Field History Management

In CopyStorm there is a lot of flexibility in how field history tracking is setup. Specifically:

  • Field history tracking is available for all fields in all tables.
  • The number of days fields history is kept is controllable on a per table basis.
  • Field history can be kept forever.

Though it is not difficult to set up field history rules, there are a handful of questions that need to be answered.

  • Do I want to control what tables are backed up using a Whitelist or Blacklist approach?
  • By default, how many days should field history records age before they are automatically deleted by CopyStorm?
  • Are there any tables whose field history records I want to keep longer (or shorter) than the default?

The rest of this document provides examples for both a Blacklist and Whitelist approach.

Example: Blacklist Field History Based Tracking

In a blacklist approach to field history the tables that SHOULD NOT be tracked must be specified. In addition to deciding on what tables to be excluded there are two other decisions to make:

  • By default, how many days should field history record be kept before being deleted from CopyStorm?
  • Are there any tables whose field history records should be kept longer (or shorter) than the default?

For the following example:

  • By default, keep field history records for 90 days.
  • Exclude Salesforce History, Feed, and EventLog records from field history tracking.
  • Keep Account, Contact, Case, and Email fields history changes for 800 days.

Example: Whitelist Field History Based Tracking

In a whitelist approach to field history tracking, all tables to be tracked are explicitly specified. The advantage is precision while the disadvantage is that any new tables added to Salesforce will not participate in field history tracking by default.

In addition to deciding on what tables to include there are two other decisions to make:

  • By default, how many days should field history record be kept before being deleted from CopyStorm?
  • Are there any tables whose field history records should be kept longer (or shorter) than the default?

For the following example:

  • By default, keep field history records for 90 days.
  • Include a lot of tables.
  • Keep Account, Contact, Case, and Email fields history changes for 800 days.