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Auditing enables administrators to keep a reliable log of what is happening with important content on a site collection. Administrators are able to retrieve the entire history of actions taken by a particular user and can also retrieve the entire history of actions taken during a particular date range. Knowing who has done what with which information is critical for many business requirements such as regulatory compliance and records management.
Site administrators can use auditing to track how documents and items are used throughout a site collection. All of the events that you select to audit are captured in audit reports based on Microsoft Office Excel and are available from the Auditing Reports page. You can also create a custom report that includes a number of these events over a specified date range, within a specific area of the site collection, or filtered to an individual user.
The audit log captures the following information for the events that are selected to be audited.
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Item name and location
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Site from which an event originated
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Item type (for example, list or document)
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User ID associated with the event
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Event date and time
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Action taken on the item
Although there is no way to modify events once they are logged, site administrators can delete items from the audit log report.
Notes:
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Information management policies can also include event auditing.
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Auditing provides information on when an item is changed, but not the details of what has changed. Thus, it should not be considered as a document versioning or backup tool.
Configure audit settings for a site collection
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On the site collection home page, click Site actions, point to Site settings, and then click Modify All Site Settings.
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On the Site Settings page, in the Site Collection Administration section, click Site collection audit settings.
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Select the events you want to create an audit log for, and then click OK.
When you select an event to be audited, it will be audited for every item in the site collection each time the event occurs. This can potentially generate a large number of audit events, particularly when the setting for viewing items or item properties is enabled.
