The “Reimagining a Data Disaster with OwnBackup” series tells anonymized stories of real life OwnBackup customers. Tune in next week for the next post in the series, “Reimagining a Data Disaster with OwnBackup Part 2: I Almost Violated GDPR within my Salesforce Backups.”
Have you ever made a small mistake that ended up having huge consequences or done something you wish you could take back but did not know how? This is the anonymous story of a Salesforce Admin who experienced a serious, consequential data loss and thought he was completely out of options.
It was a Monday morning like any other...I rolled out of bed, got ready for work, and zipped out the door. I got to my office promptly at 8:00 am, made my morning coffee, and logged into my email. I am a Salesforce Admin for a university.
My mission for the day was simple: student file cleanup. This is usually a seamless process, but when I took a closer look after completion, I noticed 254 student records were now missing. I sat in my desk chair for a moment realizing the magnitude of what I had just done.
I somehow merged students with the same names into single records. Now, 254 students appeared to have never enrolled, attended, or graduated the university at all. Furthermore, graduated students would now be billed the enrollment fees of current students. Accepted student records no longer existed. Sweat began to bead on my forehead.
In my head, I attempted to sift through all the possible scenarios of what had gone wrong. In that moment, I yearned for a time machine...some sort of refresh button that would take me back to my ordinary Monday morning.
As I sat there contemplating my fate, I received a message from my boss asking to have a quick chat. My heart was palpitating. I knew where the conversation was headed because my boss was always looking for changes made within Salesforce. I was fired that day because of a careless error that was nearly impossible to fix.
Now what if I told you there was a way to have saved this poor Salesforce admin ’s job? A version of that “time-machine” he was seeking already exists. There is actually a devoted team on a mission to ensure that no company in the cloud should ever lose data.
Let’s replay the above story again and I’ll show you what I mean...
It was a Monday morning like any other...I rolled out of bed, got ready for work, and zipped out the door. I got to my office promptly at 8:00 am, made my morning coffee, and logged into my email. I am a Salesforce Admin for a university.
My mission for the day was simple: student file cleanup. This is usually a seamless process, but when I took a closer look after completion, I noticed 254 student records were now missing. I sat in my desk chair for a moment realizing the magnitude of what I had just done.
I never had to do a full Salesforce restore before, so I quickly called OwnBackup, our cloud-to-cloud backup and restore vendor. An OwnBackup Technical Support Specialist picked up the phone. His calm tone of voice reassured me that my problem had a quick solution.
He walked me through a series of simple steps to restore the lost data. OwnBackup’s interface seemed so easy to use. I was sure that if a data corruption were to occur again, I would be able to fix it on my own with OwnBackup.
First, we used the OwnBackup Compare Tool to identify the records that were lost. Because OwnBackup runs daily, automatic backups, we were able to detect the changes that were made to the student records and restore them using OwnBackup’s Restore Tool.
Thanks to OwnBackup, I did not lose my job. I restored all the lost data and even though it was I who had deleted the data in the first place, I felt like a data-protection superhero.
Many people believe data loss is permanent. OwnBackup was created to protect data against user-inflicted data loss and corruption. We help people realize that there is always a “Plan B.” OwnBackup securely backs up a client’s Salesforce data on a daily basis and provides peace of mind that they can recover in the event of user-inflicted data loss or corruption.
If you relate to this Salesforce Admin’s story, perhaps, it is time to consider a comprehensive data backup and recovery solution today, with OwnBackup. Register now for our upcoming 7 Steps to Recovering Lost Data Using Salesforce Weekly Export webinar and ensure your company is protected from user-inflicted data loss or corruption!
