Effective tools to easily audit changes in Creatio

It is important to know when key data is changed

Depending our you business model there are times when it is extremely important to know when key data changes in Creatio. It may be the type of an account went from prospect to customer, the status changed from active to inactive, or a key contact had a new title and role in a key account.

There are two rather simple yet effective ways this can be accomplished in Creatio.

I. Change Log for Creatio - from Marketplace

The first one which I would recommend first is the use of the Creatio Marketplace application from Samarsoft, "Change Log for Creatio". This add-on allows you to track and see right in the Creatio interface how and when Creatio records got changed.

Use case: To store the history of changes in the section records that allows not only to quickly determine the author and date of changes, but also to analyze the history of changes to that section's records.

Key Features:

Can setup a list of objects (sections) where changes should be tracked,
Track the who and when the change occurred
Manually delete logs after some period of time

Note: This "Change Log for Creatio" is not reflected in the out-of-box Creatio changes log. Data is placed in the SmrLoggingRecord entity.

How to setup what to audit in the log:

Once the Marketplace app is installed go to "System Designer->Logging" menu option.

System option logging

Next you select the Entity and then add each column (field) you want to audit. This shows the auditing of several activity columns:

Audit activity

We like to audit these columns in our contact records: Phone number, job title, status, Do Not Use Email, and if they get our electronic newsletters.

Contact auditing

Where the changes are shown:

Change history is available under a specific section record, "History of Changes" tab, for objects with logging has been configured.

Activities->History of Changes:

Activity history of changes

Contact->History of Changes:

Contact history of changes

Settings:

The Logging system can be configured only by system users authorized to perform ‘Access to “Change logs”’ operation (‘CanManageLogging’ code). To configure the rights, go to ‘System designer’ section / ‘Operation permissions’, Also, you can configure rights for browsing logs and for deleting logs.

II. Use Out-of-Box Change Log in Creatio

When working with Creatio, you many need to setup logging of changes made to your data. For example, to track who and when someone changed an account name.

This solution provides a record of the events of creating, modifying, and deleting. Additionally you can not only audit changes in a section but also in lookups.

To setup logging, you can use either the [Change Log] or any other Creatio section, lookup, or detail.

Method 1: Setting up logging in the [Change Log] section:

Open the System Designer
User [Users and administration], click <Change log>. NOTE: users require permission to the related [Change Log] section system operation. So verify this first.
In the list of objects, find the needed object of the section, detail, or lookup.
Select the section from the list or find it using the search bar. Click the title of the needed object. For example, the "Contact" object.
On the page that opens, enable logging via the corresponding switch. NOTE: If you click <Apply>, Creatio will start logging according to the current settings, i.e. it will record the events of creating, modifying, and deleting.
Setup the list of columns for logging when a record has changed. For example, use the [Email], [Mobile phone], and [Business phone] columns. Click [Add] to add a new column.
Click <Apply> to save the settings. After you apply the settings, Creatio will start monitoring the changes and recording them in the [Change log] section. For contacts, logging records are found in the SysContactLog entity.