Introduction

Mifos produces change logs, which capture and store information on all the activities performed on data. It also produces application logs, which consist of error messages, warnings, and actions performed by the users of the system.

Change Logs

For each installation of Mifos, the change log captures the creation and modification of data in the system. Specifically, Mifos captures the following activities, which are preconfigured in the system and cannot be modified:

• System username of the person who made the change or created the record
• Date of record change
• Field that was changed
• Original data value
• Modified data value

Change logs are captured for the following entities:

• Clients
• Groups
• Centers
• Loan Accounts
• Savings Accounts
• Personnel
• Loan Product details
• Savings Product details

In addition to other data, the change log captures changes for the following:

• Status changes for clients, groups, centers, loan accounts, and savings accounts
• Loan officer changes for clients, groups, and centers

Additional data changes will be recorded in the change log, but there is no guarantee that any change, other than the status and loan officer changes listed above, will be captured in the change log.

Activities for which the change log captures data changes are pre-configured in Mifos.  New activities cannot be brought under the scope of the change log.

Change log for a particular entity are visible from the section where details of the entity are created or modified. The change log can be accessed from the View change log link at the bottom of each page. The data is in a flat list format organized by date.

Out of Scope

• Ability to select changes to “reverse-out”
• Facility to configure which data changes need to be logged
• Export and print of the change log entries
• Financial transactions in the change log
• Archival of change logs

Application Logs

The application log helps developers and IT personnel ensure the proper functioning of Mifos by providing a log of debug or error messages, warnings, and actions by the users. It is stored on the server and is not available through the Mifos user interface.

A severity or importance level is assigned to all entries in the application log. The entries can be sorted by the severity levels, thereby enabling users to focus on issues of interest. System administrators are able to turn off and on certain types of logging by setting a configuration value.

Application logging is enabled at the module level, and hence there are different loggers per module. This is done so that various modules can have different levels of logging. The stabilized modules log only 'ERROR' or 'FATAL' levels. while the modules under development would be at 'DEBUG' level. Modules that are released and are relatively, but not completely, stabilized are logged at 'INFO' level.

Developers can use application logging to identify where a particular error has occurred as well as test proper functioning.

Out of Scope

• Functionality to define new instance for the creation of application logs
• Option to configure features to be logged
• Analysis and reporting on the log information stored in the database or files
• Export or print the logs
• UI for viewing the application logs