Empower Tip: Audit Trails

In this tip, we look at the Message Center. While the Empower Message Center is technically not an Audit Trail and provides information about the Empower system, you must perform a periodic review of this because it contains important information such as instrument and processing errors.

Let’s see how it’s done!

When a User logs into Empower, the Message Center automatically launches and is accessed by clicking the icon. This icon appears in the main windows of Empower such as Configuration Manager, Project, Run Samples, Review, and Preview.

In this figure, Lab Manager George logs into Empower and clicks the Message Center icon. The Message Center is divided into five areas, ‘All Messages’ is the default view for George. This table displays fields that include the Type & Category of the messages, the Date & Time stamp, the User, and the Project.

Scrolling to the right in the table, we can see the details of the messages.

To view the Message Center in this way you need to have the privilege titled, “View Message Center for All Users” which George has with his User Type.

In this figure, Chemist Sally logs into Empower, however, she does not have this privilege associated with her User Type. Therefore, she only has access to her own messages.

The Type of message is as follows:

Inform – informational such as a project from an older version of Empower was restored into a newer version.

Warning – not serious such as the syntax in a custom field is incorrect.

Error – serious such as an unsuccessful login attempt to Empower.

On the Search Messages tab, you can create a View Filter within the Message Center to look for certain types of messages.

In this example, we see Error messages.

Messages fit into one of the following categories:

General – changes to system objects such as project version updates

Archive – regarding Auto Archive

Instrument – instrument failures

Security – login attempts and project integrity issues

Processing – missing options or a processing error

Email – messages can be emailed to a User(s), to be discussed in the next Empower Tip of the Week

On the Search Messages tab, you can create a View Filter within the Message Center to look for messages that fit in a certain category.

In this example, we see instrument messages, and in this case, aborted runs.

It’s that easy!