Salesforce Backup Complete Guide for Businesses 2023

Salesforce contains all the critical data related to your sales pipeline. Losing any data entry can have a significant negative effect on the efforts of your sales teams and your company’s revenues. “In this guide, we’ll discuss the importance of backup and restore for Salesforce and provide valuable insights into how to do it efficiently.

Why does your business need to backup Salesforce?

Similar to Google Workspace or Microsoft Office 365, Salesforce seems to be a secure SaaS with enhanced data protection and defense against cyberattacks. Hence, the question is why to backup Salesforce data.

Indeed, Salesforce is a secure application. All the entries are safe there and a data breach is highly unlikely if not impossible. The issues, however, occur due to human activity.

Four reasons why data is lost in Salesforce:

1. Human error (deletion, overwriting, or changing data). Although this type of data loss is the most frequent one, in many cases it can be easily identified and fixed.
2. Man-in-the-middle attack (data deletion or corruption). This is the least regular incident. However, the data loss can remain undiscovered for a long period.
3. Developers’ mistakes in reprogramming Salesforce. This scenario isn’t frequent. However, the consequences for your sales pipeline can be the most significant. The developer’s mistake can destroy all the relations between data entries and Salesforce making it impossible to work.
4. Add-ons malfunction. Salesforce has hundreds of add-ons to help automate multiple processes in its work. A bug in a new add-on or an update of an old one can cause mass data loss or corruption. Furthermore, some tools enable mass upload, edit, or deletion. And a single human error can break your pipeline for weeks if not months.

What types of data can be backed up in Salesforce?

Salesforce has three types of data. All of them can and should be backed up to make sure that your sales pipeline is intact and operates efficiently.

1. Objects

Objects are the building blocks of your sales pipeline. They contain all the necessary information about the prospects your business is working with:

– Company name, size, industry, type, and other essential firmographics.

– The contact data of the buying team (names, telephones, emails, etc.)

– All the communication you had with the company (emails, call records, messages, etc.)

– Stages of the pipeline (lead, qualified lead, estimation, decision, purchase, upsell)

Obviously, losing this type of data will lead to the loss of opportunities and deals and ultimately to revenue loss.

2. Files

These are all the files that are uploaded to Salesforce. This can be a document with sales intelligence data or a special offer in PDF your sales team sends to a potential buyer who wants a discount. It can also be critical technical documentation that your production team needs to study to make a project draft.

Probably, most files are additionally stored on other storage (e.g., from OneDrive or DropBox). However, some might be exclusively stored on Salesforce. Losing them can be damaging to your organization.

3. Metadata

Metadata is the information about the relations between other types of Salesforce data. These are the relations between:

• Various objects
• Objects and files.

Metadata shows Salesforce how all the data entries are arranged and interoperated. It shows:

• the structure of your pipeline
• which company is at which stage
• what interactions have already been made,
• which salesperson is responsible for which prospect
• and much more.

Losing Salesforce metadata is devastating. Yet, such cases happen all the time when the development team tries to introduce changes into your Salesforce.

Salesforce sandbox backup

Sandbox is yet another component in Salesforce that developers use to experiment with changes before implementing them in the production environment. It plays a crucial role within the data pipeline, allowing for testing and development. While data loss in the sandbox may not directly impact your sales team, backing up sandbox data is important to prevent potential work and time loss. Developers use it to experiment with changes in the pipeline before introducing them to the real product. Sandbox has all the above types of data (objects, files, metadata).

Losing data in the sandbox isn’t critical for your sales team. However, your developer team might have to build everything from scratch in case of serious error. To avoid excessive work and time loss, you need to back up sandbox data too.

Native tools for Salesforce backup

Salesforce offers a wide range of native tools and add-ons to prevent data loss. Let’s take a quick look at them. Below we will explain why native solutions aren’t efficient for maintaining optimal pipeline performance and protecting data.

Salesforce Recycle Bin

Deleted files stay in the Bin for 15 days. After that the program automatically deletes it. In reality, it’s not the backup. However, you can use this feature if you want to recover recently deleted files.

Paid Restoration

Salesforce stores your data for 90 days after deletion. Similar to the previous solution, it’s not a full-fledged backup as you can’t control it.

Backup & Restore

Although it’s a native tool, this add-on is paid. It is automatic and encrypted but backs up and restores only objects.

Data Export Service

Use this tool to download a CSV file of your data manually or on schedule. You will have to manually recover the data. Here is a list of Salesforce Data Export Options.

Data Loader and Report Export

These are tools for manual data download. As a result, you will get an Excel or CSV file similar to the previous solution. However, you’ll have to do more clicks.

Change Sets

This tool will export the copy of your metadata to your sandbox.

Third-party backup solutions for Salesforce

As mentioned above, native Salesforce tools can’t guarantee a seamless performance of a sales organization. That’s why many companies are looking for third-party tools.

Why native backup solutions aren’t efficient:

1. Siloed tools.

If you want to backup all your Salesforce data, you’ll need to use several native solutions. It’s time-consuming and inefficient.

2. Only manual recovery.

Most tools only back up data but they don’t restore it. You’ll need to enter all the information manually if it’s lost.

3. No automation.

Most tools don’t have automated back up and you’ll need to back up your data manually.

4. Data format.

All your Salesforce data is stored in CSV files.

5. Backup frequency.

Many native tools back up data once a week or a month depending on your plan.

6. Limited functionality.

Modern third-party backups offer multiple features, you won’t find in native tools. For example, Granular recovery” or “Compare” functionality.