Using AWS CloudTrail to log Amazon WorkDocs API calls - Amazon WorkDocs
Amazon WorkDocs information in CloudTrailUnderstanding Amazon WorkDocs log file entries

Notice: New customer sign-ups and account upgrades are no longer available for Amazon WorkDocs. Learn about migration steps here: How to migrate data from Amazon WorkDocs.

Using AWS CloudTrail to log Amazon WorkDocs API calls

You can use AWS CloudTrail; to log Amazon WorkDocs API calls. CloudTrail provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an AWS service in Amazon WorkDocs. CloudTrail captures all API calls for Amazon WorkDocs as events, including calls from the Amazon WorkDocs console and from code calls to the Amazon WorkDocs APIs.

If you create a trail, you can enable continuous delivery of CloudTrail events to an Amazon S3 bucket, including events for Amazon WorkDocs. If you don't create a trail, you can still view the most recent events in the CloudTrail console in Event history.

The information collected by CloudTrail includes requests, the IP addresses from which the requests were made, the users who made the requests, and the request dates.

For more information about CloudTrail, see the AWS CloudTrail User Guide.

Amazon WorkDocs information in CloudTrail

CloudTrail is enabled on your AWS account when you create the account. When activity occurs in Amazon WorkDocs, that activity is recorded in a CloudTrail event along with other AWS service events in Event history. You can view, search, and download recent events in your AWS account. For more information, see Viewing events with CloudTrail event history.

For an ongoing record of events in your AWS account, including events for Amazon WorkDocs, create a trail. A trail enables CloudTrail to deliver log files to an Amazon S3 bucket. By default, when you create a trail in the console, the trail applies to all regions. The trail logs events from all regions in the AWS partition and delivers the log files to the Amazon S3 bucket that you specify. Additionally, you can configure other AWS services to further analyze and act upon the event data collected in CloudTrail logs. For more information, see:

All Amazon WorkDocs actions are logged by CloudTrail and are documented in the Amazon WorkDocs API Reference. For example, calls to the CreateFolder, DeactivateUser and UpdateDocument sections generate entries in the CloudTrail log files.

Every event or log entry contains information about who generated the request. The identity information helps you determine the following:

  • Whether the request was made with root or IAM user credentials.

  • Whether the request was made with temporary security credentials for a role or federated user.

  • Whether the request was made by another AWS service.

For more information, see the CloudTrail userIdentity element.

Understanding Amazon WorkDocs log file entries

A trail is a configuration that enables delivery of events as log files to an Amazon S3 bucket that you specify. CloudTrail log files contain one or more log entries. An event represents a single request from any source and includes information about the requested action, the date and time of the action, request parameters, and so on. CloudTrail log files are not an ordered stack trace of the public API calls, so they do not appear in any specific order.

Amazon WorkDocs generates different types of CloudTrail entries , those from the control plane and those from the data plane. The important difference between the two is that the user identity for control plane entries is an IAM user. The user identity for data plane entries is the Amazon WorkDocs directory user.

Note

For greater security, create federated users instead of IAM users whenever possible.

Sensitive information, such as passwords, authentication tokens, file comments, and file contents are redacted in the log entries. These show up as HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS in the CloudTrail logs. These show up as HIDDEN_DUE_TO_SECURITY_REASONS in the CloudTrail logs.

The following example shows two CloudTrail log entries for Amazon WorkDocs: the first record is for a control plane action and the second is for a data plane action.

{
  Records : [
    {
      "eventVersion" : "1.01",
      "userIdentity" :
      {
        "type" : "IAMUser",
        "principalId" : "user_id",
        "arn" : "user_arn",
        "accountId" : "account_id",
        "accessKeyId" : "access_key_id",
        "userName" : "user_name"
      },
      "eventTime" : "event_time",
      "eventSource" : "workdocs.amazonaws.com",
      "eventName" : "RemoveUserFromGroup",
      "awsRegion" : "region",
      "sourceIPAddress" : "ip_address",
      "userAgent" : "user_agent",
      "requestParameters" :
      {
        "directoryId" : "directory_id",
        "userSid" : "user_sid",
        "group" : "group"
      },
      "responseElements" : null,
      "requestID" : "request_id",
      "eventID" : "event_id"
    },
    {
      "eventVersion" : "1.01",
      "userIdentity" :
      {
        "type" : "Unknown",
        "principalId" : "user_id",
        "accountId" : "account_id",
        "userName" : "user_name"
      },
      "eventTime" : "event_time",
      "eventSource" : "workdocs.amazonaws.com",      
      "awsRegion" : "region",
      "sourceIPAddress" : "ip_address",
      "userAgent" : "user_agent",
      "requestParameters" :
      {
        "AuthenticationToken" : "**-redacted-**"
      },
      "responseElements" : null,
      "requestID" : "request_id",
      "eventID" : "event_id"
    }
  ]
}