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+---
+stage: Manage
+group: Compliance
+info: To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments
+---
+
+# Audit Event Guide
+
+This guide provides an overview of how Audit Events work, and how to instrument
+new audit events.
+
+## What are Audit Events?
+
+Audit Events are a tool for GitLab owners and administrators to view records of important
+actions performed across the application.
+
+## Audit Event Schemas
+
+To instrument an audit event, the following attributes should be provided:
+
+| Attribute    | Type                 | Required? | Description                                         |
+|:-------------|:---------------------|:----------|:----------------------------------------------------|
+| `name`       | string               | false     | Action name to be audited. Used for error tracking  |
+| `author`     | User                 | true      | User who authors the change                         |
+| `scope`      | User, Project, Group | true      | Scope which the audit event belongs to              |
+| `target`     | Object               | true      | Target object being audited                         |
+| `ip_address` | IPAddr               | false     | Request IP address                                  |
+| `message`    | string               | true      | Message describing the action                       |
+
+## How to instrument new Audit Events
+
+There are three ways of instrumenting audit events:
+
+- Create a new class in `ee/lib/ee/audit/` and extend `AuditEventService`
+- Call `AuditEventService` after a successful action
+- Call `Gitlab::Audit::Auditor.audit` passing an action block
+
+This inconsistency leads to unexpected bugs, increases maintainer effort, and worsens the
+developer experience. Therefore, we suggest you use `Gitlab::Audit::Auditor` to
+instrument new audit events.
+
+With new service, we can instrument audit events in two ways:
+
+- Using block for multiple events.
+- Using standard method call for single events.
+
+### Using block to record multiple events
+
+This method is useful when events are emitted deep in the call stack.
+
+For example, we can record multiple audit events when the user updates a merge
+request approval rule. As part of this user flow, we would like to audit changes
+to both approvers and approval groups. In the initiating service
+(for example, `MergeRequestRuleUpdateService`), we can wrap the `execute` call as follows:
+
+```ruby
+# in the initiating service
+audit_context = {
+  name: 'merge_approval_rule_updated',
+  author: current_user,
+  scope: project_alpha,
+  target: merge_approval_rule,
+  ip_address: request.remote_ip,
+  message: 'Attempted to update an approval rule'
+}
+
+Gitlab::Audit::Auditor.audit(audit_context) do
+  service.execute
+end
+```
+
+In the model (for example, `ApprovalProjectRule`), we can push audit events on model
+callbacks (for example, `after_save` or `after_add`).
+
+```ruby
+# in the model
+include Auditable
+
+def audit_add(model)
+  push_audit_event('Added an approver on Security rule')
+end
+
+def audit_remove(model)
+  push_audit_event('Removed an approver on Security rule')
+end
+```
+
+Please note that this method does not support actions that are asynchronous, or
+span across multiple processes (for example, background jobs).
+
+### Using standard method call to record single event
+
+This method allows recording single audit event and involves fewer moving parts.
+
+```ruby
+if merge_approval_rule.save
+  audit_context = {
+    name: 'merge_approval_rule_created',
+    author: current_user,
+    scope: project_alpha,
+    target: merge_approval_rule,
+    ip_address: request.remote_ip,
+    message: 'Created a new approval rule'
+  }
+
+  Gitlab::Audit::Auditor.audit(audit_context)
+end
+```
+
+## Audit Event instrumentation flows
+
+The two ways we can instrument audit events have different flows.
+
+### Using block to record multiple events
+
+We wrap the operation block in a `Gitlab::Audit::Auditor` which captures the
+initial audit context (that is, `author`, `scope`, `target`, `ip_address`) object that are
+available at the time the operation is initiated.
+
+Extra instrumentation is required in the interacted classes in the chain with
+`Auditable` mixin to add audit events to the Audit Event queue via `Gitlab::Audit::EventQueue`.
+
+The `EventQueue` is stored in a local thread via `SafeRequestStore` and then later
+extracted when we record an audit event in `Gitlab::Audit::Auditor`.
+
+```plantuml
+skinparam shadowing false
+skinparam BoxPadding 10
+skinparam ParticipantPadding 20
+
+participant "Instrumented Class" as A
+participant "Audit::Auditor" as A1 #LightBlue
+participant "Audit::EventQueue" as B #LightBlue
+participant "Interacted Class" as C
+participant "AuditEvent" as D
+
+A->A1: audit <b>{ block }
+activate A1
+A1->B: begin!
+A1->C: <b>block.call
+activate A1 #FFBBBB
+activate C
+C-->B: push [ message ]
+C-->A1: true
+deactivate A1
+deactivate C
+A1->B: read
+activate A1 #FFBBBB
+activate B
+B-->A1: [ messages ]
+deactivate B
+A1->D: bulk_insert!
+deactivate A1
+A1->B: end!
+A1-->A:
+deactivate A1
+```
+
+### Using standard method call to record single event
+
+This method has a more straight-forward flow, and does not rely on `EventQueue`
+and local thread.
+
+```plantuml
+skinparam shadowing false
+skinparam BoxPadding 10
+skinparam ParticipantPadding 20
+
+participant "Instrumented Class" as A
+participant "Audit::Auditor" as B #LightBlue
+participant "AuditEvent" as C
+
+A->B: audit
+activate B
+B->C: bulk_insert!
+B-->A:
+deactivate B
+```
+
+In addition to recording to the database, we also write these events to
+[a log file](../../administration/logs.md#audit_jsonlog).