The Audit History Data Insight

The Audit History data insight gathers all events that are tracked in the AAI database for each active scheduler. These can be events related to job and jobstream executions, or job or jobstream definitions, or system events. {@VENU:I'm quite sure it incorrect to say that execution data is included in the Audit History. How would you summarize the kinds of events that are included: "Everything except execution data, which is managed by the logging activities"???? Thank you! } {@VENU: Does the scheduler need to be just defined, connected, or active ?}

This page includes the following:

{Explain the purpose of the data insight and its value, including whom it would be typically interesting for. Some questions that might help get meatier information here: Is it something that you would generally schedule? Is it helpful on dashboards? For whom?

{How might you use it in combination with other data insights to get a more complete picture of some aspect of jobstream executions or scheduler workloads? For more than general information or brief examples, consider describing a more detailed use case, which you can add in the section at the end of this topic or, for more complex or numerous use cases, you might want to put them in a separate topic. }

The Audit History data insight is a tool to track what happened when and who did it. You need this kind of tracking in two situations:

• Triage: When problems arise without an immediately identifiable cause, you can examine past events to get precise details about what happened at or shortly before the problem occurred.

  For example, suppose that you start having problems with a job run that started two days ago. Examining the Audit History can reveal that the job definition was updated just before then. Now you can investigate whether those changes are the cause of your current delays.

• Compliance: Whether it is for company, customer, or governmental compliance, you can have a record to refer to when addressing inquiries about past activities.

  For example, you might get a call from your compliance department that they want a list of all jobs that were changed on a particular day to be able to match them to work orders or change tickets that were issued. You can quickly create an Audit History data insight for the changes to job definitions on the requested day and scheduler, and print it, download a CSV, or even attach the output to an email directly to the compliance team.

Benefits

{Post 6.5.2AUTHORS: When this report is available for other schedulers, we should revise this section to have benefits for all scheduler types (easy to read; AAI can keep a long history outside of your workload scheduler's production environment, etc.) and then specifically for AutoSys and any others, as appropriate. —Suzanne???}

Whereas workload schedulers generally have some sort of audit reporting capabilities, AAI and its Audit History data insight offer the following advantages that are not easily matched by other systems:

• You can include data from more than one scheduler in one view.

• The AAI web interface presents the data in an easy to understand structure and format.

• You can easily manipulate the data with filters, sorts, and the column configuration options on your screen and see the results in real time.

• Because AAI and its databases are separate from your scheduler server, you can afford to keep many more years of audit history data ready at your fingertips, without compromising the performance of your workload schedulers.

Specific benefits for AutoSys users

In the case of AutoSys specifically, although it has its own audit history capabilities, the problem is that different kinds of events are tracked in three separate archive files, one each for events, machines, and audits. This leaves you having to piece the data together to get a complete picture. AAI brings all those activities into the same Audit History data insight, giving you a complete overview of archive events in one place with no extra effort on your part.

Using filters, you can focus on any number of event types, even if they span different files in the originating AutoSys workload scheduler.

On the Audit History data insight, each change has one line item on the Audit History data insight. This consolidated presentation makes it easier to identify what line items constitute a single change.

 {@VENU: FYI, although I would like to have a sample with each data insight type description, I've decided not to include a sample screenshot of the Audit History for this release. There are two reasons: (1) After release, Martin Rybzcynski or Jon Hiett will have installed 6.5.2 on their demo environment, which has much better data (even if we blur out object names) than anything we have been able to produce in our environments. (2) In this case, it isn't 100% necessary because I have a sample with the screenshot in the topic Using a Data Insight, which describes the basic landscape and features of any data insight. Suzanne}

{Post 6.5.2AUTHORS: Add a sample of the Audit History, probably a screenshot of a PDF, but maybe also a screenshot of the web page. Talk to the other writers and let's make a decision. It might be easier to decide after we have a few more data insight types—Suzanne???}

Quick Filtering on the Audit History

You can quick filter the Audit History data insight from the graphic in the following way:

• Click any segment. It pops out of the whole and the table is filtered to show only the data rows that have the value that the segment represents.

