Logging user activity (1 Viewer)

gakiss2

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I have developed an MS Access database (with no small thanks to those in in this forum who helped me with various challenges) that has grown to a point that there are a half dozen users. Particularly after going through some turnover in the department and for other potential forsee-able issues, I feel it may be valuable for my Database to keep track of who is using it and what they are doing. I am not overly concerned with security since the back end is on a server that the users can only access with credentials. But I want to be able to answer questions such as "Who changed the due date on that form?", "Did Matt log in on Tuesday?" or even "Which engineer is using the database the most?".

This is a much more general question that I typically have asked on this forum so I am not sure we can solve it with a few replies. At this point I am happy with some general direction. So far I am assuming that I need a new table, tblUserLog and that should be in the backend db. There is one main form I want to track so there should be an event on the form. I'm not sure what event. Basically when someone one changes any control on the form or maybe just some key controls. I suppose you could fire it off when a specific control gets focus but I'm interested in many different controls leading to lots of code and that seems like the less elegant way than to go off a form event, if that is possible. I guess you can tell I need help with this decision.
Then when whichever event we choose fires, add an entry to tblUserLog which contains the name of the user and contents of which ever fields we want to track the changes for. Then after all that, one could come up with a report that lists the changes by a specific user or the changes during a specific time change. Or even the changes for a specific record in the main table?? Or could the history be stored in the record itself??? on a multi value field that could display with time stamps???

Thanks in advance for guidance. I am sure I will post much more specific questions after I get elbow deep in this.
 

theDBguy

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Hi. This forum has a code repository where you might find a demo of what you are trying to do. Try searching for "audit trail." Good luck!
 

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