What an audit trail is for

An audit trail is rarely interesting until the day it is needed. Then it is the only thing anyone wants to read. A client asks when a document was sent. A colleague asks who changed a setting. An adviser asks how an amount came about. The answer should not depend on anyone's memory, including the assistant's.

What the trail contains#

The trail in a Nabcloud workspace is append-only: entries are added, and not edited or removed afterwards. It records changes in one workspace, such as seats and roles, agents and their keys, grants of secrets, billing, deletions and deployments. Each entry says what happened, when, who or which agent did it, and where an approval was involved, who approved it.

This is a record of consequential changes. It is not a transcript of every conversation, and it is not meant to be one.

Reading it#

You can work with the trail in four ways.

• Filter by actor, area, action, target and dates, or search for a text.
• History of one thing, for example everything that happened to one agent.
• Export the same selection as CSV, up to 5,000 rows at a time.
• Retention: owners and admins choose how long entries are kept, from 30 to 3,650 days.

The export is useful for your adviser or for your own files. The retention period is a decision for the office: a long period serves accountability, a short one serves data minimisation. Which is right for you depends on your obligations. Ask your adviser, and do not take a default as advice.

Three ordinary uses#

Questions after the fact. A client says an invoice never arrived. The trail shows when the invoice email was approved and by whom.

Reviewing access. Once a quarter, you look at changes to seats, roles and agents. A permission that was added for a short project and never removed is easy to spot.

Onboarding and offboarding. When a colleague joins or leaves, the trail shows what was changed on their behalf, so that you can confirm the arrangement is complete.

Why it supports approvals#

Approvals keep a person in the decision. The trail keeps the decision on record. Together they let an office hand preparation to assistants without losing sight of what was done. An assistant that works quickly and leaves a clear record is easier to trust than one that works quickly and leaves nothing.

Starting point#

Open the trail in your first week, before there is anything to look for. Set a retention period deliberately, export once to see what the file looks like, and decide who in the office will review it and how often.

More is in audit trail, and the overview is under approvals and audit.