Your Salesforce production org is full of constant activity–and complex workflows. With Salesforce retiring two of its business process automation tools, Process Builder and Workflow, many teams are migrating to Salesforce Flow, the latest iteration for automated processes. While it's a win for admins and developers, deploying a flow or managing any complexity in your Salesforce org without a safety net can put your data at risk.
To help teams work fearlessly in their Salesforce org and secure critical, complex processes like a flow, we co-hosted a LinkedIn Live webinar with Salesforce Ben titled “Deploying Salesforce Flows without Fear”.
Here are the key takeaways:
Growing data means growing risk
Between fields, objects, automations, triggers, and more, your Salesforce data is growing (along with your dependence on it). As you build on the platform, your complexities build, too–which can increase mistakes that can cause data loss or corruption. According to Enterprise Strategy Group’s 2022 study “SaaS Data Protection: A Work in Progress”, 55% of organizations experience a SaaS data loss or corruption. To make full use of the platform–deploying Flow included– your organization must recognize growing error risk and how to proactively mitigate it.
Your safety net is your responsibility
With data’s increased fragility and complexity, many teams are concerned that their ability to innovate will be hampered. However, fearless innovation in Salesforce can drive forward if you have a proper data protection strategy .
Salesforce, like all SaaS applications, operates under the shared responsibility model. This means that the SaaS provider is responsible for the network, physical infrastructure, and application, while you’re responsible for protecting the data that you put into the system. It’s up to you to have a safety net that can both backup and recover in the event of an incident or risk irreversible consequences. While DIY approaches like weekly export, sandbox refresh, and API/ DIY export to a data warehouse exist, they can leave you unprepared and unsupported in times of need.
Protect data and metadata
Data integrity is a top priority in your live production org. The same principle needs to apply to your backup and recovery efforts too. Your backups must cover your data, files and attachments, and metadata to ensure that everything is organized and accounted for when you do need to recover. With Flow, granular protection is imperative. Backing up your metadata means that the definitions of your flows, profiles, permissions, reports and dashboards are safeguarded, and you can easily fix unwanted changes. Metadata backup and restore are also helpful if you’ve accidentally deleted any of your code and customizations in both production and sandbox environments, saving time (and headache) with just a few clicks to restore.
Prioritize quick and correct data recovery
While full coverage of your backups is important, it needs to be coupled with quick recovery time to be effective. But, quickly fixing loss and corruption from flows is easier said than done if you don’t have the right solution. Data loss and corruption can easily go under the radar. Whether by human mistake or malicious intent, lack of clarity around your data can widen the gap between awareness and action. Also, changes in one object can have ripple effects on multiple objects, creating a cascade issue–which can occur for both relationships and automations. And, with unwanted changes mixed in with desired changes, recovering quickly and correctly can feel more like a dream than a reality.
Therefore, it’s up to you to source a solution that enables quick, correct data recovery. Your third-party solution should allow you to survey changes to objects, filter just unwanted changes, and restore at the field-levels. This way, you can restore promptly, without compromising on quality.
Backups should be independent
Your Salesforce data is changing day to day, along with the in-platform tools. What shouldn’t change, however, is your access to your data. Unfortunately, this is a harsh reality in the worse- case scenario: a Salesforce service disruption, which can bring your business to a standstill. You can mitigate this problem with independent backups–ensuring data integrity and having comparison of pre and post disruption backups. No matter what happens within the Salesforce platform, your data–and your business–can run smoothly without interruption.
Take fear out of the equation with Own
Your Salesforce data’s growing complexities are just that–complex. But, your data protection efforts shouldn’t have to be. With Own, you can feel confident that you’re moving your business forward, with the ability to recover quickly from mistakes along the way. Watch the webinar to learn how to fearlessly innovate in Salesforce and deploy Salesforce flows with ease.
