Some of you may have worked in a regulated environment and know how important there an audit trace can be. Now, normally when you are using an enterprise level document sharing platform you expect the same to be true for it disregarding its implementation: in-house or in the cloud. Especially when this feature is documented as available.
Not such the case with the Microsoft SharePoint Online, available separately or as a part of Office 365 enterprise subscription.
Here (http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint-help/view-audit-log-reports-HA102772739.aspx) you can read that among the available log reports there is the "Content viewing – Reports users who have viewed content on a site". Very important for Trainings- and SOP-Read-Audits afterwards.
On two other officials MS forums you can read that this "is actually supported".
http://community.office365.com/en-us/forums/154/t/153953.aspx
http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/sharepoint/en-US/8786bbb5-69f8-4c25-aa18-d0c6635cc2a1/sharepoint-2013-online-content-viewing-report
Well, don’t trust these.
The feature is not available.
First you can infer it from the subterfuge "Opened and downloaded documents, viewed items in lists, or viewed item properties (This event is not available for SharePoint Online sites)"
And second you can see it from the site collection audit settings:
Nowhere there is a trace of opening and downloading documents. By the way I have this unofficially confirmed from a Microsoft support.
And guess what? When I compare the online list with the site collection audit settings, I can assure you off the top of my head that there are three more events not available under SharePoint Online:
Changed audit settings and deleted audit log events
Workflow events
Custom events
Make the comparison for yourselves if you don’t trust me 🙂