Audit logging

This page describes the audit logs created by Google Workspace Add-ons as part of Cloud Audit Logs.

Overview

Google Cloud services write audit logs to help you answer the questions, "Who did what, where, and when?" Your Cloud projects contain only the audit logs for resources that are directly within the project. Other entities, such as folders, organizations, and Cloud Billing accounts, contain the audit logs for the entity itself.

For a general overview of Cloud Audit Logs, see Cloud Audit Logs. For a deeper understanding of Cloud Audit Logs, review Understanding audit logs.

The following types of audit logs are available for Google Workspace Add-ons:

• Admin Activity audit logs

  Includes "admin write" operations that write metadata or configuration information.

  You can't disable Admin Activity audit logs.

Audited operations

The following summarizes which API operations correspond to each audit log type in Google Workspace Add-ons:

Audit logs category	Google Workspace Add-ons operations
Admin Activity audit logs	Projects.GetAuthorization Deployments.CreateDeployment Deployments.ReplaceDeployment Deployments.ListDeployments Deployments.GetDeployment Deployments.DeleteDeployment Deployments.InstallDeployment Deployments.UninstallDeployment Deployments.GetInstallStatus

Audit log format

Audit log entries—which can be viewed in Cloud Logging using the Logs Viewer, the Cloud Logging API, or the Google Cloud CLI—include the following objects:

• The log entry itself, which is an object of type LogEntry. Useful fields include the following:

  • The logName contains the project identification and audit log type.
  • The resource contains the target of the audited operation.
  • The timeStamp contains the time of the audited operation.
  • The protoPayload contains the audited information.

• The audit logging data, which is an AuditLog object held in the protoPayload field of the log entry.

• Optional service-specific audit information, which is a service-specific object. For earlier integrations, this object is held in the serviceData field of the AuditLog object; later integrations use the metadata field.

For other fields in these objects, and how to interpret them, review Understanding audit logs.

Log name

Cloud Audit Logs resource names indicate the Cloud project or other Google Cloud entity that owns the audit logs, and whether the log contains Admin Activity, Data Access, or System Event audit logging data. For example, the following shows log names for a project's Admin Activity audit logs and an organization's Data Access audit logs. The variables denote project and organization identifiers.

projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity
organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fdata_access

Note: The part of the log name following /logs/ must be URL-encoded. The forward-slash character, /, must be written as %2F.

Service name

Google Workspace Add-ons audit logs use the service name gsuiteaddons.googleapis.com.

For information about all logging services, see Mapping services to resources.

Resource types

Google Workspace Add-ons audit logs use the resource type audited_resource for all audit logs.

For a list of other resource types, see Monitored resource types.

Enabling audit logging

Admin Activity audit logs are always enabled; you can't disable them.

Google Workspace Add-ons doesn't write Data Access audit logs.

Audit log permissions

Identity and Access Management permissions and roles determine which audit logs you can view or export. Logs reside in Cloud projects and in some other entities including organizations, folders, and Cloud Billing accounts. For more information, see Understanding roles.

To view Admin Activity audit logs, you must have one of the following IAM roles in the project that contains your audit logs:

• Project Owner, Project Editor, or Project Viewer
• The Logging Logs Viewer role
• A custom IAM role with the logging.logEntries.list IAM permission

Google Workspace Add-ons doesn't write Data Access audit logs or System Event audit logs.

If you are using audit logs from a non-project entity, such as an organization, then change the Cloud project roles to suitable organization roles.

Viewing logs

To find and view audit logs, you need to know the identifier of the Cloud project, folder, or organization for which you want to view audit logging information. You can further specify other indexed LogEntry fields, like resource.type; for details, review Build queries in the Logs Explorer.

The following are the audit log names; they include variables for the identifiers of the Cloud project, folder, or organization:

   projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity
   projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fdata_access
   projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fsystem_event
   projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fpolicy

   folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity
   folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fdata_access
   folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fsystem_event
   folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fpolicy

   organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Factivity
   organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fdata_access
   organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fsystem_event
   organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com%2Fpolicy

You have several options for viewing your audit log entries.

Note: The Cloud Console Logs Explorer currently supports viewing logs for Google Cloud projects only. To read log entries for a specified folder or organization, use the Cloud Logging API or the Google Cloud CLI.

Console

You can use the Logs Explorer in the Cloud Console to retrieve your audit log entries for your Cloud project:

1. In the Cloud Console, go to the Logging > Logs Explorer page.

   Go to the Logs Explorer page

   Note: If you are using the Legacy Logs Viewer page, switch to the Logs Explorer page.

2. On the Logs Explorer page, select an existing Cloud project.

3. In the Query builder pane, do the following:

   • In Resource, select the Google Cloud resource type whose audit logs you want to see.

   • In Log name, select the audit log type that you want to see:

     • For Admin Activity audit logs, select activity.
     • For Data Access audit logs, select data_access.
     • For System Event audit logs, select system_event.
     • For Policy Denied audit logs, select policy.

   If you don't see these options, then there aren't any audit logs of that type available in the Cloud project.

   For more details about querying using the new Logs Explorer, see Build queries in the Logs Explorer.

gcloud

The Google Cloud CLI provides a command-line interface to the Cloud Logging API. Supply a valid PROJECT_ID, FOLDER_ID, or ORGANIZATION_ID in each of the log names.

To read your Google Cloud project-level audit log entries, run the following command:

gcloud logging read "logName : projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com" \
    --project=PROJECT_ID

To read your folder-level audit log entries, run the following command:

gcloud logging read "logName : folders/FOLDER_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com" \
    --folder=FOLDER_ID

To read your organization-level audit log entries, run the following command:

gcloud logging read "logName : organizations/ORGANIZATION_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com" \
    --organization=ORGANIZATION_ID

For more information about using the gcloud CLI, see gcloud logging read.

API

When building your queries, replace the variables with valid values, substitute the appropriate project-level, folder-level, or organization-level audit log name or identifiers as listed in the audit log names. For example, if your query includes a PROJECT_ID, then the project identifier you supply must refer to the currently selected Cloud project.

To use the Logging API to look at your audit log entries, do the following:

1. Go to the Try this API section in the documentation for the entries.list method.

2. Put the following into the Request body part of the Try this API form. Clicking on this prepopulated form automatically fills the request body, but you need to supply a valid PROJECT_ID in each of the log names.

   {
     "resourceNames": [
       "projects/PROJECT_ID"
     ],
     "pageSize": 5,
     "filter": "logName : projects/PROJECT_ID/logs/cloudaudit.googleapis.com"
   }
   

3. Click Execute.

For more details about querying, see Logging query language.

For a sample audit log entry and how to find the most important information in it, see Understanding audit logs.

Exporting audit logs

You can export audit logs in the same way that you export other kinds of logs. For details about how to export your logs, see Exporting logs. Here are some applications of exporting audit logs:

• To keep audit logs for a longer period of time or to use more powerful search capabilities, you can export copies of your audit logs to Cloud Storage, BigQuery, or Pub/Sub. Using Pub/Sub, you can export to other applications, other repositories, and to third parties.

• To manage your audit logs across an entire organization, you can create aggregated sinks that can export logs from any or all Cloud projects in the organization.

Pricing

Cloud Logging does not charge you for audit logs that cannot be disabled, including all Admin Activity audit logs.

For more information about audit logs pricing, see Google Cloud's operations suite pricing.