Managing enterprise data is at the heart of any CRM implementation, especially cloud‑based platforms like Salesforce. This is very important for all types of Salesforce solutions as it requires a flawless mapping of data to ensure better performance and optimum ROI. Salesforce maintains its data copies as a backup to be restored if needed in case of a failure. However, this may be time-consuming and costly, with many manual restoration tasks involved. Considering this, the organizations now primarily focus on implementing third-party solid data backup solutions and recovery strategies to ensure security.
Why Salesforce’s data recovery strategy is essential?
For every organization running on Salesforce CRM, it is advised that there should be a dedicated strategy for Salesforce data backup and recovery. This will help the Salesforce admins streamline the business workflows data relationships for or optimize productivity and ensure the smooth run of the overall processes. However, while adequately aligning the teams, employees with all these new strategies may find it very challenging at the beginning.
An ideal data recovery plan will help protect the business data and allow the users of Salesforce to implement better data projects with no friction. Further, in this article, we will highlight some significant data recovery practices that businesses can effectively adopt to reduce the risk of data loss and improve the efficiency of running the business.
Knowing about metadata
Only the core data records come to everyone’s mind when mentioning Salesforce data. However, there is metadata also, which is a different entity from Salesforce data. Metadata becomes so crucial as data itself when restoring data into proper structure and function. We can consider all the important contacts, accounts, business leads, etc. On the contrary, metadata is the configurable settings information and the custom quotes for data like the page layouts, customized fields, dashboard reports, etc. Any minor changes on metadata are irreversible. So, you must maintain a strict protocol and proper permissions to deal with metadata copies during restoration.
- Using App Exchange
Salesforce is a cloud-based system, and as many of you may already know, it can do more things than what it comes with. The online marketplace named App Exchange dedicatedly for Salesforce is a great feature, which is one primary reason why Salesforce is the No. 1 CRM now. Along with promoting services and products of Salesforce com, the users can also find many useful tools and add-ons at Salesforce App exchange for salesforce data backup recovery.
You can also find many data backup and metadata backup tools at App exchange. Each of these comes with a unique set of features and utilities, so you need to understand the difference between those and test each when considering adopting a good one among these.
- Understanding the depth of data loss and confirming it
Salesforce is primarily a data-driven platform in which customer engagements are converted into insights based on the available data. This will make corrupted or missing data very undesirable in the Salesforce ecosystem. Corrupted or missed data will mislead the senses and adversely affect an organization’s business strategies and decision-making. So, the Salesforce users should first confirm the data loss while suspecting such things. Here are a few things to consider before confirming data loss.
– Change in the data-sharing rules – In some cases, the admins may change the practices of sharing, which may restrict some users from viewing a specific set of data. In such cases, it may not be the data loss, but the restrictions force failure to view data.
– Using global search – The users may also check if the missing records can be accessed through the global search feature. In many cases, the documents may be restricted, and others cannot be viewed by the users who are not having permission.
– ‘View All’ access to data – If all the primary troubleshooting attempts find the suspected data loss to be correct, you can try the View All access to reconfirm that the user with View All permissions is also not having access to data to confirm it.
- Finding data restoration options
The following process is to identify the best backup and restoration approach to confirm the scope of data loss. There are many methods to check for better backups; the simplest is to access the recycle bin. Let us explore some standard backup options from recycle bin.
– Purging from recycle bin – If you are using any classic Salesforce user interface, you will be able to check for the records that may have been deleted to be found at the recycle bin. On finding those in recycling bin, you can quickly restore them by just using the undelete option.
– Purging with the use of data loader – There may be multiple records that can be purged using Export All data loader functions. This is very useful in cases where the records may not be visible in the recycle then but can be accessed through the Data Loader.
– Purge through Recent Export logs – Salesforce data records can also be created or recreated using the backup logs from the weekly data reports through weekly data export archives. These archives are auto-created within the Salesforce ecosystem. The users can also use the third-party apps from the App Exchange for recreating the weekly logs automatically.
– Purging using Sandbox copy – You will be able to also check for the Sandbox copies of data for restoration. Full Sandboxes may be used to test the environment, and they can easily create a replica of all the current production logs, including data and metadata. One should note that the data export feature may not be available in the sandbox, where the data can be reloaded only by using third-party API tools.
There are also more ways to confirm data loss and initiate the recovery and restoration process, which we will discuss in the forthcoming articles.