• Click another segment and it, too, pops out. Now the table filters for both those values. You can continue to click segments consecutively, and each pops out and that value is added to the table filter.

• To remove a quick filter value, click the corresponding segment. It pops back into the whole, and the value is removed from the table filter.

Notice that the total number of rows at the bottom on the table adjusts as you apply and remove quick filters. After quick filtering to see only the data rows with common key values, you can sort and arrange the table data to surface patterns and outliers.

Group-By Options on the Audit History

With the Group By setting of the Audit History data insight, you can choose what is summarized to make up the slices in the pie chart. Whereas the whole pie chart represents the total of all events that match the filter criteria, each slice shows the proportion of those events that belong to the each value in the Group By column value.

The following are the columns that you can choose for the Group By setting on the Audit History data insight:

• Scheduler (default)

• Type

You can define the default Group By option in the Filters settings of the data insight, or you can change it from the Group By field while viewing the data insight.

Best Practice: Schedule Daily Downloads

Because the Audit History is a tool for tracking past events for reconstructing them for audit purposes—as the name indicates—it is good to schedule a CSV file to be produced and emailed to yourself and possibly also the appropriate departments daily.

Tips for success:

• Audit history data is typically voluminous. Therefore schedule the emails at short and regular intervals so that the attachment does not clog your recipients' inboxes. {@VENU: Is this garbage? Would this "clog" an inbox, or just overload it, or neither of them? Is this tip relevant at all??? Thank you, Suzanne} {Suzanne: This might be good as a general tip for scheduling big reports. Maybe in scheduling and a snippet to be used in each data insight type topic???}

• Use a clearly identifying subject and description, so that your recipients can set up their email program to automatically archive them to a specified folder.

{Suzanne V24: Somehow it would be good to list columns in the Understanding topics and the Defining topics, and, if applicable, the Group By options. Same maybe with Filters. Figure this out and carry it out.~???}

The following are the data columns that are available in an Audit History data insight. You can define filters based on the data in these columns and you can choose to show or hide them in the table. The ones marked with an asterisk (*) are required columns and cannot be hidden. They contain key data or data that is essential to the purpose of an Audit History data insight.

• Type*: The event type that occurred. The following are the filter options for event types that can be collected for the audit history:

  • Calendar Definition: Any changes related to a calendar definition

  • Connection Profile Definition: Any changes related to the connection profile

  • Job Definition: Any changes related to a job definition

  • Machine Definition: Any changes related to the machine definition

  • Monitor/Browser Definition: Any changes related to monitoring or browser definition

  • Override Definition: Any changes related to a one-time override

  • {@VENU: For the following three, is there anything else to say here? Is this list complete? In all situations??? Thank you, Suzanne}

  • autosys_secure command: Occurrences of this kind of event

  • autotrack command: Occurrences of this kind of event

  • sendevent command: Occurrences of this kind of event

• ID: The internal ID of the event. The sequential ID number tells you precisely the order of events. {@VENU: "Internal" to which product? Is this an AAI assigned ID or is it coming from the workload scheduler itself??? Thank you, Suzanne}

• Time*: The time that the event occurred, in the time zone that is defined for this data insight.

• User*: The user whose actions triggered the event.

• Name: The name of the object that was touched, if applicable.

• Scheduler*: The AAI scheduler name for the workload scheduler on which the event occurred {@VENU: Why is Scheduler a required column to show? If I filter for one scheduler, then don't I have a useless column taking up space. Is anything that I can Group By a required column??? Thank you, Suzanne}

• Value: Details about the type of event, such as the full command for a sendEvent or autoTrack command event

Use Case

{I wonder whether a use case is necessary if the purpose is rather straightforward, as I think it might be for Audit History? See how these develop Post 6.5.2, discuss with the Tech Writing team, and update here if needed. ??? — Suzanne}

See also:

• Using a Data Insight

• Adding or Editing an Audit History Data Insight

• Understanding Data Insights