# Auditing Configuration Items
ASM provides the capability to audit entities on your CMDB all the way down to field level changes. This is particularly helpful when managing the federated CMDB as it provides an easy method of understanding what fields were changed and when. ASM captures the following:
1. The Original Value and the New Value
2. Action Taken
3. Origin of the change
4. Data/Time of Change
5. Field Changed
6. Reason for Change (If enabled)
The Audit trail of changes to CI can be found on the individual CI record in the Data menu on the left-hand side menu links pane.
## Auditing CMDB Items
There are a few different levels of Audit available for your CMDB items.
* System Level Audits - [Enable System Level Audit](https://docs.alemba.com/asm-hermes/setup-and-configure-asm/configuring-your-system/system-administration-settings/cmdb-configuration-management-database/cmdb-settings#audit-trail)
* You must enable Audit on the entities you want to have basic auditing logged against.
* Field level Audits - [Enable Field-Level Audit](https://docs.alemba.com/asm-hermes/setup-and-configure-asm/configuring-your-system/configuring-screens/building-screens-in-asm-designer/configuring-fields#field-options-section)
* Field Audit goes beyond the standard audit captures, to include specific fields you can select.
{% hint style="info" %}
**Before You Start**
You must enable CMDB Item Auditing in CMDB Item Type Details.
1. To enable it, access System Administration>CMDB>CMDB Item Type
2. Open the Item Type you want to Audit (child types will inherit permissions from the parent type)
3. Tick the "Turn Audit On" check box
{% endhint %}
### System Audit
A **System Level audit** is configured in System Administration in your CMDB Settings. The Audit Trail options enable you to select the types of CMDB entities to track when changes are made in their Details window.
For performance reasons, the **Audit Trail** only tracks changes to long text fields (such as **Description**) up until the size limit of the New Value field, which is 80 characters. So while the audit trail will record a change made to the description, it may not track the entire change made to a long text field.
* Organizations - Select this option to track changes made to Organization entities.
* Contracts - Select this option to track changes made to Contracts entities.
* Locations - Select this option to track changes made to Location entities.
* People - Select this option to track changes made to Person entities.
* Change Calendar - Select this option to track changes made to Change Calendars entities.
* Agreements - Select this option to track changes made to Agreements entities.
* Subscriber Groups - Select this option to track changes made to Subscriber Groups entities.
* Change Reason - Select this option to enable the Change Reason window.
### **Field Audit**
**Field level auditing** is far more specific than the System-level audit. This option (set in the field's properties in Screen Designer) allows auditing of the changes made to an individual field. Changes can be seen under the **Audit** option in the explorer of the corresponding screen.
If the field is a standard data field or an extensible field inherited from another screen, this option will be labeled **Audit (Impacts Parent)**. Otherwise, if the field is particular to the current screen, it will be labeled **Audit**.
## View the Audit Trail
1. Access the CMDB Item you want to view
2. Click "Audit" from the data menu on the left
3. View the Audit Log. From here, you can alsoPrint or export one or more results.
