Q. When do backups run? And can I schedule a fixed start time?
A.
You can use the "Back Up Now" option to initiate a backup on demand at any time.
Q. How does the application identify deleted/removed records?
A. The application compares backup snapshots between two points in time. If the record existed in the previous backup, and it does NOT exist in the newer backup, the application will identify it as Deleted. To expand a bit further, if the IsDeleted checkbox is True, it means that the record is deleted and resides in the Salesforce Recycle Bin. The application does not back up the records in the recycle bin. Therefore, there is no situation where the IsDeleted field will be True in the backups.
Q. Can Salesforce's weekly exports be backed up?
A. Yes. You need to add Weekly exports as an additional service.
Q. What can I do with a Weekly Exports service?
A. The use case for Weekly Exports is to be able to run Compare jobs between this service and any other service.
Q. Is backing up and restoring chatter data supported?
A. Yes, we back up all the chatter information in the Feeds table for each object and in the FeedItems table.
Q. Is Salesforce backup and recovery supported for accounts with no API access?
We are able to back up the data tables, including standard and custom objects. However, we do not support metadata backup. In order for customers with no API access to restore data, they must submit a request to Salesforce support, in order to have their APIs temporarily enabled. For more information, see here.
Q. How do I delete or archive my backup services?
A. To permanently delete or archive your Sandbox environment backups, simply click on:
We recommend to archive services, when feasible. Archived services no longer back up, but you will still have full access to the backed up data, which is useful for restore purposes or seeding functions.
For refreshed Sandboxes, see here.
Q. How to find Content Libraries in your Backups?
A. ContentFolder represents a folder in a content library for adding files. Therefore, the application will query Libraries as ContentFolder object. If you are looking for a specific Library that has been added or deleted. The change will be shown under the ContentFolder object in our application. * To access Libraries in Salesforce, Salesforce CRM Content must be enabled on the user profile. All users with a content feature license can modify folders in their personal library in Salesforce.
Q. Where can I find my search layouts, record types, list views, validation rules, etc., for any given data object?
A. In order to find your metadata components (such as: search layouts, record types, list views, validation rules, etc.) for any given data object, do the following:
Q. My backup is failing due to ‘inactive user’, how do I resolve this?
A. In order for our Backup and Restore application to successfully take daily snapshots of your Salesforce data and metadata, a valid Salesforce Admin user is required both for the initial authentication, and on an ongoing basis to enable the daily backups to run.
In the event that you deactivated the Salesforce admin account used for initial authentication, then you will need to re-authenticate the relevant service(s) with an active Salesforce admin user. Login to the application, click on the failing backup service(s), click Re-authenticate Service, and follow the on-screen instructions.
Be sure to authenticate using an admin user that has "Modify All Data" permissions in order to enable the backups to work properly.
Q. Is my data secure?
A. All data backed up by our application is encrypted using AES-256 server-side encryption. If you are interested in bringing your own encryption keys. Feel free to reach out to your Account Executive for further options. At the end of this call, I will be sending a link to our trust site which has information regarding our security and compliance policies.
Q. Why is my backup stuck on 99%?
A. For the first backup, this is expected behavior due to the design of the progress bar. Basically it is trying to relate to another backup to know its position and doesn't have a reference point. The backup is currently running as expected.
Q. What does “Always keep last 15 backups: Yes” mean, in Options → Retention?
A. In the Options screen, if this feature is set to “Yes”, even if the client archives their service, the last 15 backups will be saved in the client’s account. If this options is set to “No”, only the last backup will be saved in the client’s account if the service is archived.
Q. I want to back up geolocation fields. How do I do that when they are excluded by default?
A. We back up the geolocation fields in the metadata backups. We don't back up the values within the records since they are automatically generated when you open the record in Salesforce. This is similar to how formula fields behave.
Q. How do we restore our Salesforce metadata?
A. We back up your metadata objects via the metadata API.
The Metadata Restore tool is used to restore specific metadata objects from a previous snapshot (or revert changes that took place between two snapshots).
The Backup and Restore product supports the following objects:
We recommend using WorkBench for objects that are backed up, but not available in the pick list.
Q. Is it possible to do a cross environment restore by object and if so, how do we do this?
A. You may use our "Parent & Child" restore tool which works cross-environment. The tool will compare the two selected snapshots from the specified environment. It will then allow you to preview all the identified records before enabling you to proceed to restore the missing records.
Example:
Q. Can the application restore Audit fields in Salesforce?
A. Yes, Objects in Salesforce have audit fields (CreatedByID, CreatedDate, LastModifiedbyID, LastModifiedDate) that are read-only by default, as they are populated by Salesforce upon creation or modifications of records. If you would like to restore Audit fields, you can do that from the Salesforce.com setup page: Enable "Set Audit Fields upon Record Creation" and "Update Records with Inactive Owners" For more information, see here.
Q. If a source object has an additional field, will the restore to a destination object that’s missing the field succeed?
A. You will get the best result if the source and destination match exactly. However, in the case above we will "apply" the source schema from the destination org to the data that is being restored. In other words, we will automatically remove that field from the source data restore file in order to make the restore work properly.
Q. Does the Archive product support GDPR Request?
A. Yes, the Archive product supports GDPR Request via a support case with an SLA of 5 business days.
Q. What if I have triggers on the records I plan to archive/ unarchive?
Q. Is there a limit to the number of records processed in an archive policy?
A. Archive currently limits the number of records that can be processed in a single archiving policy to a maximum of 2 million records.
