SharePoint Online: How to View Audit Log Reports in Security & Compliance Center?

Requirement: View audit log reports in SharePoint Online.

How to view SharePoint Online Audit Logs?

The Audit log reports in SharePoint Online provides detailed information about specific actions that have been taken in your tenant, such as when a user creates, updates, or deletes an item, or when a user views a document. Audit log reports missing SharePoint Online? Well, SharePoint Audit log features are moved to Microsoft 365 Security & Compliance Center unified logging! We can’t trim or restrict audit log events in SharePoint Online anymore! If you go to “Audit Log Settings” on the site collection administration section of the site settings page, you’ll get the following:

So, to view audit logs, you should use Office 365 Security & Compliance Center site! In this tutorial, we will show you how to view audit logs for SharePoint Online in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center. This will include steps for narrowing down the results to a specific date range, user, or action and also exporting the results to a CSV file if needed.

Enable Audit Settings in Office 365

How to enable audit log reports in SharePoint Online? We must turn ON the audit logs feature in the Compliance center before you access the audit logs for SharePoint Online.

1. Log in to the Microsoft Office 365 admin center with Global Administrator permissions: https://admin.microsoft.com
2. Click on the “Show All” link and then “Compliance” under admin Centers in the left navigation.
3. In the Compliance center, click on the “Audit” link in the left navigation >>  Click on the “Start recording user and admin activity” button and give it a minute to complete. In case, you don’t see this link or button, that means auditing is already turned ON.

   

You can also enable Audit Logs for SharePoint Online – Office 365 using PowerShell:

#Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -Credential (Get-Credential) -ShowBanner:$False

#Enable Audit Log 
If( (Get-AdminAuditLogConfig).UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabled)
{
    Write-host "Auditing is already Enabled!" -f Yellow
}
Else
{
    Set-AdminAuditLogConfig -UnifiedAuditLogIngestionEnabled $True
    Write-host "Enabled the Auditing Successfully!" -f Green
}

#Disconnect Exchange Online
Disconnect-ExchangeOnline

How to View SharePoint Online Audit Logs?

Once auditing is enabled, it takes some time (30 min to 24 hours!) to collect data and prepare reports. You can perform Office 365 security audit or SharePoint audit log search by:

1. Login to Security and Compliance Center https://compliance.microsoft.com/auditlogsearch or https://protection.office.com
2. Click on “Search” >> “Audit Log Search” from the left navigation.
3. In the search panel, You can apply search criteria such as:
   • Activities: There are plenty of activities you can choose from.
   • Start date and End date: Specify the time duration of the activity
   • Users: Define if you need the report for specific users
   • File, Folder or Site: Add all or part of the file name, folder name, or SharePoint site URL.

     

4. Pick relevant activities and other parameters in the search panel. Once set, click on the “Search” button at the bottom to start searching audit logs from SharePoint Online.

   

From the results panel, you can filter the search results, and you can also export the result data in CSV format.

Search and Export Office 365 Audit Log using PowerShell

With PowerShell, you can query the Audit log and produce reports. E.g., You may want to generate a report on a scheduled basis on a specific event such as “External User Invited”, “Deleted Items”, etc. Here is an example of searching and exporting a unified audit log.

#Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -ShowBanner:$False

#Set Dates
$StartDate = (Get-Date).AddDays(-7)
$EndDate = (Get-Date)

#Search Unified Log
$AuditLog = Search-UnifiedAuditLog -StartDate $StartDate -EndDate $EndDate -ResultSize 5000
$AuditLogResults = $AuditLog.AuditData | ConvertFrom-Json | select CreationTime, UserID, Operation, ClientIP, ObjectID
$AuditLogResults
$AuditLogResults | Export-csv -Path $CSVPath -NoTypeInformation

#Disconnect Exchange Online
Disconnect-ExchangeOnline

This gets all audit logs from all applications from Office 365. Refer to this documentation for all available parameters: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compliance/search-the-audit-log-in-security-and-compliance?view=o365-worldwide

Get SharePoint Online Audit Logs using PowerShell:

Let’s filter SharePoint Online audit logs on files and generate a report with PowerShell.

#Connect to Exchange Online
Connect-ExchangeOnline -ShowBanner:$False

#Set Date Filters - past 24 hours!
$StartDate = (Get-Date).AddDays(-1)
$EndDate = Get-Date

#Search Unified Log
$SharePointLog = Search-UnifiedAuditLog -StartDate $StartDate -EndDate $EndDate -RecordType SharePointFileOperation
$AuditLogResults = $SharePointLog.AuditData | ConvertFrom-Json | Select CreationTime,UserId,Operation, ObjectID,SiteUrl,SourceFileName,ClientIP

#Export Audit log results to CSV
$AuditLogResults
$AuditLogResults | Export-csv -Path "C:\Temp\AuditLog.csv" -NoTypeInformation

#Disconnect Exchange Online
Disconnect-ExchangeOnline

To filter all events of a particular user, use this script:

$AuditLogs = Search-UnifiedAuditLog -StartDate $StartDate -EndDate $EndDate -UserIds "[email protected]"  
$AuditLogResults = $AuditLogs.AuditData | ConvertFrom-Json | Select CreationTime,UserId,Operation,Workload, ObjectID
$AuditLogResults

Similarly, we can filter specific events as:

s#Filter Audit log to Find specific operations
$SiteURLs = @("https://Crescent.sharepoint.com/*")
$CSVFile = "C:\Temp\AuditLog.csv"
$FileAccessOperations = @('PageViewed', 'PageViewedExtended','FileAccessed', 'FileAccessedExtended','FileDeleted')
$FileAccessLog = Search-UnifiedAuditLog -StartDate $StartDate -EndDate $EndDate -Operations $FileAccessOperations -ResultSize 5000 -ObjectIds $SiteURLs
$FileAccessLog.AuditData | ConvertFrom-Json | Select CreationTime,UserId,Operation, ObjectID,SiteUrl,SourceFileName,ClientIP | Export-csv $CSVFile -NoTypeInformation -Force#Filter Audit log to Find specific operations

Conclusion:

In conclusion, viewing audit logs for SharePoint Online in the Office 365 Security & Compliance Center is a useful way to monitor user activity, troubleshoot issues, and identify potential security breaches. The steps outlined in this tutorial show you how to view audit logs in the Security & Compliance Center and narrow down the results to a specific date range, user, or action. Additionally, you can also use PowerShell to view and export audit logs, which can be useful if you need to automate the process or view large amounts of data. Having access to audit logs and being able to review them regularly is an important aspect of maintaining the security and compliance of your SharePoint Online environment.