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Auto Backup

With GRAX Auto Backup, you have a simple interface to backing up your entire Salesforce org.

  1. In Salesforce, create an integration user for GRAX with access to every object you want backed up
  2. In the GRAX Application, establish an OAuth connection to Salesforce with the integration user
  3. In the GRAX Application, enable the Auto Backup advanced feature module
  4. In the GRAX Application, use the Auto Backup dashboard to see progress on backing up your entire org

GRAX is now automatically and continuously backing up your entire org, with no objects to select or schedules to configure. Please review our permissions documentation to ensure that no data is lost or missed.

Auto Backup Toggle

To control the behavior of Auto Backup, you have simple options:

  • Backup All Objects
  • Backup All Objects Except Files
  • Backup Nothing

The selector on the related dashboard can be used to select an option:

Auto Backup Mode Selector

How It Works

Once the integration user is connected, GRAX:

  • Periodically describes all the objects and schema in your org and adds them to the Auto Backup system.
  • Starts periodic jobs that pick an object and back up everything new or changed since the last backup.

When setting up Auto Backup for the first time, GRAX begins to back up object data from the oldest modified to most recently modified in Salesforce. After some time, all the initial object data is backed up and Auto Backup begins periodically capturing the most recent data changes.

Disabling an Object Backup

There are two methods for excluding objects from backup, one on the Salesforce end, and one on the GRAX end.

Preventing backup by Salesforce permissions

Auto Backup is built to back up all possible Salesforce data by backing up every object the Integration User has permission to view. This design lets you manage what objects are backed up with standard Salesforce permissions and automatically backs up new custom objects or fields without the need to modify GRAX settings. If you don't want GRAX to back up an object or field because it isn't restorable or isn't valuable to your data strategy, deny access to the object or field for the GRAX integration user.

Excluding objects from Auto Backup in GRAX

On the Settings page, under General Settings, there is a field titled Auto Backup Exclusions that can be filled with a comma-separated list of object API names to be excluded. In subsequent backups, these objects will be ignored by Auto Backup. Note that if an object has already been backed up, it will still appear in the Objects list with a corresponding Excluded status.

Monitoring and Dashboard

The Auto Backup Dashboard within the GRAX Application is the primary point of reference for related metrics and statuses. This dashboard includes information related to how much data has been backed up by GRAX in total, the time frames for which backup safety can be assured, and how much work Auto Backup has completed historically. The dashboard also contains statuses, explained below:

  • "Backfilling": GRAX is backing up the history of your org, and at least one object has never been fully backed up
  • "Behind": All objects were fully backed up previously, but GRAX has fallen behind since on at least one object
  • "Running": GRAX is operating as expected and up to date on all objects within expected SLA
  • "Paused": Auto Backup has been paused by a user for records, files, or both
  • "Error": An error has been encountered by the app while backing up data
List of Files and Objects

Alongside this table is another containing all objects that aren't being backed up, like unsupported objects, objects for which GRAX has lost permission to sync, and explicit exclusions set by the user.

List of excluded Objects

The dashboard also contains a list of files and objects being backed up along with record count and version count. Objects can have the following statuses:

  • Waiting: object is caught up and waiting for new data
  • Running: object is nearly caught up and backing up new data
  • Backfilling: object is still backing up initial data
  • Paused: object isn't being processed because Auto Backup has been turned off
  • Excluded: object isn't being processed because it has been explicitly excluded by the user
  • Unavailable: object isn't being processed because GRAX has lost access to the object in Salesforce

If there are errors currently being encountered by the system, a status of "Error" appears for Auto Backup as a whole as well as the specific object that the error is present on. A banner also appears on the dashboard with a link to the error summary page, where a CSV can be downloaded with the full stack traces if necessary.

The Dashboard offers several different views to highlight the specific data of interest.

Dashboard View Options

Those views are:

  • Auto backup Status
  • Only files
  • Only records
  • Data overview

Data overview provides a comprehensive insight into GRAX by allowing users to view created, updated, deleted, and archived records.

Data Overview

Within any view, users have the ability to enable or disable the display of each data type by clicking on the data type in the dashboard legend.

Select Data Types

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I configure the backup schedule?

GRAX is designed to back up your entire Salesforce organization without complicated tools to configure objects, fields or schedules.

To achieve this, GRAX periodically scans your Salesforce organization for new data. If it finds new data, it then automatically schedules smaller jobs to backup new data while staying within Salesforce API limits, and within system limits to keep Backups, Archives, Restores, Searches and Data Lake working as expected.

GRAX offers an option to change the period of scans between "daily" and "continuous."

Daily scans for new data once a day, where continuous scans for new data many times a day in succession after the last scan completed.

How do I use daily backup? How does it work?

Contact GRAX Support to enable Daily Backup for your deployment.

In the backup dashboard you will see continual activity during initial backup and "backfill." After that you will see activity where every object is scanned once a day but at times spread throughout the day.

No further configuration is necessary, or possible, on your part.

Why are formula fields showing outdated values?

While GRAX saves the definition of formula fields with metadata backups, it does not execute the actual formula when showing field value or running search. The formula field values displayed are the values at time of last backup.

What does "INSUFFICIENT_ACCESS" mean?

Example: salesforce INSUFFICIENT_ACCESS: insufficient access rights on cross-reference id

Review your Integration User permissions for View All Data, View All Files and other required permissions. If the error occurs on Campaign or other marketing related objects, try enabling "Marketing User" for the integration user.

See the User Fields reference doc for more information.

How does Auto Backup handle records where a field is updated in SFDC, but the record's "SystemModStamp" remains unchanged?

For the most part, each time a record is modified within SFDC, SFDC updates the SystemModStamp to reflect the date/time of the modification, however, there are certain fields (including, but not limited to formula fields), that when changed, do not result in an updated SystemModStamp. This is a SFDC limitation, not a GRAX limitation.

Auto Backup relies on a change in a record's SystemModStamp in order to identify, and therefore backup, new or changed data. If a record is being backed up for the first time, GRAX will backup the record with the value stored in SFDC at the time of backup, but if the record is modified after the initial backup and SFDC does not update the record's SystemModStamp, GRAX will not back up the change.

There are several documented workarounds detailing how to "trigger" a SystemModStamp update when fields that do not update the record's SystemModStamp are modified, one of which can be found here.

What does "UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION" mean?

Example: UNKNOWN_EXCEPTION: sfdc.keystone.catalog.blobforce.KeystoneGetBlobFromStoresException: Failed to get a blob from all stores: orgId=00AbC000000DeM0 keyPrefix=05T entityId=05T2R000016VbmO blobId=0KF2R00002uQzDX extentId=F00D0b000000GaMp0KE2R00001MVoIw1 [...] there are no stores that currently contain the extent= F00D0b000000GaMp0KE2R00001MVoIw1, so we can't read it!)

An error has occurred within the Salesforce backend infrastructure, outside the scope of the GRAX Application. Please contract Salesforce support to open a case and report the issue.

The Auto Backup dashboard offers a CSV export of all errors to include with your support case.

Updated about 21 hours ago