Activity and Audit Trails
Boardwise maintains detailed records of important actions across your organization. These activity logs help you monitor what is happening, investigate concerns, and demonstrate compliance with governance requirements.
Viewing Organization Activity
Dashboard Activity Feed
Your main dashboard displays recent activity across all organizations you belong to. This gives you a quick overview of recent changes including:
- Documents uploaded or updated
- Meetings created or modified
- Committees added or changed
Each activity entry shows who performed the action, what they did, and when it occurred.
Person Activity
When viewing a person's profile, you can see activity statistics specific to them:
- Number of meetings attended
- Action items assigned to them
- Document annotations they have made
- Comments they have contributed
This helps you understand each person's engagement level within the organization.
What Events Are Tracked
Boardwise tracks three categories of events:
Content Events
- Documents: Created, updated, file replaced (with the new version number), deleted, viewed, and downloaded (with the version that was downloaded)
- Meetings: Created, updated, canceled, and changes of stage (date hold sent, materials published, moved back a step, started, and closed)
- Committees: Created, updated, deleted
- Folders: Created, updated, deleted
Security Events
- Authentication: User logins, logout events, and failed login attempts
- Password activity: Password changes and reset requests from before Boardwise stopped using passwords
- Passkey activity: WebAuthn authentication attempts and failures
- Session management: Forced logouts of individual devices or all sessions
Administrative Events
- Organization changes: Settings and configuration updates
- People management: People added, updated, removed, blocked, or unblocked
- Role changes: Organization roles and committee memberships modified
- Access changes: Invitations sent and permissions updated
Document-Level Tracking
Beyond general activity logs, Boardwise provides detailed tracking for document engagement.
What Is Recorded
For each document, the system tracks:
- Who opened the document
- When they first viewed it
- When they last viewed it
- How many times they accessed it
- How many annotations they added
Viewing Document Activity
Document view tracking is primarily surfaced through Meeting Analytics, where you can see:
- Which attendees have reviewed each meeting document
- A breakdown of readers versus non-readers
- Engagement patterns across the attendee list
This information helps you identify who has prepared for upcoming meetings and who may need a reminder.
Watermarked Downloads
Every PDF a board member downloads from Boardwise is stamped with their name before the file leaves the system. The watermark appears as a faint diagonal mark across each page and a small header line at the top — the same identification the in-app viewer shows. This means a copy of a board pack that surfaces outside Boardwise can be traced back to the specific recipient.
A copy saved for offline reading is stamped and recorded in the same way, and the record says it was an offline save rather than a download. Saving for offline works whether or not the organization allows downloads.
Alongside the watermark, Boardwise records a download audit row for every file served — including a cryptographic fingerprint of the exact bytes that left the system. If a leak needs to be investigated, the fingerprint on the leaked file can be matched against the audit log to establish the chain of custody.
Who Can View Activity Logs
Access to activity information follows the standard permission model:
Organization Administrators
Administrators have full visibility into organization activity, including:
- All content changes (documents, meetings, committees)
- People management actions
- Configuration changes
Board and Committee Officers
Chairs, Secretaries and other board or committee officers do not see the activity log or meeting analytics unless they are also Administrators. Holding a role in a group lets a person run that group's meetings, but the record of who did what across the organization stays with the Administrators.
Regular Members
Members see limited activity information:
- Their own engagement statistics
- Recent activity on the main dashboard (filtered to content they can access)
Guests
Guests have minimal activity visibility, limited to content they have been explicitly granted access to through meeting invitations.
Compliance and Audit Benefits
Activity tracking in Boardwise supports several compliance and governance objectives:
Accountability
Every significant action is attributed to a specific user with a timestamp. This creates accountability for:
- Who uploaded or modified sensitive documents
- Who changed meeting details or permissions
- Who accessed confidential materials
Investigation Support
If a security concern arises, activity logs help you:
- Identify unusual access patterns
- Determine when specific changes were made
- Trace who had access to particular information
Governance Documentation
For organizations subject to regulatory requirements, activity logs provide evidence of:
- Proper information handling procedures
- Controlled access to board materials
- Documented decision-making processes
Board Preparedness
Document view tracking helps demonstrate that board members are reviewing materials before meetings, supporting good governance practices and fiduciary duties.
Privacy Considerations
Activity tracking balances transparency with appropriate privacy boundaries.
What Attendees Should Know
- Document views are tracked as standard functionality for board portals
- Analytics are visible only to meeting organizers and administrators, not to other attendees
- The focus is on aggregate preparedness rather than individual surveillance
Data Retention
Activity data follows your organization's data retention policies. When documents or meetings are permanently deleted, associated activity records may also be removed according to your retention settings.
Best Practices
For Administrators
- Review activity logs periodically to stay aware of organizational changes
- Use activity data to identify unusual patterns that may warrant investigation
- Ensure team members understand that significant actions are logged
For Secretaries
- Check meeting analytics before board meetings to gauge preparedness
- Use document view data to send targeted reminders to attendees who have not reviewed materials
- Reference activity history when preparing meeting minutes or records