Enable audit and activity formatter

[Sruthi17]

I have a requirement to enable auditing and add activity formatter for a custom table. But Im not sure if its correct to enable audit to all tables. Will it impact performance and storage space?

Additionally, what are the factors I should consider before enabling audit for a table?

Thanks

[Uncle Rob · Accepted solution]

ON PERFORMANCE
Auditing is more impactful than non-auditing, but I wouldn't worry about it unless this table has quantity of records & updates similar to Incident module.

I was recently asked about performance impact for a custom Task table I built.  But this table would have dozens to hundreds of records in a YEAR.  Impact?  Negligible.  Rounding error.

FACTORS TO CONSIDER ENABLING AUDIT
The number one factor:  WHY does someone need it?
The mechanical output of auditing is an activity log that shows who, when, previous, and changed values of every field on the table.  
- Is it critical to log changes to fields?  What are the use cases?

You can also see the need on the flip side.  Remember that stakeholders don't know or care how the system does what it does.  If I see requests like "add a worknote whenever the priority changes" I know for SURE auditing should probably be on.

AS A GENERAL RULE

- Custom task tables should probably have audit turned on.
- Changes in field values should matter for coherent reasons
- Changes should be "frequent enough" in the data.  What that frequency is is variable.  Your guts should tell you.

[Ankur Bawiskar]

@Sruthi17 

@Uncle Rob has already given his valuable thoughts on this.

You can check this link as well

ServiceNow Security Best Practices Guide 

If my response helped please mark it correct and close the thread so that it benefits future readers.