Users who need to archive more than 2 million records can create multiple archive policies to run on the same SOQL query. When creating multiple policies with the same SOQL, it is recommended to schedule them to run at different times to avoid collisions. Running them simultaneously can cause errors if the policies attempt to archive the same records. We recommend scheduling the policies to run at intervals not less than five hours apart to prevent conflicts.
Q. What Objects are not supported in Archive?
A. Big Objects.
Q. What are the run times for an archive policy?
A. Archive policy maximum run times are set and configured to ensure that the same policy will not be running simultaneously at any point and attempting to archive the same records.
The maximum run times are:
Daily Policies - 23 hours
Weekly Policies - just less than 1 week
Monthly Policies - 3 weeks
Q. How much time should it take the archiving process to run?
A. Today archiving 100K records takes 15 minutes. A larger data set can be calculated accordingly. Archiving time depends highly on the retrieval of attachments. If you archive a significant number of attachments, as part of the policy, you should expect the archiving time to increase.
Q. Does Archive support GDPR Requests?
A. Yes, Archive supports GDPR Request via a support case with an SLA of 5 business days.
Q. Can I seed metadata between environments?
A. No. The system does not support metadata seeding between environments at this moment. Please use the existing Replicate functionality to copy metadata between environments.
Q. What metadata is modified in the Destination Org during seed?
A. The application will, if selected by the user, automatically disable all possible Validation Rules, Workflows, Triggers (except for triggers that are part of managed packages), and Processes on the destination environment during seeding and automatically re-enable them upon seed completion. Both activities require a “metadata deploy.” Please take that into account if you are seeding to sensitive environments.
Q. What happens with records owned by Portal/Community users?
A. When seeding records owned by portal/community users, the system replaces the owner of the records with the authenticated user for the destination service.
Q. What happens with records owned by Inactive Users?
A. In cases where the authenticated user for the destination has permission to UpdateWithInactiveOwner, the records would seed with the original owning User. Otherwise, the system will replace the records owner with the authenticated user for the destination service.
Q. Can we transfer User records?
A. The seeding of user records is supported. Please contact our Support for more information on how to do this. The tool does not support the seeding of Portal users.
Q. Is my sensitive data getting to the destination sandbox when using anonymization?
A. No, data anonymization will occur before being inserted into the destination sandbox.
Q. Why would I want to disable matching users?
A. In case you want to reduce the seed time, and you know that the destination contains users that also exist in the source.
Q. Why would I disable matching Product2, PriceBook and PricebookEntry?
A. In case you want to reduce the seed time, and you have no need for these objects in the template.
Q. How can I seed files?
A. For seeding files, you need to add the relevant object to the template (Attachment, Document and/or ContentDocument). You can add Document object to the template and for Attachments and ContentDocument you need to add their parent object. For example, if you want to seed Account’s attachments, you need to select Account and add Attachment and/or ContentDocument objects as Children.
Q. Why don’t I see my original file in the destination?
A. In this phase, the original file will be replaced with a dummy file that correlates to the original file type (matching is by the file name).
Q. Why do I see additional objects when I add ContentDocument to my template?
A. Salesforce uses three objects to store files data: ContentDocument, ContentVersion and ContentDocumentLink. Therefore, all three need to be seeded. The actual "content" of the file is saved as a ContentVersion, and is a child of ContentDocument. ContentDocumentLink is the object that connects ContentDocument to a given record. For example, if you added a file to Account record, the relationships will be: Account → ContentDocumentLink → ContentDocument (required parent of ContentDocumentLink) → ContentVersion (required parent of ContentDocument).
Q. Why do I get duplicate files while I selected “Clean&Insert” (the existing ones should have been deleted prior to seeding new ones)
A. There is a technical limitation. ContentDocument, ContentDocumentLink and ContentVersion cannot be deleted when selecting “Clean&Insert”.
Q. I have an object that I keep failing to seed. It triggers many automations that I cannot disable, and the insertion fails on timeout. What can I do to successfully seed this object?
A. You can set a lower batch size for the insertion of this particular object, and that should prevent the timeout issue. This is done in the template’s Advanced Settings.
Q. I added an object to my template, and when trying to add a filter to it, I am missing a field in the Fields dropdown.
A. A field can be hidden from the authenticated user (the user that the application uses to access the org/sandbox) because it is missing read permissions for that field.
To verify this:
Q. How can I reseed records that I deleted from my sandbox?
If you manually deleted data to the sandbox since the last seed, we may not be aware of these changes. For the application to know what records exist in the selected sandbox, you need to run a reindexing process by clicking Seed in the template builder, and following the steps in the Seed popup. You can select to index the template objects (recommended), or all the destination objects. Indexing all destination objects will increase the duration of the seed.
Q. Why do I see errors when seeding AccountContactRelation?
These errors that occur when seeding AccountContactRelation are a false positive. When you insert a non-private contact in your org that associates a contact to multiple accounts, an AccountContactRelation is automatically created by Salesforce, and its validation rules, database insertion, and triggers are executed immediately after the contact is saved to the database. When you change a contact's primary account, an AccountContactRelation may be created or edited, and the AccountContactRelation validation rules, database changes, and triggers are executed immediately after the contact is saved to the database.
Therefore, although you see errors, please disregard them, as a new object should exist in the destination, and it should connect the relevant Contact and Account objects. For more details, see here.
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