SharePoint Access time column, Modified By column
- Hello. Is the access time of a document in a document library stored in SharePoint? (content db or front end web server). Would an indexing operation change the access time? I cannot seem to find the column like the Modified By column.
Answers
Hi Stanley12345,
Are you using WSS 3.0 or MOSS? If you are using MOSS 2007, you can enable Auditing policies in MOSS by following this article. For example: if you just want to know who have accessed which document, you can choose audit “Opening or downloading documents, viewing items in lists or viewing item properties” when editing policy. Then you can view the report in Site collection Administration” à “Audit log reports”.
If you are using WSS 3.0, for item level auditing you need to write code. WSS provides the basic mechanisms for auditing however it does not provide any built-in support for users to enable auditing or the functionality to see entries that are written to the audit log. That’s why you need to write code to enable WSS audit logging facility. For more information, please refer to:
Built-in Auditing Support in Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397403.aspx
Hope this helps.
Lu Zou
- Marked As Answer byLu Zou-MSFTMSFT, ModeratorTuesday, November 10, 2009 10:33 AM
All Replies
- As access time varies with the client system in use, it would be impossible to have a column for it.There is no such column.-------------Later: I realised you might mean the time AT which (rather than in which) the document was accessed within the SharePoint system. If checked out it will be regarded as having been amended and the access time will be in the Modified By column - which it also would if it had been modified and uploaded back with the same name. If read without being checked out there will be no record of such a read in that or any other column.
FAQ sites: (SP 2010) http://wssv4faq.mindsharp.com; (v3) http://wssv3faq.mindsharp.com and (WSS 2.0) http://wssv2faq.mindsharp.com
Complete Book Lists (incl. foreign language) on each site. - Is there any record within the SharePoint system (web server file system, SQL database) with the time at which the document has been accessed? Say if a user just went to the document and viewed it, without checking out, modifying?
With some simple tests, opening the document does not seem to update any logs on the front-end webserver, but modifying it does. Hi Stanley12345,
Are you using WSS 3.0 or MOSS? If you are using MOSS 2007, you can enable Auditing policies in MOSS by following this article. For example: if you just want to know who have accessed which document, you can choose audit “Opening or downloading documents, viewing items in lists or viewing item properties” when editing policy. Then you can view the report in Site collection Administration” à “Audit log reports”.
If you are using WSS 3.0, for item level auditing you need to write code. WSS provides the basic mechanisms for auditing however it does not provide any built-in support for users to enable auditing or the functionality to see entries that are written to the audit log. That’s why you need to write code to enable WSS audit logging facility. For more information, please refer to:
Built-in Auditing Support in Windows SharePoint Services and Office SharePoint Server 2007
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb397403.aspx
Hope this helps.
Lu Zou
- Marked As Answer byLu Zou-MSFTMSFT, ModeratorTuesday, November 10, 2009 10:33 AM
