Note: Auditing Settings between SharePoint 2013 on Prem and Office 365 Differ

This has been something I have been meaning to point out for a little while and it came up in conversation today which prompted me to take the 10 minutes to share it.

There are some limitations to emerging Cloud technologies, some which may never get addressed. In this case, I’m not sure if auditing “Opening or downloading documents, viewing items in lists, or viewing item properties” is something that will get flipped on later but at this writing (December 31, 2013 – so close to 2014 I should almost wait the 9 hours to post it then), that functionality is not in the Office 365 SharePoint Online cloud offering.

So there you have it.  Auditing in Office 365/SharePoint Online does NOT include auditing of opening or downloading documents, viewing items in list or their properties. Further to that, I’ve successfully helped firms determine if someone has read something using the Windows IIS logs but you won’t  have access to those guys in Office 365 either.  At this writing, I’m not aware of any other alternative.

Where to Find your Site Collection Auditing Settings

First off, perhaps you didn’t know you could define auditing settings?  If so, check them out in your Site Collection, if you have Site Collection Administrator permissions. Note: there is a price to pay, in performance to enabling auditing, so don’t just flip it on everywhere just because you can.

How to configure audit settings: http://office.microsoft.com/en-001/sharepoint-server-help/configure-audit-settings-for-a-site-collection-HA102031737.aspx

Auditing Settings available for on Premise SharePoint 2013 Implementations

On to the visuals.  This is a screenshot from my local SharePoint 2013 On Premise implementation, within a Site Collections Auditing Settings.

Auditing Settings available in Office 365 Site Collections

And here is the Office 365 equivalent.

Happy New Year folks!