The “Black Box” of Your Business: What Audit Trails Reveal
Whenever you add, change or delete something in PowerShift, the change is recorded in one or more audit trail files. Like a flight recorder on an aircraft, audit trails are effectively the "black box" of your business, capturing critical details such as who made a change, what was changed, when it occurred, and sometimes even why it happened.
Audit trails contain a wealth of valuable information, enabling you to:
- evaluate security protocols based on patterns of user access and behavior
- identify inefficiencies in workflows by tracking system usage
- recognize areas requiring education based on system throughput
- determine the operation or sequence of actions that led to an unexpected result
While most often associated with compliance and security, audit trails can also keep everyone informed of changes (e.g., orders being cancelled or rescheduled).
Audit Trails In PowerShift
PowerShift offers comprehensive audit trails:
- Audit Trail Maintenance (XAT) enables you to selectively activate audit trails for the files most critical to your business.
- Audit Trail Listing (ATR) outputs the contents of an audit trail file. Selection options enable you to limit the list by date, user, action, field or program. See sample output.
The Audit Button
As you can probably imagine, combing through audit trail files can get pretty tedious, so an Audit button is available in many inquiries and maintenance apps when audit trails are active. Clicking Audit pops up a list of all the changes made to the displayed data. If the data comes from multiple files, you select the audit trail you want to see. See example.
Order Change Reports
The order change reports mine information from audit trails to capture specific types of changes to critical order files.
- Sales Order Change Report (AUDSO) mines the Sales Order Header (O1A) and Sales Order Lines (O1) audit trails.
- Purchase Order Change Report (AUDPO) mines the PO Header (VP1) and PO Lines (VP1B) audit trails.
- Manufacturing Order Change Report (AUDMFG) mines the Manufacturing Order Master (MP2) audit trail.
- Planned Order Change Report (AUDMOP) mines the Planned Manufacutring Orders (MP1) audit trail.
These reports can be scheduled (through JOBS) and the output customized to include the changes most relevant to your business -- e.g., quantities, dates, cancellations -- and to the receipt (e.g., a sales rep or planner).
To Summarize
Audit trail data can help pinpoint unauthorized access, resolve operational bottlenecks, troubleshoot errors, and communicate changes. If you have any questions about audit trails or scheduling the order change reports, contact helpdesk.
