It is quite common for any salesforce user or admin to delete mass scale of data or modify significant amount of records in one go . As the same time it may be chances that due to someone’s bad decision the data may become corrupt also . You must be thankful to recycle bin who can assist you in data recovery in case of data loss , inspire of the fact that it may store certain volume of data for some limited time only .
Another means to recover overwritten data is by making use of filed history tracking in Salesforce . Field history tracking . Field history tracking needs to be enabled manually , and thereby can’t be enabled for each of the objects . At the same time , it does not permit more than 20 fields per object .
Salesforce provides various back up options such as data export service , data loader and Report export , but in the event of disaster who quickly you will be able to recover the data is all it matters .
SalesForce Data Backup And Recovery Service
SalesForce always recommend its customers to opt for native metadata backup solutions or may also recommend third party intervention in backing up and management of data .
“Because of the manual intervention, there is a cost. The cost is relative to the amount of manual work and time needed to perform the recovery. The price for this service is a flat rate of $US 10,000 (Ten Thousand US Dollars) for the one Organization that’s being recovered. The work involved actually costs us much more than that, but we pay for a portion of the service.”
Process
It all starts with the right procedure . Always keep an eye on recycle bin or review deleted records using “export all ” in Salesforce’s Data Loader before raising your case with Salesforce .
Lets quickly look at the steps for restoring data to Salesforce :
Assess Damage And Defined Goals
Till now it has been crystal clear in your mind that salesforce database is highly interlinked . For instance say you delete a single parent records in salesforce , all the parent-child database will be automatically deleted and thereby understanding the extent of data loss is essential .
Determination Of Which Data Has Been Lost Where
In order to determine the amount of data loss , the best way out to make a comparison of metadata with backup file of data which has already been exported to Salesforce org. You can use VLOOKUP in excel or any other equivalent to identify the whole relationship .
Creation Of Restoration File
As you have already determined the missing objects/records , now its time to create separate files for parent and their related objects in “.csv” format
Transformation Minimisation During Restoration
The best way to minimise transformation process is :
- It is always preferable to exclude Audit fields , as Salesforce auto updates it .
- Always deactivate workflow or validation rules or triggers .
- Switch auto-number field type to text .
Restore Data
At the time of manual insert , always try to insert operations to upload parent and make an upsert for child
What’s Next ?
After going through the above stages we have seen that salesforce data recovery is cumbersome process right from starting to end point . There are high end chances of possibility of errors or loss of data , and It may also take as long as 20 days or more to recover it .
One of the best readymade solution for data backup and recovery is Vault . Vault streamlines and automates data recovery process using 1-1 relationships , 1-n relationships and n-n relationships of salesforce data as well as metadata .