Services or capabilities described in Amazon Web Services documentation might vary by Region. To see the differences applicable to the China Regions, see Getting Started with Amazon Web Services in China (PDF).

Recording API calls with Amazon CloudTrail

Amazon Simple Workflow Service is integrated with Amazon CloudTrail, a service that provides a record of actions taken by a user, role, or an Amazon Web Service. CloudTrail captures all API calls for Amazon SWF as events. The calls captured include calls from the Amazon SWF console and code calls to the Amazon SWF API operations. Using the information collected by CloudTrail, you can determine the request that was made to Amazon SWF, the IP address from which the request was made, when it was made, and additional details.

Every event or log entry contains information about who generated the request. The identity information helps you determine the following:

CloudTrail is active in your Amazon Web Services account when you create the account and you automatically have access to the CloudTrail Event history. The CloudTrail Event history provides a viewable, searchable, downloadable, and immutable record of the past 90 days of recorded management events in an Amazon Web Services Region. For more information, see Working with CloudTrail Event history in the Amazon CloudTrail User Guide. There are no CloudTrail charges for viewing the Event history.

For an ongoing record of events in your Amazon Web Services account past 90 days, create a trail or a CloudTrail Lake event data store.

Data events in CloudTrail

Data events provide information about the resource operations performed on or in a resource (for example, reading or writing to an Amazon S3 object). These are also known as data plane operations. Data events are often high-volume activities. By default, CloudTrail doesn’t log data events. The CloudTrail Event history doesn't record data events.

Additional charges apply for data events. For more information about CloudTrail pricing, see Amazon CloudTrail Pricing.

You can log data events for the Amazon SWF resource types by using the CloudTrail console, Amazon CLI, or CloudTrail API operations. For more information about how to log data events, see Logging data events with the Amazon Web Services Management Console and Logging data events with the Amazon Command Line Interface in the Amazon CloudTrail User Guide.

The following table lists the Amazon SWF resource types for which you can log data events. The Data event type column shows the value to choose from the Data event type list on the CloudTrail console. The resources.type value column shows the resources.type value, which you would specify when configuring advanced event selectors using the Amazon CLI or CloudTrail APIs. The Data APIs logged to CloudTrail column shows the API calls logged to CloudTrail for the resource type.

You can configure advanced event selectors to filter on the eventName, readOnly, and resources.ARN fields to log only those events that are important to you. For more information about these fields, see AdvancedFieldSelector in the Amazon CloudTrail API Reference.

Management events in CloudTrail

Management events provide information about management operations that are performed on resources in your Amazon Web Services account. These are also known as control plane operations. By default, CloudTrail logs management events.

Amazon Simple Workflow Service logs the following control plane operations to CloudTrail as management events.

Domain Events

Activity Events

WorkflowType Events

Tag Events

Example event

An event represents a single request from any source and includes information about the requested API operation, the date and time of the operation, request parameters, and so on. CloudTrail log files aren't an ordered stack trace of the public API calls, so events don't appear in any specific order.

The following example shows a CloudTrail event that demonstrates the CountClosedWorkflowExecutions operation.

{
    "eventVersion": "1.09",
    "userIdentity": {
      "type": "AssumedRole",
      "principalId": "1234567890abcdef02345:admin",
      "arn": "arn:aws:sts::111122223333:assumed-role/Admin/admin",
      "accountId": "111122223333",
      "accessKeyId": "abcdef01234567890abc",
      "sessionContext": {
        "sessionIssuer": {
          "type": "Role",
          "principalId": "1234567890abcdef02345",
          "arn": "arn:aws:iam::111122223333:role/Admin",
          "accountId": "111122223333",
          "userName": "Admin"
        },
        "attributes": {
          "creationDate": "2023-11-23T16:37:38Z",
          "mfaAuthenticated": "false"
        }
      }
    },
    "eventTime": "2023-11-23T17:52:46Z",
    "eventSource": "swf.amazonaws.com",
    "eventName": "CountClosedWorkflowExecutions",
    "awsRegion": "us-east-1",
    "sourceIPAddress": "198.51.100.42",
    "userAgent": "aws-internal/3 aws-sdk-java/1.11.42",
    "requestParameters": {
      "domain": "nsg-domain",
      "closeTimeFilter": {
        "oldestDate": "Nov 23, 2023 5:52:46 PM",
        "latestDate": "Nov 23, 2023 5:52:46 PM"
      }
    },
    "responseElements": null,
    "requestID": "a1b2c3d4-5678-90ab-cdef-EXAMPLEaaaaa",
    "eventID": "a1b2c3d4-5678-90ab-cdef-EXAMPLEbbbbb",
    "readOnly": true,
    "resources": [
      {
        "accountId": "111122223333",
        "type": "AWS::SWF::Domain",
        "ARN": "arn:aws:swf:us-east-1:111122223333:/domain/nsg-domain"
      }
    ],
    "eventType": "AwsApiCall",
    "managementEvent": false,
    "recipientAccountId": "111122223333",
    "eventCategory": "Data",
    "tlsDetails": {
      "clientProvidedHostHeader": "swf.example.amazondomains.com"
    }
  }

For information about CloudTrail record contents, see CloudTrail record contents in the Amazon CloudTrail User Guide.