Backing up your Salesforce data is a process that every company needs to implement. Even though Salesforce instances are stored on some of the most secure servers in the world, there is always a chance of losing your data through user error or configuration issues on the platform. Having a data backup solution in place can safeguard your business from unexpected data loss resulting in business disruption, broken trust and loss in revenue. In this article, we will take a look at why you should backup your data and the tools offered by Salesforce to help you get your data back.
Why Do You Need to Backup Your Data?
Even with the best of intentions, users and administrators have been in situations where they have either deleted large amounts of data, or have modified records, only to later realize that a mistake was made. With tools like Data Loader, it is very easy to mass delete or update records. And a simple mistake in your source file or field mapping could spell disaster for your data. It is recommended that you keep a regular backup of your data and to do a manual point-in-time backup before you proceed with any major data project within your organization.
Any security expert will tell you that it’s not a matter of if but when a company’s security posture will be tested. An effective backup and recovery service can turn an incident from being an existential crisis into a speed bump on the way to business continuity. In an increasingly digital and AI – generated world, where data loss can mean catastrophic setbacks for individuals and businesses alike, a customer-controlled backup is a beacon of reliability and security.
What Should You Look for in a Salesforce Backup Tool?
In simplest terms, a Salesforce backup solution will make a copy of your Salesforce data and store this data in a location other than Salesforce, such as AWS storage or a similar solution. Try to look for something that will help you keep an eye on your data and alert you of some abnormal activities. For example, let’s say that you see that 1,000 records were deleted overnight and this type of thing does not usually happen at your company. It would be a lot better for you to be alerted about such an event right away instead of getting an earful from angry users about some missing data.
Now, let’s look at the actual restoring data part. We mentioned earlier that the data backup tool needs to be able to get your data out of Salesforce, but it also needs to get it back in as well. Restoring data is particularly difficult because you will be deploying to production, which is a sensitive operation by itself. In addition to this, you will need to deploy records that relate to other records, and you don’t want to make a bad situation worse by deploying the wrong data. Therefore, when evaluating a data backup solution, pay attention to how easily the tool lets you put the data back from an external database to your Salesforce.
Salesforce Offers Native Backup Tools
While Salesforce offers multiple native data backup solutions, most of which are free, it is important to remember that these tools do not recover your data. Rather, they give you the ability to export your data and metadata. These tools include:
- Data Export Service – Allows you to backup your entire Salesfirce instance to a CSV file. You can schedule these backups to automatically prepare weekly or monthly.
- Data Loader – The Data Loader can be an admin’s best friend since it gives you the ability to export data from each individual object at a time. This is great for backing up a specific object before conducting a mass import.
- Report Export – This is a simple way to export reports out of Salesforce using the Report’s interface.
- Change Sets – Change Sets is great for backing up metadata by copying metadata from one Salesforce organization to another, such as from production to a sandbox or a developer organization.
If you decide to go with the Salesforce native solutions, you need to keep in mind that there are drawbacks:
- Entirely Manual Process – Somebody will need to go into Salesforce and manually click buttons and if they forget to do it even one single time, then you are putting all of your data at risk.
- Big Possibility of Human Error – You will not be able to backup your data more frequently than on a weekly basis. Think of all the changes your team made today or the day before.All of these changes will not be captured until the next time you do an export.
- Not the Most Convenient – Since Salesforce backs up your data in CSV files, it may not be the most convenient format to pull data from since it can be easy to lose the relationship between records.
- Possible Security Risks – When you are downloading the CSV file with your Salesforce data, it might contain some sensitive information, which you may not want to be simply laying around on your computer. This presents another problem of finding secure storage for such sensitive data.
