Introduction to Audit Events

FTE Tree creates robust and reportable audit trails for many changes made by the system or users in your organization. While many audit events are auto-generated by the system, such as when a position is approved, configurable audit events selected or entered by a user are available in the following locations and situations when the object or its attributes are created or updated:

  • Positions
  • Employees
  • Job Codes
  • Requisitions
  • Approval Requests

Configuring Audit Event Settings

Although they share common functionality, audit events are filtered and configured independently for each available use location listed above. Appropriate permissions are required to update these settings. For each use location and type, you can configure the entry fields to be visible and/or required.

Two types of user-entered audit events are available:

  • Event Note Text Field: A free text field where your users can type any content they wish.
  • Event Note Choice Field: A choice field where users select from a list of predefined choices configured by your organization.

The following options are available for configuration in both fields unless otherwise noted:

  • Use Location: This value is predefined and identifies where the note fields are used. For example, 'Position Create' is used when a new position is created.
  • Enabled: Selecting this option shows the note field on the form. Deselecting the option hides it.
  • Label: This is the name of the form field to be displayed. The default value is "Audit Event Type" for the choice field and "Audit Event Note" for the text field.
  • Help Text: Enter any help text you wish to be displayed under the field in the form. The default is none.
  • Choice Group: This applies only to the event note choice field and contains the group of choice values your users can select from. These are updated using the same methodology as other choice groups in the application.

File Attachments and Security

FTE Tree provides functionality throughout the application to attach files to items such as dashboard messages, approval workflows, and approval requests.

We use highly secure storage to protect the files that you upload. Your files are encrypted in transit to our storage servers and stored encrypted at rest. Secure, time-limited download links are provided every time a download link is presented. These links allow only authorized users to access the appropriate file for a limited time period (15 minutes) before the link expires.

To protect the integrity of our servers, we generally limit the number and size of file uploads per item to 10 files of 25 MB each. Please contact us if you need the limits increased.

Case Sensitivity

With the few important exceptions noted below, the software powering FTE Tree is case-sensitive. This means that upper and lower case versions of the same letter or word are considered different. Throughout the application, we frequently enforce unique names for elements such as departments in your department tree. Therefore, the 'administration' department is not the same as the 'Administration' department.

There are two key places where we do not enforce case-sensitivity:

  • Email addresses: This is required to help protect the integrity of your account because email systems are generally case-insensitive.
  • User names: Although we use your current email address as a username, there may be some instances where a username is generated behind the scenes. We enforce case-insensitivity on usernames to protect your account for similar reasons.

Time Zones

All dates saved within FTE Tree are entered and displayed as local time according to the user's time zone. Internally, dates and times are stored in UTC. This standardization allows us to coordinate across users in different time zones. FTE Tree also accounts for changes such as daylight saving time and leap years.

Important Note: When displaying FTE and cost values of a position, they are calculated as of the current date in the organization's default local time zone. This is usually unnoticed unless users are working around midnight in different time zones.

System-generated timestamps, such as those for approval requests or position version updates, are displayed in the user's selected time zone. For instance, if a user approves a request at 4:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, another user in Pacific Standard Time will see the approval timestamp as 1:00 PM in their local time zone.

Need Help?

For any questions about audit events, data integrity, or system behavior, please contact us or email us at support@ftetree.com.