports errors and warning events.

    Information

    Reports errors, warnings, and information events.

    Verbose

    Reports errors, warnings, information, and verbose events.

  6. Click Save & Close.

    Note

    Note that audit & diagnostics records are activated when they are created.

  7. Next, to begin diagnostic logging, associate the audit & diagnostic settings record with a configuration. To do this, create a configuration or use an existing configuration, and then select the audit record in the Audit & Diagnostics Settings attribute on the Configuration form. More information: Manage access using Unified Service Desk configuration

Add user information to Audit & Diagnostics Settings logging

The User Schema Settings area provides a list of User entity attributes that can be added to an audit and diagnostics record. The values you select in the Audit & Diagnostics Settings record are included in the audit and diagnostics data that is recorded. Instead of identifying users by first and last name alone, there are many attributes you can use to uniquely identify each user in the audit and diagnostic logs, such as Active Directory Guid, Home Phone, or Primary Email. If a user schema value is null or empty an entry is not recorded in the audit logs.

Warning

Audit and diagnostics logs can contain personally identifiable information and should only be stored in a secure location.

Deactivate or activate an Audit & Diagnostics Settings record

  1. In the Active Audit & Diagnostics Settings view, choose the record you want to deactivate.

  2. On the actions toolbar, click DEACTIVATE.

    From the Inactive Audit & Diagnostics Settings view, use similar steps to activate records that are deactivated.

See Also

MSDN: Manage Options for Unified Service Desk
MSDN: Global Manager (Hosted Control)
Administer and manage Unified Service Desk

Unified Service Desk 2.0

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