How does Auditor compare to Great Plains’ Activity Tracking? The Activity Tracking feature in Great Plains is different in its scope and purpose than Auditor. Here are the major differences.
First, Activity Tracking will track failed logins and failed accesses to forms and reports. It also tracks posting actions and process server actions, as well as access to Report Writer and Modifier. Auditor is not intended to track these things.
Where there is some overlap, Activity Tracking will track additions, deletions, and modifications of Master records, Setup records, and Transaction records. Master records include Employee Master, Customer Master, Vendor Master, etc. However, when a modification occurs on a record, Activity Tracking only tells you that a given record was modified, but does not tell you what was modified. On the other hand, Auditor will track not only Master records, it will track any and all records, including those in third party products. When a change is made to a given field, Auditor will track the field name, its old value, and the value it was changed to. Auditor gives much more detail on the specifics of changes.
Another issue with Activity Tracking is when it tracks changes for tables that have more than one field as a primary key. For instance, it will track Customer Address changes, but when it reports, it will only tell you the Customer ID. The Address ID will be missing. With Auditor, you will be able to capture both the Customer ID and the Address ID to determine which record was audited.
Auditor will allow you to pick and choose which tables or windows you wish to audit. If you only want some master tables, no setup tables, and a few transaction tables, it is entirely in your control. While the information you obtain for adds and deletes is essentially the same between products, the modifications are much more informative in Auditor. You capture which specific fields changed, as well as the old and new values. Additionally, you can capture notes for users to explain why they made a change. Modifications are the main reason to audit your system. While adds and deletes are useful to track, changing data is what often matters most.
Finally, Auditor has other abilities such as mapping data in fields to more useful values (like document types, rather than being 1, 2, 3, it is useful to see Quote, Order, Invoice, etc.). Auditor can also audit conditionally, and e-mail specific people when audits occur. Activity Tracking does not have any of these features.