From the moment a customer record is created in Spektrix, the system tracks every change that is made and records it in the Customer Audit. This article looks at what the Audit is, how it looks and how you can report on the information it contains.
NOTE: this came into effect in April 2017, as part of Release 48. All audit activity from before that time will display with less detail and will show a single line any time a change was made, but not provide the specifics of what that change was.
Where is it and what does it look like?
You can find the Customer Audit in the Sales Interface, within the Customers tab. To see a specific customer’s Audit, search for the customer and then scroll down to the bottom of their record.
Click on the Audit option, and you’ll see the Audit details for that customer, defaulting to the oldest changes first. Here’s an example of how that might look:
- User: the username of whoever made each change. Any changes made online will show up with the user Web.
- Update method: the way in which each change was made. There are four possible options here:
- User: made by a Spektrix user or online.
- AutoTag: made when an Auto Tag applies or drops off.
- Bulk: made when bulk changes are made via a Customer List.
- Import: made when data was imported into the system.
- Narrative: the details of what was changed, displayed in as clear a way as possible.
- Date: the date and time at which each change was made.
The example above is from a customer record which has just been created, by a box office user named Matt. You can see that a single user has made all of the changes; what’s actually happened is that the system has recorded everything that was included in the new customer record - name, address and email address.
A note on Auto Tags
It’s possible for Auto Tags to apply under various circumstances, each of which will determine how the Audit represents what’s happened.
If an Auto Tag is applied or removed following a transaction, in the User column the Audit will list either the user who made the transaction, if it was made in the Sales Interface, or Web if it’s an online transaction.
Alternatively, if an Auto Tag is applied or removed overnight, the User listed will be spektrix/autotagging.
Narratives
The Audit captures almost everything that can happen to a customer record and displays it as a Narrative. We’re not going to list every possible permutation here, but instead we’ve provided a quick list of some of the types of narrative that you might see in the Audit:
- Set: a value has been set for the first time in a field.
- i.e. Contact Preference set - Standard Post
- Changed: an existing value has been edited to a new value.
- i.e. Phone number changed - from 01234567890 to 01234 123456
- Removed: an existing value has been deleted.
- i.e. Tag removed - Customer Tags: Missing Email
There are also a range of possibilities dealing with accounts merging into one another, and becoming active or inactive.
If you look at a Customer Audits report (see reports section below) you’ll see that Narratives are in fact broken down into multiple parts, but in the Sales Interface you only see the main Narrative. If you’re only using the Audit for troubleshooting or checking individual customers, you don’t need to worry about the different parts that display in reports.
NOTE: when multiple narratives occur at the same time, for example when more than one field is added or changed, the Audit will display one line per narrative.
Merging and Converting records
When merging two customer records, the record that survives will include in its Audit everything that was modified during the merge - i.e. any fields which were created or changed. It will also detail the names of the two customers involved in the merge.
When converting a customer’s record from an Individual to an Organisation or vice versa, the Audit will display a line showing that the customer has been converted. It will either show Converted from… or Converted to… depending on exactly what happened.
The customer’s record will retain all of the Audit details that it originally had, although the process differs slightly depending on which way around the conversion happened:
- If converting from Individual to Organisation the Organisation will inherit the details from the Individual, while a new Individual will be created and set to be the Primary Contact for the Organisation.
- If converting from Organisation to Individual the Organisation record will be deleted and a new Individual created with all of the existing details carried over.
Reporting on the Audit
In addition to displaying the Audit data in the Sales Interface, it can also be output in a specific type of report - a Customer Audits report. The purpose of this report type is to provide a detailed audit trail of customers for tracking changes to things like Contact Preferences, and it’s been designed so that the output of the report can be easily transferred into third party databases.
The output of this report type lists out one line per Audit item, so for each customer included in the report there will be one line for every item that displays in the Audit in the Sales Interface.
There isn’t a Standard report using this report type yet, so if you would like to have a Customer Audits report added to your system, please get in touch with the Spektrix Support Team who will be able to advise further.
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If you have any further questions about the Customer Audit, please get in touch with the Spektrix Support Team.