Data is the lifeblood of most modern businesses. Don’t believe me? Try to imagine your day-to-day work life without Salesforce. Difficult, right? You’re not the only one who relies on Salesforce. At Dreamforce 2016, half of all large companies we surveyed told us their data is “everything.”
Since your data is important to the success of your company, I’ve developed the following list of common backup and recovery missteps you should avoid.
1) Expecting that data recovery with Salesforce Weekly Export will be simple and complete.
Even if you’re diligent in downloading your Weekly Export .CSVs, using them to recover from a data loss can be extremely complex. In fact, there are over seven steps to recover from a data loss using the Weekly Export files. These include:
- Size the damage
- Isolate missing data
- Create .CSVs for restore
- Prepare deleted records
- Build external ID
- Insert records
- Additional considerations for complex objects
2) Counting on Salesforce’s Disaster Recovery Service to be fast or free.
Of course, Salesforce offers services to help you recover lost data, but unfortunately this service is neither fast nor free. On Salesforce’s FAQ and Help Center, it clearly states that “the price for [the data recovery] service is a flat rate of $US 10,000.” In addition, it takes two to three weeks minimum to recover the lost data.
3) Trusting your own data center (or laptop!) for your Salesforce backups.
It may feel more secure to save your Salesforce Weekly Export .CSVs in your own data center, but storing your proprietary business leads and contacts there may not be as safe as you think. Investing in your own data center requires external hardware and software providers or staff, all of whom have access to your data. If you haven’t limited the permissions on your Salesforce .CSVs, your data will also be open to malicious attacks or angry employees. Backing up your Salesforce data to your own data center or laptop may also contradict data compliance requirements in certain industries, such as insurance.
4) Not setting up proactive notifications upon significant changes in your data.
Picture this: You manage your company’s data, yet other people in your company are constantly uploading, changing, or deleting this data. When someone makes a mistake, and data goes missing or bad, he or she immediately comes to you for urgent help. You try to fix your colleague’s mistake, but are not always sure how to find all the missing or corrupted data. This is, unfortunately, one of the major challenges Salesforce Administrators and Developers face.
5) Assuming that your backup solution supports metadata recovery.
On Salesforce, Metadata includes page layouts and objects, report changes, document and save workflow rules, and customizations. Salesforce’s Data Recovery Service and Weekly .CSV Exports do not include Metadata. You could lose information if it’s not backed up separately with another tool, such as OwnBackup.
Learn more about these 5 common Salesforce backup and recovery missteps by watching our “Salesforce Backup and Recovery Strategy – 5 Common Missteps” webinar.
