Important things to note when using Salesforce Data Recovery Services

Businesses that use Salesforce must take special care about keeping their data safe and protected by implementing some backup strategy that helps avert any disaster. Data losses are bound to happen despite following the best practices of the IT industry because of the various unavoidable scenarios that lead to data loss.

For organizations to make the best use of Salesforce and succeed, it is critically important to ensure flawless data mapping that directly impacts ROI.

To implement Salesforce successfully, organizations must be at the top of their game in data management by relying on their data backup and restore services. The data restoration or recovery services of Salesforce acquire a lot of importance because although Salesforce retains copies of data in the system, recovering it can take a long time and involve a lot of money. Therefore, organizations using Salesforce must be self-sufficient in data backup and recovery.

Why do you need a data recovery strategy?

Salesforce applications help to streamline business processes, workflows, and relationships that result in better productivity. However, getting your employees and the teams within the organization to come to terms with the completely new strategies can be pretty challenging, but with constant pushing, accomplishing the task should not be a problem. Having a solid data recovery plan gives the strength to businesses to implement Salesforce projects without any hiccups.

Businesses can adopt various data recovery strategies about which we will discuss in this article.

 

What is Metadata?

Salesforce users must have enough clarity about the Salesforce ecosystem and the use of data and Metadata in the proper context. Data and Metadata are the two main entities in the Salesforce domain. Data relates to information generated during the business operations and includes data generated from accounts, leads, contacts, etc., that are nothing but records. However, Metadata relates to the Salesforce system and consists of data related to configuration and settings and custom codes like page layouts, custom fields, dashboards, reports, etc. Metadata is much more sensitive because any change that happens to it is permanent. You cannot reveres any change done to Metadata. Therefore, more care is necessary for handling Metadata, and you must carry out due diligence before allowing anyone to handle it. Moreover, organizations must maintain copies of Metadata for easy restoration.

 

Use of App Exchange

Recognizing the importance of data safety and protection, Salesforce provides various features that users can take advantage of to protect data and ensure its recovery after backup. Even some features which are designed to serve some other purpose have suitable interfaces for data backup. For example, the AppExchnage feature of Salesforce helps create an online marketplace, but the same app helps back up data and Metadata. The AppExchange has many backup applications, and users can select one by comparison and evaluation.

 

Confirming Data loss

Salesforce uses customer data and customer insights to arrive at customer engagement data. It is critical to filter out corrupted data from the system as it does not have any value.  Corrupted data is of no use in the Salesforce ecosystem and is an undesired asset that should be identifiable. Corrupted data is as bad as missing data because it can trigger false signals that mislead users and affect the customer strategies negatively. As a result, the reputation of the brand and organization takes a beating in the long run. As part of the troubleshooting process during the initial stages, users must share all information about data loss with the Administrator of the Salesforce system.

Clear communications between users and the Salesforce administrator is the key to successfully implementing the system by taking care of the following.

• If the situation demands, the administrator sharing rules can change at any moment, and it might affect some users by restricting viewing.
• Users must verify the possibility of viewing records by using global search. Some records might go through re-parenting, in which case some users would be unable to view them.
• After completing the preliminary investigation, if the facts point to data loss, users can confirm it by accessing the View All feature.

 

Backup options

On receipt of confirmation of data loss, users must take the most crucial step to identify the best options for data backup. Among several methods to check for backups, the recycle bin is the simplest. Here are some other backup options commonly used.

Recover from recycle bin – Users of classic Salesforce UI can check the recycle bin for deleted records. By selecting Undelete, you can restore the data immediately. However, you can try this only in a few selected cases because Salesforce does not allow restoring several records in this manner. To restore multiple data from the recycle bin, you must use the API, workbench, sandbox, etc.

Recover by using Data Loader – System admins can purge multiple records using the export all function in data loaders.  This method helps recover data visible through the data loader but seen in the recycle bin. System admins first access the data and recreate it with the help of data loaders.

Recover by using Recent Export logs – Using export backup logs from the archives of Weekly Data Export, it is possible to recreate records. The Salesforce ecosystem creates these archives automatically within the environment. Users who are keen to develop weekly logs automatically can use some third-party app from App Exchange.

Recover data by using Sandbox copy – Full sandboxes usually used in testing environments help create replicas of all current production Org and data and Metadata. The sandbox lacks the export feature, and users need API tools and data loaders for reloading data.

Finally, be prepared to overcome the challenges of importing records by mapping new unique IDs of new records with the previous records. The other task is to replace old IDs with new IDs. It will help you organize and streamline things better. You can do this by creating external ID fields or using the VLOOKUP function of Microsoft Excel.