What You Need to Consider When Setting Up your Backup Strategy
As mentioned earlier, a comprehensive backup strategy is an essential part of your company’s cyber safety net. Having said this, there are some things you should consider when setting up your backup strategy:
- Data vs Metadata – Whe you think of a Salesforce backup solution, you are probably thinking of backing up Salesforce records, but it is also important to backup metadata as well. Metadata includes all of your custom configurations in Salesforce such as the fields you created, the Flows you set up, as well as any custom Apex code or Lightning pages. If you have multiple people working in your Salesforce instance, it is possible for one user to override the changes made by another user, causing months or weeks of work to be lost.
- Emergency Data Recovery – If all else fails, the fine folks at Salesforce will be there to help you, but this service comes with a $10,000 price tag. You see, Salesforce must keep backups of all your data in the event they are at fault and they will be happy to dip into this archive. However, once again, it will cost you and can take a number of weeks.
- Wide Variety of Third-Party Offerings – There are a number of data backup solutions offered by vendora on AppExchange. Some of these are more comprehensive in that they allow you to automate backups of both your data AND your metadata and provide a mechanism to restore that data easily. You can search for these by visiting AppExchange directly and searching using keyword backup.
- Schedule Frequent Backups – As we mentioned earlier, the Salesforce native functionality does not allow you to backup more frequently than on a weekly basis, but you can further enhance this by investing in a third-party tool. Try to back up data when changes are made, but without straining the resources or the system of the business. Security goalposts aside, being realistic about your organization’s ability to keep a consistent data backup schedule is the key to getting started to making a backup schedule.
- Determine and Comply with Retention Requirements – Compliance with regulations can’t be achieved unless an organization handles data in a way that adheres to the outlined regulations. To be able to obtain the needed certifications and comply with regulations and different standards in general, you’ll have to maintain robust, up-to-date backup processes that ensure data is always protected, but also available to users—even in cases of unexpected events, like natural disasters, cyberattacks, data losses, and human error.
Make Sure You Have an Incident Response Plan in Place
While your data backup and restore tool can help you get back your data, it should be a part of an overall incident response plan you should already have in place. This plan should take into account your data models, the elapsed time between the incident and the restoration, possible incident scenarios and the impact they may have on your company. Be sure that you test out this plan to be fully certain that you are comfortable with it. Remember, real incidents are difficult and stressful. You may have a bunch of sales representatives contactinng you, inforrming you that they are close to closing a particular deal and need access to their data; they will want to know a timeline for the restoration. Therefore, running this through to test out the process will definitely help you out in the long run.
In the event that something does go awry, there should be some mechanisms in place to revert the changes. For example, DataGroomr offers Undo and Rollback features that provide crucial safeguards during data cleaning and deduplication. They allow users to easily reverse mistakes—whether it’s a single erroneous action or a series of unintended changes—ensuring data integrity and reducing the risk of costly errors. Therefore, you should make sure that your tools enhance confidence and efficiency and allow users to experiment with changes while maintaining control over their data.
Good Data Hygiene Practices Will Help Your Backup Recovery Efforts
Data hygiene and data backup are closely connected in maintaining the quality and integrity of an organization’s data. Proper data hygiene—ensuring that data is accurate, consistent, and up to date—directly impacts the effectiveness of backups. Clean, well-managed data leads to more efficient and reliable backups, reducing the storage of unnecessary, outdated, or duplicate information. Conversely, poor data hygiene can cause backups to replicate errors, inaccuracies, and redundancies, complicating the recovery process and undermining the reliability of restored data. In essence, maintaining good data hygiene ensures that backups remain valuable, streamlined, and capable of quickly restoring accurate, usable information when needed.
In addition to this, data hygiene enhances the efficiency of backup and recovery processes by reducing the volume of irrelevant or redundant data stored. When data is regularly cleaned and validated, backups require less storage space and can be completed faster, minimizing system strain and costs associated with data management. Clean data also simplifies the recovery process, as it allows for quicker and more precise restoration of critical information without the need to filter through outdated or inaccurate records. This synergy between data hygiene and data backup is crucial for minimizing downtime during recovery and ensuring business continuity, especially in cases of system failures, data corruption, or security breaches.
