Salesforce Data Loss: How Can UI Contribute?

For a number of years security and safety of data has been the major reason which proved itself to be a hiccup in the path of cloud adoption for organizations. According to a recent survey…

Cloud service providers like Salesforce have contributed a lot to building the trust pulling up the numbers to as high as 65%.

Salesforce is the number 1 CRM and one of the leading cloud solutions boasting over 99% uptime. But then the question lingering around is that is your data safe? The answer is yes; your data is absolutely safe in the cloud because Salesforce service disruptions are very rare. However, the issue of data loss happening has more to do with how a company is accessing their Salesforce organization along with the manipulation of all the available cloud data. Each company has their own instance of data in the Salesforce environment. They access the data in the cloud via standard Salesforce applications like CRM, third-party applications, etc. And each of these actions results in updating of one or many records with a potential of leading to unwanted results.

So Salesforce and data loss. Let’s see the topmost causes of data loss:

1. Deletion By Accident or Malicious Deletion
This scenario may crop up when a user accidentally or intentionally deletes one or more records. Individual records can be easily deleted by clicking on the delete button on the object page. Even Multiple records can be deleted with the mass delete utility.
2. Bad Code
Another factor which can lead to accidental data loss is bad code making inappropriate or unwanted changes. Developers do test their plan but then program errors still happen. Codes can at times falter since every case is not covered so it can at times shoot unexpected results. These exceptions are often very difficult to trace and fix.
3. Erroneous Data Import
This is quite impactful. For data import we use tools like data loader or data import wizard and these tools allows record update in a single operation. However, an incorrect mapping can reflect the huge amount of bad values in a large number of records.
4. SOQL Gone Wrong
This mistake can take place in a minute. Developer console query editor can be used to execute queries and any wrong syntax leads to a serious issue. An update query is written to impact a number of records at a single go so a backup is of utmost importance before a mass update.
5. Issues With Integration
Any minute issue with integration can lead to an update of wrong records. There are a few impactful integration tools for Salesforce that can update millions of records through automation. However, without backup, even a minute integration issue will lead to a massive volume of misplaced record update which will be impossible to recover.

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Improving or enhancing the Salesforce UI is a substantial method to reduce the areas concerning accidental data loss. In case of Salesforce’s UI, the control and flexibility of the design is up to the admins or the developers. If the end users are struggling to see the data clearly leading to imperative data loss then you need to take some serious actions to re-design and optimize your pages.

The impact of brilliant Salesforce UI are as follows:

Fewer chances of data loss.
Accurate data management.
Enhanced productivity.

Here are a few ways how you can optimize the Salesforce UI to reduce the accidental data loss.

1. Detailed user research:
You need to have a clear understanding of the personas for which you are building it. Once the persona is cleared figure out how they want to use the system. Their responses will help you to construct the page. Questions like what are the major common tasks? Amount of time consumed to complete the task? The pain points? Will help in framing the structure appropriately.

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2. Built components that make regular activities easier:
Salesforce is the master of providing out of the box options that enhance productivity and usability. If you want to see all the opportunities grouped by stage go for Kanban view with lightning or if you are interested in mass account edits and activities scan through AppExchange for some awesome add-ons. If nothing suits you and you have access to developers you can easily create customized pages or components and also leverage Lightning Design systems to ensure proper data update thereby reducing accidental data loss.

3. Exposure to minimal information:
One of the major reasons for wrong data updating or erroneous entry of data is that they are exposed to too many fields to input. You need to work upon to keep the amount of information needed on each page to a minimum. You can easily set the component visibility within Lightning so that you will only show a certain component upon requirement. You should also look forward to leverage lookup filters, record types and picklist wherever possible so that the amount of misfed information is kept to the minimum.

4. Keeping components consistent and best practices of error messages:
Another imperative way to reduce incorrect data updating is via keeping the fields ordering and the page layouts consistent. Error messages displayed also play a vital part. It plays perfectly to avoid erroneous entry if done right by the side of the entry fields despite at the end of the submission.

On an ending note, I would like to say that numerous users depend on Salesforce for data entry on a regular basis and there will always be a chance of error. So we need to be cautious and at the same time take all the vital steps that could minimize the causes of error. So think before you leap and suffer no more!

References: salesforceben, skyhighnetworks, ownbackup

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Pratyush Kumar

Co-Founder & President at Algoworks, Open-Source | Salesforce | ECM

Pratyush is Co-Founder and President at Algoworks. He is responsible for managing, growing open source technologies team and has spearheaded more than 200 projects in Salesforce CRM alone. He provides consulting and advisory to clients looking for services relating to CRM(Customer Relationship Management) and ECM(Enterprise Content Management). In the past, Pratyush has held consulting roles with various global technology leaders, such as Globallogic & HCL in India. He holds an Engineering graduate degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee.