How to use Audit feature to troubleshoot random Data issues

2 minute read time.

Have you ever had a situation that randomly one or more of your data fields was blank or changed and you can't pinpoint why and how this has happened, or also you can't determine the steps to duplicate so you can get help from Sage ERP X3 Support?

Audit feature in Sage ERP X3 can potentially help with that.

Before we talk about the steps to turn on auditing, I should mention that over-auditing is not good either, and having audit turned on for a heavy used table can decrease performance, so if we are turning it on for troubleshooting a data problem, it's always good to turn it off after you have gathered necessary data.

Now a real example:

Imagine you are a customer that randomly you notice that in Purchase requests the CREUSR ( user created field ) is blank.

How do you trouble shoot that? The answer: By turning on auditing you can at least get a sense of when and from what user this issue started from.

  1. Open Development, Data and Parameters, Tables, Tables.
  2. Select the table that you like to audit, in this case PREQUIS (purchase requests).
  3. Click on Audit Tab.
  4. Check mark Creation, Modification and Deletion (if you want)
  5. On the fields you can enter the field you like to audit, in this case I like to Audit CREUSR field , and choose the appropriate operator, in this case I am choosing Indifferent, so anytime this field changes , it will record.





  6. Click Save.
  7. Click Validate.
  8. Select OK for the validation, (Forced validation works in a different way ) for this purpose we will select OK.



    Before we pass this step, it's good to mention you can also audit all fields on this table by right clicking on a field and choose All the fields.




    Now let's test it and see what it records.

  9. Open Purchasing, Purchase requests, Purchase requests.
  10. Click New and create a new purchase request.
  11. Open Usage, Audit, Tables.
  12. Enter PREQUIS for the table and enter the proper date and click Search.
  13. Right click on the line that represents the purchase request number and select Details of fields.



  14. Notice that it shows the previous value and new value of any field you had set the auditing for.

 

Conclusion:

Auditing tables can give you an insight to changes that was done to a field or record, but over auditing can influence performance,(Keep that in mind)

What is Next:

Review  HTG - Auditing Data Changes KB 18694 and  HTG- Table Triggers KB 18582 (You need to be logged in to support.na.sage.com to review KB article)