Google Chat audit log

If you have G Suite Essentials edition, upgrade to G Suite Enterprise to get this service.

You can track conversation and discussion activity in your organization using the Google Chat audit log. For example, you can see when a user starts a direct message or creates a room.

If you have history turned off, you won't see data for users who send direct messages. To check your settings, see Turn history on or off.

Note:

• Occasionally some Chat activity isn't logged as expected. We're working to resolve this issue and will update this article when full logging is restored.
• For details on when log data becomes available and how long it's retained, see Data retention and lag times.

Step 1: Open your Chat audit log

1. Sign in to your Google Admin console.

   Sign in using your administrator account (does not end in @gmail.com).

2. From the Admin console Home page, go to Reports.
3. On the left under Audit, click Hangouts Chat.
4. (Optional) Next to the columns, click Manage columns and select the columns that you want to see or hide.

Step 2: Understand Chat audit log data

Data you can view

Step 3: Customize and export your audit log data

Filter the audit log data by user or activity

You can narrow your audit log to show specific events or users. For example, find all log events for when a particular user created a conversation.

1. Open your Chat audit log as shown above.
2. Click Add a filter.
3. Select and enter the criteria for your filter and if needed, click Apply.
4. (Optional) To filter by organizational unit, at the top right, click Organization filter, select the organizational unit, and click Apply.
5. (Optional) To specify a date range to search, click Date range and select a period from the list or enter a start and end date and time. If needed, click Apply.

Filter by organizational unit

You can filter by organizational unit to compare statistics between child organizations in a domain.

1. Open your audit log as shown above.
2. At the top, click Organization filter.
3. Select an organizational unit and click Apply.

Filter by date

1. Open your audit log as shown above.
2. At the top, click Date range.
3. Select a period from the list or enter a start and end date and time.
4. If needed, click Apply.

You can only filter the current organizational unit hierarchy, even when searching for older data. Data before December 20, 2018 will not appear in the filtered results.

Step 4: Set up email alerts

Track user activities by setting up email alerts.

1. Open your audit log as shown above.
2. Click Add a filter.
3. Enter or select the criteria for your filter and click Create Alert.
4. Enter a name for the alert.
5. (Optional) To send the alert to all super administrators, under Recipients, click Turn on .
6. Enter the email addresses of alert recipients.
7. Click Create.

To edit your custom alerts, see Administrator email alerts.