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Field Level Auditing


There are two types of delivered auditing in PeopleSoft:

  • Field level auditing
  • Record level auditing

Field level auditing tracks changes to one or more fields on a PeopleSoft record and stores the results in the delivered PSAUDIT table.

Like record level auditing, field level auditing only applies to data updated through PeopleSoft and not directly through the database. So auditing will not apply to data updated by SQL scripts, SQRs and COBOLs unless they are specifically designed to update the audit table.

To enable field level auditing, simply update the record-field properties of the relevant fields on the PeopleSoft record. For instance, the following screenshot shows how to audit field add, change and delete, on the PROJECTNAME field of PSPROJECTDEFN:

field-audit-projectname.png

Once enabled, make changes to the relevant field of the relevant PeopleSoft record online and confirm your changes are audited by querying the table PSAUDIT.

The record PSAUDIT stores the old and new values of the field along with the audit action (e.g. A for Add, D for Delete and C for Change). It also stores the record name and key fields of of row in the PeopleSoft record that was modified so that you can track back to it. These are the values that appear in the fields KEY1 ... KEY15.

So for example, if you had field level auditing enabled on the field LASTUPDOPRID of the record PSPROJECTDEFN and the LASTUPDOPRID was changed, you would see:

  • The person that made the change (AUDIT_OPRID)
  • The date/time of the change (AUDIT_STAMP)
  • The audit action of change (C) (AUDIT_ACTN)
  • The record name of PSPROJECTDEFN
  • The field name of LASTUPDOPRID
  • The old value of LASTUPDOPRID before the change
  • The new value LASTUPDOPRID after the change
  • The project name (PROJECTNAME field) in KEY1as this is the first (and only) key of the PSPROJECTDEFN record.

Field auditing is good for tracking a few fields on a record. It becomes cumbersome to track when you have many fields on a particular record being audited. This is where record level auditing is more appropriate, particularly when you want to audit many or all changes on a record.

Record level auditing also uses its own audit table while field level auditing uses the delivered PSAUDIT record which can get very large if a lot of auditing is enabled.

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