Workspace Studio log events

View user and agent activity in Google Workspace Studio

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 Google Workspace Studio log events. For example, you can view a record of actions to track user activity in Studio. You can also track the activity of agents, and which steps they complete on behalf of the agent owner. This information is helpful when you troubleshoot issues or when your users notice discrepancies or unexpected changes made by Workspace Studio agents.

Agents take actions on behalf of their owners. For actions in Google services, these events are logged in the corresponding service, with the owner as the actor. If you see abnormal activity by a user in a service that you think is because of an agent, you can stop the agent. Learn more about stopping users’ agents

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

To run a search for log events, first choose a data source. Then, choose one or more filters for your search.

  1. 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.

  2. Go to Menu and then Reporting > Audit and investigation > Rule log events.

    Requires having the Audit & Investigation administrator privilege.

  3. To filter events that occurred before or after a specific date, for Date, select Before or After. By default, events from the last 7 days are shown. You can select a different date range or click to remove the date filter.

  4. Click Add a filterand thenselect an attribute. For example, to filter by a specific event type, select Event.
  5. Select an operatorand thenselect a valueand thenclick Apply.
    • (Optional) To create multiple filters for your search, repeat this step.
    • (Optional) To add a search operator, above Add a filter, select AND or OR.
  6. Click Search.

    Note: Using the Filter tab, you can include simple parameter and value pairs to filter the search results. You can also use the Condition builder tab, where the filters are represented as conditions with AND/OR operators.

Security investigation tool
Supported editions for this feature: Frontline Standard and Frontline Plus; 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

  1. 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.

  2. Go to Menu and then Security > Security center > Investigation tool.

    Requires having the Security center administrator privilege.

  3. Click Data source and select Rule log events.
  4. To filter events that occurred before or after a specific date, for Date, select Before or After. By default, events from the last 7 days are shown. You can select a different date range or click to remove the date filter.

  5. 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.
  6. Click Attributeand thenselect an option. For example, to filter by a specific event type, select Event.
    For a complete list of attributes, go to the Attribute descriptions section.
  7. Select an operator.
  8. Enter a value or select a value from the list.
  9. (Optional) To add more search conditions, repeat the steps.
  10. Click Search.
    You can review the search results from the investigation tool in a table at the bottom of the page.
  11. (Optional) To save your investigation, click Save and thenenter a title and descriptionand thenclick 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 give a user a new name, you will not see query results with the user's old name. For example, if you rename [email protected] to [email protected], you will not see results for events related to [email protected].

Attribute descriptions

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

Attribute Description

Actor

Email address of the user who performed the action, or whose agent performed the action on their behalf.

Event

The logged event action. These include:

  • Create agent—The user created an agent
  • View agent—The user viewed an agent
  • Edit agent—The user edited an agent
  • Delete agent—The user deleted an agent
  • Turn on—The user turned on a new agent for the first time or saved changes to an agent that was already on
  • Turn on again—The user turned on an agent that had been turned off
  • Turn off—The user turned off an agent
  • Start run—The agent started a run
  • End run success—The run finished successfully
  • End run with error—The run stopped due to an issue
  • Stop run—The run stopped for another reason
  • Start step—The run started a step
  • End step—The run completed a step

Agent ID

The ID of the agent.

Agent name

The name of the agent.

Run ID

The ID of an individual run by an agent.

Step type

The type of step, which can be one of the following:

  • Trigger—The step was a starter, the first step of the agent.
  • Action—The step was after the starter and wasn’t a condition step.
  • Condition evaluation—The step was a Check if step.

Step name

The name of the step that was run by the agent.

Step app

The app the step uses for the task, such as Gmail, Chat, or a linked third-party service.

Run length

How long it took to complete the run, in seconds.

Run type

How the run was started, which can be:

  • test run—The run was started by the user using a test run.
  • execution—The run was started automatically by the agent starter detecting a starting event.

Turn off reason

Why an agent was turned off:

  • Turned off by user—The user turned it off
  • Turned off by step—A step stopped working and turned off the agent
  • Account deleted—The user no longer has a Workspace account
  • Run error—Too many runs in a row didn’t complete successfully
  • No access to Studio—The user lost access to Workspace Studio
  • Turned off by Google—A Google Workspace Support agent turned off the agent

Manage log event data

Manage search results column data

You can control which data columns appear in your search results.

  1. At the top-right of the search results table, click Manage columns .
  2. (Optional) To remove current columns, click Remove .
  3. (Optional) To add columns, next to Add new column, click the Down arrow and select the data column.
    Repeat as needed.
  4. (Optional) To change the order of the columns, drag the data column names.
  5. Click Save.
Export search result data

You can export search results to Sheets or to a CSV file.

  1. At the top of the search results table, click Export all.
  2. Enter a name and then click Export.
    The export displays below the search results table under Export action results.
  3. To view the data, click the name of your export.
    The export opens in Sheets.

Export limits vary:

  • The total results of the export are limited to 100,000 rows.
  • If you have the security investigation tool, the total results of the export are limited to 30 million rows.

For more information, go to Export search results.

Take action based on search results

Create activity rules & set up alerts
  • You can set up alerts based on log event data using reporting rules. For instructions, go to Create and manage reporting rules.
  • Supported editions for this feature: Frontline Standard and Frontline Plus; Enterprise Standard and Enterprise Plus; Education Standard and Education Plus; Enterprise Essentials Plus; Cloud Identity Premium. Compare your edition

    To help prevent, detect, and remediate security issues efficiently, you can automate actions in the security investigation tool and set up alerts by creating activity rules. To set up a rule, set up conditions for the rule, and then specify the actions to perform when the conditions are met. For more details, go to Create and manage activity rules.

Take action based on search results

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

After you run a search in the security investigation tool, you can act on your search results. For example, you can run a search based on Gmail log events, and then use the tool to delete specific messages, send messages to quarantine, or send messages to users' inboxes. For more details, go to Take action based on search results.

Manage your investigations

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

View your list of investigations

To view a list of the investigations that you own and that were shared with you, click View investigations . The investigation list includes the names, descriptions, and owners of the investigations, and the date last modified. 

From this list, you can take action on any investigations that you own, for example, to delete an investigation. Check the box for an investigation and then click Actions.

Note: You can view your saved investigations under Quick access, directly above your list of investigations.

Configure settings for your investigations

As a super administrator, click Settings  to:

  • Change the time zone for your investigations. The time zone applies to search conditions and results.
  • Turn on or off Require reviewer. For more details, go to Require reviewers for bulk actions.
  • Turn on or off View content. This setting allows admins with the appropriate privileges to view content.
  • Turn on or off Enable action justification.

For more details, go to Configure settings for your investigations.

Save, share, delete & duplicate investigations

To save your search criteria or share it with others, you can create and save an investigation, and then share, duplicate, or delete it.

For details, go to Save, share, delete, and duplicate investigations.

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