As your organization's administrator, you can run searches related to Gmail log events and take action based on search results. You can view actions to review your organization's user and admin activity in Gmail—for example, when emails are classified as spam, released from quarantine, or sent to admin quarantine. You can then use the security investigation tool to take action—for example, to delete specific messages, mark messages as spam or phishing, send messages to quarantine, or send messages to users' inboxes.
About viewing Gmail message content
If you have the appropriate privileges in the investigation tool and the required Google Workspace edition, you can also view the content of a Gmail message as part of an investigation. For details, go to Use the investigation tool to view sensitive content .
Run a search for log events
Your ability to run a search depends on your Google edition, your administrative privileges, and the data source. You can run a search on all users, regardless of their Google Workspace edition.
Audit and investigation tool
To run a search for log events, first choose a data source. Then choose one or more filters for your search.
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In the Google Admin console, go to Menu Reporting Audit and investigation Gmail log events.
Requires having the Audit & Investigation administrator privilege.
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To filter events that occurred before or after a specific date, for Date, select Beforeor After. By default, events from the last 7 days are shown. You can select a different date range or clickto remove the date filter.
- Click Add a filterselect an attribute. For example, to filter by a specific event type, select Event.
- Select an operatorselect a valueclick Apply.
- (Optional) To create multiple filters for your search, repeat this step.
- (Optional) To add a search operator, above Add a filter, select ANDor OR.
- Click Search.
Note: Using the Filter tab, you can include simple parameter and value pairs to filter the search results. You can also use the Condition builder tab, where the filters are represented as conditions with AND/OR operators.
Security investigation tool
To run a search in the security investigation tool, first choose a data source. Then, choose one or more conditions for your search. For each condition, choose an attribute , an operator , and a value .
- Sign in with an administrator account to the Google Admin console.
If you aren’t using an administrator account, you can’t access the Admin console.
- Go to Menu Security > Security center > Investigation tool .
Requires having the Security center administrator privilege.
- Click Data sourceand select Gmail log events.
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To filter events that occurred before or after a specific date, for Date, select Beforeor After. By default, events from the last 7 days are shown. You can select a different date range or clickto remove the date filter.
- Click Add Condition.
Tip: You can include one or more conditions in your search or customize your search with nested queries . For details, go to Customize your search with nested queries . - Click Attributeselect an option. For example, to filter by a specific event type, select Event.
For a complete list of attributes, go to the Attribute descriptions section. - Select an operator.
- Enter a value or select a value from the list.
- (Optional) To add more search conditions, repeat the steps.
- Click Search.
You can review the search results from the investigation tool in a table at the bottom of the page. - (Optional) To save your investigation, click Save enter a title and descriptionclick Save.
Notes
- In the Condition buildertab, filters are represented as conditions with AND/OR operators. You can also use the Filtertab to include simple parameter and value pairs to filter the search results.
- If you give a user a new name, you will not see query results with the user's old name. For example, if you rename OldName@example.com to NewName@example.com , you will not see results for events related to OldName@example.com .
- You can only search for data in messages that have not yet been deleted from Trash.
Attribute descriptions
For this data source, you can use the following attributes when searching log event data.
Actor application name
This data column needs to be added to the search results. For details, go to Manage columns in your search results .
Details about the application used to perform the action. Click the name in the search results to open a side panel to get the following actor application information:
- Actor application name—Name of the application used to perform the action (populated for third-party apps and, in some cases like Gmail, for first-party apps)
- Actor OAuth client ID—Identifier for the third-party app used to perform the action
- Impersonation—Whether the app was impersonating a user
List of resources associated with the action. Click the following to view a resource's details:
- Resource ID—The resource identifier
- Resource title—Title of the resource
- Resource type—Drive item, Email, Alert, Rule, and so on
- Resource relation—Relationship of the resource to the event
- Resource label—List of classification labels
for a resource, including:
- Resource label ID
- Resource label title
- Resource label field
- Label field ID
- Label field name
- Label field type—The data type of the label field. Possible values and their associated properties are:
- Text
- Number
- Selection—Includes: ID, Display name, Is badged
- Selection list
- User—Includes: Email
- User list
- Date
Take action based on search results
After you run a search in the security investigation tool, you can act on your search results. For example, you can run a search based on Gmail log events, and then use the tool to delete specific messages, send messages to quarantine, or send messages to users' inboxes. For more details about actions in the security investigation tool, go to Take action based on search results .
Manage your investigations
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View your list of investigationsTo view a list of the investigations that you own and that were shared with you, click View investigations . The investigation list includes the names, descriptions, and owners of the investigations, and the date last modified.
From this list, you can take action on any investigations that you own—for example, to delete an investigation. Check the box for an investigation, and then click Actions.
Note:Directly above your list of investigations, under Quick access, you can view recently saved investigations.
As a super administrator , click Settings to :
- Change the time zone for your investigations. The time zone applies to search conditions and results.
- Turn on or off Require reviewer. For more details, go to Require reviewers for bulk actions .
- Turn on or off View content. This setting allows admins with the appropriate privileges to view content.
- Turn on or off Enable action justification.
For instructions and details, go to Configure settings for your investigations .
You can control which data columns appear in your search results.
- At the top-right of the search results table, click Manage columns .
- (Optional) To remove current columns, click Remove item .
- (Optional) To add columns, next to Add new column, click the Down arrow and select the data column.
Repeat as needed. - (Optional) To change the order of the columns, drag the column name.
- Click Save.
You can export search results in the security investigation tool to Google Sheets or to a CSV file. For instructions, see Export search results .
To save your search criteria or share it with others, you can create and save an investigation, and then share, duplicate, or delete it.
For details, go to Save, share, delete, and duplicate investigations .
For more information about data sources, go to Data retention and lag times .
