The record of a file
Every action on a file leaves an entry in the workspace audit trail: what was decided, by what, under which rule, and what happened. That covers adding a file, changing it, linking it, and being refused permission to do any of those. The trail sits beside the file's own version chain and answers a different question — not what the document says, but how it came to say it.
The questions the trail answers#
| Event | Recorded | Where you look |
|---|---|---|
| A file is added | Who added it, from which surface, and the file it created | The Decision Log, and the file's first version |
| A change is run | The request behind it, the tool, the person who confirmed, and the version produced | The Decision Log, and the new version |
| A change is refused | The refusal and its reason. No version is written | The Decision Log only |
| A file is linked to a record | Who linked it and to what | The Decision Log, and the record |
| A file is used to produce another | The new file's provenance names the request that made it | The produced file |
The refusal row is the one that makes the trail worth reading. A decision not to act is still a decision, and a workspace where only successes are recorded cannot tell the difference between something that never came up and something Connect declined to do.
Two records, side by side#
- The version chain
- Belongs to the file. Says what the document was at each point. Read it when the contents matter.
- The audit trail
- Belongs to the workspace. Says what was decided and by whom. Read it when the responsibility matters.
- Where they meet
- A change appears in both: a new version on the file, an entry in the trail. Neither is derived from the other, so a gap between them is itself informative.
Neither is editable. An entry is never rewritten to agree with what happened later, which is the property that makes it evidence rather than a summary — the same reasoning behind deriving control state from the log.
What the trail does not hold#
- Not every read. The trail records decisions and actions, not each time somebody opened a preview. It is an accountability record, not a surveillance log.
- Not the document's contents. Entries name the file and the version; the text stays in the file where it belongs.
- Not anything from another workspace. Audit rows are scoped like every other row, so a trail shows one workspace's actions and cannot be widened.
- Not a retention policy. The trail says what happened; how long files are kept is an administrative question, answered under account and access.
Reading it when something looks wrong#
Start from the file, not the log. Open its versions and find the one where the document changed character.
Result You have a moment to search for instead of a day to scroll through.
Open the Decision Log and find the entry for that change.
Result It names the request, the tool and the person who confirmed it — including the case where the confirmation came through Needs You rather than in the moment.
Look for refusals around the same time.
Result A pattern of refusals before a successful change usually explains an odd result better than the change itself does.
If the file is linked to the wrong record, the link has its own entry.
Result You find out who made it and when, which is normally enough to know whether it was a mistake or a decision.
Questions#
Can I see who read a document?
No, and that is deliberate. The trail records what changed the state of the workspace — additions, changes, links, refusals — because those are the things somebody may later have to account for. Logging every view would make the record longer and the signal in it much weaker.
Does the Assistant's own activity appear?
Yes, and it is attributed to the Assistant rather than to you, with the person who confirmed the action recorded separately. Keeping the actor and the approver apart is the point of separating the agent's authority from the person's.
How long does a file's trail last?
Entries are not removed as part of normal use — nothing in the ordinary course of working with a file prunes them. Retention beyond that is an administrative matter rather than a property of the file service.