Setting Up Auditing in Dynamics 365 CRM

Auditing in Dynamics 365 CRM can help your organization understand when important events occurred, who performed them, and how data changed. Configuring auditing requires an administrator role in CRM. Because audit logs contribute to CRM capacity, administrators should also consider which data actually needs to be audited and how long that history needs to be retained.

What Does Auditing Track?

Dynamics 365 auditing can track several types of events, including:

• Creating, updating, and deleting records
• Changes to CRM security roles
• Association and disassociation of many-to-many relationships
• Sharing records between users
• Deletion of audit logs
• Users accessing the application
• Changes to auditing configuration

For record changes, auditing can preserve information about what the data contained before and after the event. Changes to security roles can show which role was updated and which privileges changed. Auditing can also capture changes to many-to-many relationships, such as adding Contacts to a Marketing List or adding stakeholders to an Opportunity. Many-to-one relationships are tracked as record updates because these relationships create lookup fields on the related records.

Understand the Difference Between Auditing and Activity Logging

The CRM audit log doesn't capture every type of user activity. Other Dataverse events are handled through activity logging. Examples include:

• Exporting data
• Viewing data
• Changes to system configuration
• Downloading reports

Auditing this type of activity requires Microsoft's Purview Compliance Portal.

Turn On Auditing for Your CRM Environment

Auditing isn't enabled by default. You need to opt into it because not every organization needs auditing and the resulting logs consume CRM capacity. Auditing is enabled separately for each environment. To configure it, open the Power Platform Admin Center, select the appropriate environment, and open its settings. Under the auditing and logs settings, you'll find options for configuring and reviewing auditing. The primary areas include:

• Audit Settings
• Audit Summary View
• Entity and Field Audit Settings

The Audit Summary View provides access to the system-wide audit log, while Entity and Field Audit Settings are used to determine which tables and fields are audited.

Configure Your Audit Settings

Audit Settings includes several important options. Start Auditing turns auditing on for the environment. Log Access records when users access the system. This can provide useful information, but it can also introduce additional noise because application users associated with services and other Dynamics 365 functionality may appear in these logs. Another setting allows audit logs to be sent to the Microsoft Purview Compliance Portal. Your organization should select the settings that make sense for its security, compliance, and troubleshooting requirements.

Choose an Audit Log Retention Policy

One of the most important auditing decisions is how long to retain your logs. Audit logs are part of your CRM capacity. If you choose to keep audit history forever, your log usage will continue to increase over time. A shorter retention period automatically removes older audit information. For example, selecting a 90-day retention period means audit history older than 90 days will be automatically deleted. This helps control capacity growth, but you won't be able to look as far back into your CRM history. Choosing a retention period requires balancing two considerations:

• How far back your organization needs to access audit history
• How much CRM capacity you're willing to use for audit logs

After choosing the appropriate settings and retention period, save your changes to apply them to the environment.

Enable Auditing for Multiple Tables

Dynamics 365 also provides options for enabling auditing across groups of standard tables. These groups can include commonly used, Sales, Marketing, and Customer Service tables. The available options can help enable auditing across several related tables more efficiently. However, you don't necessarily need to audit every available table. For greater control, auditing can also be configured individually.

Decide Which Data Is Worth Auditing

The data you audit should reflect what's important to your organization. The more tables and fields you audit, the more quickly your audit log can grow. Tables that generate records very frequently can have an especially significant impact on capacity. For example, you may not need to audit heavily used activity records such as Tasks or Emails unless your organization has a specific reason for tracking them. If you're unsure where to begin, look at the tables included in your applications and the fields displayed on the forms employees use. If a table isn't included in an app or a field isn't being used on a form, there's a good chance it isn't important enough to audit. Auditing isn't limited to standard Dynamics 365 tables. Custom tables can also have auditing enabled.

Turn On Auditing for an Individual Table

To configure table-level auditing, open Entity and Field Audit Settings from the Power Platform Admin Center. This opens the Power Apps editor, where you can locate the table you want to configure. You can filter the available tables or use search to quickly find a particular table, such as Account. Open the table's properties and expand the advanced options. Enable Audit changes to its data, then save your changes. When auditing is enabled for a table, its columns are enabled for auditing as well.

Choose Which Fields to Audit

You don't necessarily need to audit every field in an audited table. After enabling table-level auditing, review its columns and determine which ones contain information you actually need to track. For example, you might decide that changes to an Account's Website field aren't important enough to retain in your audit history. You can open that column, expand its advanced options, disable auditing, and save your change. Reducing unnecessary field-level auditing can help control the amount of audit data your environment generates.

Disable Auditing for Multiple Fields

At the time of this Fast Class recording, Dynamics 365's auditing settings were in a hybrid state while Microsoft moved functionality from the older CRM customization tools into Power Apps. The older customization editor provided the ability to select multiple fields and modify their auditing settings together. From the older customization editor, you could:

1. Locate the appropriate table.
2. Open its fields.
3. Select multiple fields.
4. Choose Edit.
5. Change the Auditing setting to Disabled.
6. Apply the change to the selected fields.

This could make removing unnecessary fields from auditing considerably faster than editing them individually.

Organize Audited Tables with Solutions

Solutions can also provide a convenient way to organize your auditing configuration. Solutions are commonly used to move customizations from a sandbox environment into production, but they can also help administrators organize related customizations. For example, you could create a solution containing the tables you've enabled for auditing. This gives you a convenient place to find and manage those tables when you need to review your auditing configuration.

Build an Auditing Strategy That Fits Your Organization

Effective auditing isn't about recording as much information as possible. It's about retaining the information that provides value to your organization. Start by enabling auditing for your environment, then identify the tables and fields that contain information you genuinely need to track. Avoid auditing high-volume records or unnecessary fields without a clear business reason. Finally, establish an audit log retention policy that balances your need for historical information against CRM capacity. With those decisions in place, Dynamics 365 auditing can provide useful historical information for troubleshooting, security, compliance, and understanding how important CRM data has changed over time.