How to use field inclusion list with table field auditing - Support and Troubleshooting

How to use field inclusion list with table field auditing Issue  There are two methods for which individual fields in a record can be individually configured to allow or disallow auditing. The exclusion listing method, which is detailed in another KB Article (see the Additional Information section at the bottom of this article for a direct link to that article) is designed for cases in which most fields should be audited, but there are a few individual fields which should not. Alternatively, the inclusion listing method (which is described in this article) is for the cases in which most fields in the article should not be audited, but there are several fields that should be.

Note that if no fields on a table are allow-listed then no audit will be generated for any updates to a record, but the deletion of the record will be audited with the creation of the corresponding sys_audit_delete record.

To use inclusion list audit configuration, the table itself must first be properly configured for the usage of inclusion listing. See the instructions below which describe the steps needed to configure the table to enable the use of inclusion list auditing on the table itself.

Procedure The first step in using inclusion listing for a particular table is to configure the table (if not already done so) itself to use inclusion list auditing. The following steps show how to configure a table to allow inclusion listing on the individual fields of the table:

1. Configuring a Table to use Inclusion list Field Auditing 1. Log in to the instance with an account having admin rights to the instance.

2. From the Menu Navigator, browse to the following location on the instance: System Definition -> Dictionary .

3. A list of Dictionary records on the instance will appear. Filter the list to locate the Collection record for the specific table for which you want to configure inclusion list auditing. The record needed will have a Table name equal to the name of the table and a Type field with a value of Collection . If the Audit column is not displayed as a column in the list, personalize the list to ensure the column titled Audit is shown on it.

4. Double click the Audit field in the list corresponding to this record. If this value is showing a value other than "true" modify this column for this record to show as true . Click the green checkmark to save the change to the record.

5. After modifying the Audit field for the specific record, click the Information icon for this record to open the record for editing.

6. Click the Advanced view link as found in the Related Links section for this record which will display additional fields associated with the record. If the Advanced view link does not appear on the form, the record is already displayed in the necessary Advanced view.

7. Locate the Attributes field in this Dictionary record.

8. If the Attributes field is currently empty, type the following into the Attributes text box:

audit_type=whitelist

9. If, however, there is already text in the Attributes field, add a leading comma before appending the new audit_type attribute to this field.

10. Click the Update button to save the record.

11. Once the table itself has been configured for inclusion list auditing, the specific fields for the table which should be inclusion listed should then be configured.

2. Setting the inclusion list of Fields to be Audited The next step should thus be to determine the specific fields that need to be audited on the table.

The following steps will need to be performed on each field that you want to retain audit information for.

As detailed in the steps above, the root table to which this field is associated should have the Audit checkbox checked (set to true) such that the table itself is configured to enable auditing as well as having the audit_type attribute set to a value of inclusion list.

1. Once the specific fields are determined that should be audited, browse to the following location on the instance using the Menu Navigator: System Definition -> Dictionary.

2. A list of Dictionary records for that instance should then be displayed. Filter the list to locate the record that has a Table name corresponding to the table on which the field is found and a Field name which corresponds to the field on that table you intend to have audited. Click the Dictionary record corresponding to this field to open that record for editing.

3. Click the related link titled Advanced view to display additional fields associated with the record on the form.

4. Once the record opens, click into the Attributes field. If this field currently has no text populated, simply add the text audit. If there is already text in the field, add the following to the end of the current text (including the leading comma) found in the textbox: audit

5. If however, it is necessary to instead disable this auditing from this field, remove the audit attribute from the field as well as any leading comma.

6. Click the Update button to save the change to the Dictionary record.

7. Once this setting has been completed, the field and table corresponding to the Dictionary record will then begin auditing this field (or disable the auditing of the field in the case in which the audit attribute was already set for the field).

Related Links This article describes one method of configuring auditing for specific fields on a table. For information regarding how to activate or de-activate auditing at a table-level or how to use the exclusion listing method of determining auditing for specific fields in a table see KB Article KB0723730 - How to activate/deactivate auditing for a specific table or field . For general information regarding configuration of tables/columns for audit, and the behavior of audit-related attributes, see KB1648738