Corporate elearning: managing compliance training with Audit Trail

• 3 min read

Many regulations worldwide require specific data tracking in an LMS so that evidence of all events that have occurred in the elearning platform can be provided. Corporations need to be compliant with these requests. This post goes over how you can make your online training compliant by using Audit Trail for deep tracking of events that happen in the LMS.

Audit Trail: what is it?

An Audit Trail is an immutable record that keeps track of administrative actions performed in the learning management system, such as important changes to course completion and enrollment status changes.

The Audit Trail report provides written evidence of an entire sequence of activities that have affected specific operations, procedures, or events, and is useful to allocate appropriate accountability in case of any incident specifically pertaining to compliance.

Why do you need Audit Trail in your LMS?

There are a couple of good reasons why you need to have Audit Trail available in your corporate learning management system.

1. Total control over your training project

Firstly it makes life easier for your customers – when you are dealing with any kind of software and you have more than one administrator in charge of the system, management encounters common issues (such as ‘who deleted this user?’ or ‘who updated this item?’). The Audit Trail app addresses this so you’ll always be aware of who is responsible for what inside the learning management system!

2. Compliance with international regulations

Secondly, compliance is another reason you want Audit Trail in your LMS. Many regulations worldwide require specific data tracking so that evidence of all events that have occurred in the elearning platform can be provided – this ensures accuracy and trustworthiness of the certifications data that the LMS provides.

For example, one of the most well-known regulations is the FDA’s 21 CFR Part 11 compliance:

One of the most commonly known regulations is the FDA’s 21 CFR Part 11:
Title 21 CFR Part 11 is the part of Title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations that establishes the United StatesFood and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations on electronic records and electronic signatures (ERES). Part 11, as it is commonly called, defines the criteria under which electronic records and electronic signatures are considered to be trustworthy, reliable and equivalent to paper records (Title 21 CFR Part 11 Section 11.1 (a)).

Source: Wikipedia.org

How to achieve compliance by activating the Audit Trail report

The Docebo learning management system has been just updated with the Audit Trail feature.

Here I will show you how you can create and implement the Audit Trail report and assure full compliance of your corporate online training (please note, this is available for the Docebo Enterprise solution only!).

Once you have activated the app you will see a new type of report inside the custom report area: the Audit Trail one. Select this and, after choosing users and courses you want to apply to the report, identify the kind of information you want to get.

You can find information about:

  • Power users – main actions concerning allocation / purchasing / reclaiming seats, performed by each power user.
  • Courses – actions concerning deleting or updating courses, catalogs, training materials, widgets or the courses category.
  • Custom reports – actions concerning creation, publishing (for Power users), or deletion of customized reports.
  • Learning Plans –  actions concerning creating, updating or deleting learning plans.
  • Users management –  actions about creating, deleting and updating users into the platform and the association (or disassociation) of a user in a group. You can also find information about groups management.

Once you have included all the information you want to see, you can run the report for a view of the entire list of actions.  What is interesting is that you will also have evidence of the IP address of the user who performed each action.

You can run an Audit Trail report each time you need to, or you can schedule the sending of this report to your email inbox, and also to anyone else involved in the certification or compliance process.