Admin log events

View administrator activity in the Admin console

Depending on your Google Workspace edition, you might have access to the security investigation tool, which has more advanced features. For example, super admins can identify, triage, and take action on security and privacy issues. Learn more

As your organization's administrator, you can run searches and take action on security issues related to Admin log events. For example, you can view a record of actions performed in your Google Admin console, such as when an administrator added a user or turned on a Google Workspace service.

Forward log event data to Google Cloud

You can opt in to share log event data with Google Cloud. If you turn on sharing, data is forwarded to Cloud Logging where you can query and view your logs and control how you route and store your logs.

The type of log event data you can share with Google Cloud depends on your Google Workspace, Cloud Identity, or Essentials account.

Run a search for log events

Your ability to run a search depends on your Google edition, your administrative privileges, and the data source. You can run a search on all users, regardless of their Google Workspace edition.

Audit and investigation tool

Security investigation tool

Supported editions for this feature: Frontline Standard; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Standard and Education Plus; Enterprise Essentials Plus; Cloud Identity Premium. Compare your edition

To run a search in the security investigation tool, first choose a data source. Then, choose one or more conditions for your search. For each condition, choose an attribute, an operator, and a value.

Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.
If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.
Go to Menu Security > Security center > Investigation tool.
Requires having the Security center administrator privilege.
Click Data source and select Admin log events.
Click Add Condition.
Tip: You can include one or more conditions in your search or customize your search with nested queries. For details, go to Customize your search with nested queries.
Click Attributeselect an option.
For a complete list of attributes, go to the Attribute descriptions section (later on this page).
Select an operator.
Enter a value or select a value from the list.
(Optional) To add more search conditions, repeat steps 4–7.
Click Search.
You can review the search results from the investigation tool in a table at the bottom of the page.
(Optional) To save your investigation, click Save enter a title and descriptionclick Save.

Notes

In the Condition builder tab, filters are represented as conditions with AND/OR operators. You can also use the Filter tab to include simple parameter and value pairs to filter the search results.
If you gave a user a new name, you will not see query results with the user's old name. For example, if you rename OldName@example.com to NewName@example.com, you will not see results for events related to OldName@example.com.

Attribute descriptions

For this data source, you can use the following attributes when searching log event data:

Attribute	Description
Action(s)*	Action(s) taken by the admin using the security investigation tool, or using an activity rule. For details about the actions an admin can take, go to Take action based on search results.
Actor	Email address of the user who performed the action. Instead of an email address, you might see: License manager—If an admin action triggers a change to a user’s license Service account—If the action was performed by a service account admin Anonymous—If the action was performed by a service account admin
Actor group name	Group name of the actor. For more information, go to Filtering results by Google Group. To add a group to your filtering groups allowlist: Select Actor group name. Click Filtering groups. The Filtering groups page appears. Click Add Groups. Search for a group by entering the first few characters of its name or email address. When you see the group you want, select it. (Optional) To add another group, search for and select the group. When you finish selecting groups, click Add. (Optional) To remove a group, click Remove group . Click Save.
Actor organizational unit	Organizational unit of the actor
Additional information	Additional contextual information for the event
Begin date*	Use Begin date and End date to filter events that include a specific begin and end date range, such as Chart Drilldown events. Note: To search for events within a date range, use the Date attribute.
Data source*	The data source in investigation tool or alert source in alert center
Date	Date and time of the event (displayed in your browser's default time zone)
Device ID*	ID of the device affected by this audit event. For example, if an admin wipes out a company-owned device, then this field captures the device ID.
Device type	Type of the device affected by this audit event. For example if an admin wipes out a company-owned device, then this field captures the device type
Domain name	The domain where the action occurred
End date*	Use Begin date and End date to filter events that include a specific begin and end date range, such as Chart Drilldown events. Note: To search for events within a date range, use the Date attribute.
Event	The logged event action, such as Investigation Query or Activity Rule Creation. Under Event value, the events are grouped by type, such as User Settings or Domain Settings. Most event values are self-explanatory. For example, Add Application, under Domain Settings, is a search value for an application that was added to your domain. You can search for events in the search box. Tip: If you have event values that you use often, pin those events to the top of the drop-down menu.
Google Workspace edition*	Google Workspace edition for the admin (Actor) who performed the action
Group email	Email of the Google group affected by this activity
IP address	Internet Protocol (IP) address associated with the logged action. Usually reflects the user's physical location, but could be a proxy server or a virtual private network (VPN) address.
Justification*	If justification text was required for the action, explanation provided by the admin
Message ID*	Message ID of the email message that's affected by this audit event
New value*	New value of the setting in case it’s updated
Old value*	Old value of the setting in case it’s updated
Resource ID(s)*	ID(s) of one or more resources affected by the audit event
Resource name*	Name of the resource affected by the audit event
Resource type*	Type of the resource affected by the audit event
Search query	Query that is used to fetch or process data. For example, the query used in investigation tool search, when creating activity rules, or when creating email dump.
Setting Category	Category of the updated setting
Setting name	Name of the updated setting
Setting org unit name	Settings in admin console can be scoped to an organizational unit. When a setting is updated and it’s scoped to an organizational unit, the organizational unit name is shown in this field.
Target*	Target email address for the event. For example, the destination email address when creating an email monitor, or the verifier's email address when performing a bulk action in the investigation tool.
Total affected*	Total number of entities that were affected by the audit event. For example, the number of users that were uploaded when bulk uploading users to a group, or the number of actions that were triggered as part of an activity rule trigger. This is a contextual field that depends on the event.
Total failed*	Total number of failed operations. For example, the number of users that failed to upload when bulk uploading users to a group, or the number of actions that failed as part of an activity rule trigger. This is a contextual field that depends on the event.
User email	Email of the user who performed the action

* You cannot create reporting rules with these filters. Learn more about reporting rules versus activity rules.

Note: If you gave a user a new name, you will not see query results with the user's old name. For example, if you rename OldName@example.com to NewName@example.com, you will not see results for events related to OldName@example.com.