Arun Vinoth @ Dynamics

Arun Vinoth @ Dynamics

https://arundynamix.blogspot.com

Blank Audit records and empty ChangedData rows

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Blank Audit records and empty ChangedData rows

Ever wonder, why are we seeing blank entries in Dynamics CRM audit? I pass them without giving much importance and this Stack Overflow question made me to take a stab on that behavior couple of years back. Later on, I forgot about that behavior and recently another user concerned about it and storage space in this SO question.


If there is no audit data to capture and why this is even getting stored as a record in backend. Also it is confusing users when seeing a blank entry in UI as well. Only MS can answer this.

The rootcause I noticed is, when the audit is enabled in Org level and entity level, but disabled on an attribute level - and when that attribute is only changed in a transaction, then there is a chance of blank row and changedData column is empty along with empty AttributeMask column.


If you want to understand more deeply how these delimited values are stored in auditbase table - read my answer in this thread. I explained how this data can be restructured again and make a sense out of it.

There is an usual ask in client projects and community - how can we query the audit data and build a PowerBI report on top of it. 

We can use SDK method also on-demand to decipher the audit data and mimic how CRM UI Audit summary is generated. I have played around Audit for quite some time - it is always interesting to explore the internal mechanics of Dynamics :)

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