Understanding audit trails and event history
3 min read
Updated Apr 14, 2026
Audit history is one of the core pieces of the Signelio signing model. It gives operational teams, compliance reviewers, and recipients a consistent trail of what happened during the workflow.
Before you begin
A need to explain workflow evidence
A completed or in-progress package to use as an example
Awareness that event history is append-only
Know what gets recorded
The audit layer records document events such as creation, sending, viewing, signing, voiding, declining, and completion-related artifact generation.
Signing sessions can also capture route type, actor identity, timestamps, IP, and user agent when available.
Understand the chain
Each event links to the previous one through previousHash and stores its own eventHash.
That chain makes later tampering easier to detect than a loose collection of unrelated logs.
Use audit history with artifacts
Audit history is strongest when paired with the signed PDF, certificate, and manifest created at completion.
Operational teams should keep those records together when downstream review is likely.
Pro Tips
Treat audit history as part of the package, not as a separate afterthought.
Use plain language when explaining the chain to non-technical stakeholders.
If a reviewer needs a portable export, combine the artifact set with a compliance export when appropriate.
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