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Auto Backup

With GRAX Auto Backup, you’re just a few clicks away from securely backing up your entire Salesforce org.

Pre-requisites

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.

Enabling Auto Backup

To enable Auto Backup:

  • Navigate to the Auto Backup tab within the GRAX Application
  • You'll see the screen below, and will be prompted to choose one of the following options: Start Auto Backup to current bucket or Change the storage provider/bucket
Enable Auto Backup

When setting up Auto Backup for the first time, GRAX starts by backing up object data in Salesforce, beginning with the oldest modified records and progressing to the most recently modified ones. Once the initial backup is complete, Auto Backup seamlessly transitions to periodically capturing ongoing data changes.

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Note

The time to complete backup of new data may vary based on amount of new data to backup, API limits, and system limits.

Monitoring and Dashboard

The Auto Backup Dashboard in the GRAX Application serves as the central hub for tracking key metrics and statuses. It provides insights into the total volume of data backed up, the time frames covered by secure backups, and the historical progress of Auto Backup operations.

Auto Backup Dashboard

Auto Backup Toggle

You can easily control Auto Backup behavior with the following options:

  • Backup Objects and Files: Capture all available data objects
  • Backup Objects, Pause Files: Exclude file data from the backup
  • Backups Paused: Disable all backup operations
Auto Backup Toggle

Auto Backup Status

Additionally, the dashboard displays detailed status information, as outlined 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 backup has since fallen behind for 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
Auto Backup Objects

Additionally, the Excluded Objects tab displays all objects that are not being backed up, including unsupported objects, objects for which GRAX has lost sync permissions, and any objects explicitly excluded by the user.

Auto Backup 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

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Note

If the system encounters errors, Auto Backup will display an Error status both for the entire process and the specific object affected. Additionally, a banner will appear on the dashboard with a link to the error summary page, where you can download a CSV containing detailed stack traces, if needed.

Disabling an Object Backup

“There are two methods for excluding objects from backup: one on the Salesforce side and one within the GRAX Application.

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, you’ll find the Auto Backup Exclusions field. Here, you can enter a comma-separated list of object API names to exclude from future backups. Once specified, these objects will be ignored in subsequent backups. However, if an object has already been backed up, it will still appear in the Objects list with an Excluded status.

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 Auto Backup: scans for new data once a day
  • Continuous Auto Backup: scans for new data at a minimum of every hour

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Note

The time to complete backup of new data may vary based on amount of new data to backup, API limits, and system limits.

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’ll observe continuous activity during the initial backup and ‘backfill’ process. Afterward, daily scans will occur for each object, with activity distributed 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 contact Salesforce support to open a case and report the issue.

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Note

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

Updated about 22 hours ago