[SalesForce] Field history tracking – data retention

The field history is important to our organisation and I need to retain it indefinitely. According to the field history tracking documentation, the field history is automatically deleted after 18 months unless field audit trail is used or the organisation was created before june 2011. However, I just checked our org and we have field history records going back to the start of our org in 2014.

This seems contradictory, and I'd love an explanation. While searching I found this post to an older question: Retention of field history data

There it states that in 2014 an attempt was made to enforce the 18 month limit, but that it was reversed due to customer requirements.

This leads me to three possible explanations:

Even though our organisation is from 2014 we still are still part of the permanent retention policy.
Our field history records are being deleted but not universally, which is why some records still remain.
Our field history will be deleted whenever Salesforce deems it necessary (and I don't know when).

Does anyone know which it is?

Best Answer

It is possible that auto-deletion was requested to be disabled back in the day. Out-of-the-box, yes, the information you have is correct. There are requests that can be made of Salesforce to change back-end org settings (e.g. number of field tracking fields on an object, number of workflows on an object, etc.), but I don't know if this is still possible with the introduction of Field Audit Trails. I found an Idea citing release notes about what I've mentioned above and Salesforce is pushing the Field Audit Trails add-on.

If data storage isn't an issue for your org and Salesforce can't support you beyond 10 years, you may want to consider a custom solution to create records for the fields you want to track. You could also export the data to a data warehouse and get that information whenever you need via lightning connect or odata connection to show your history data in Salesforce.

I recommend you open a case with Salesforce. Only they can tell you the settings for your org. I hope this helps you some.

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] the best workaround for the 20 field history tracking cap

Create an object called AccountHistoryTracking and fields like APIName__c,OldValue__c,NewValue__c then create a fieldset on Account called'HistoryTracking' with the fields you want to track on Account and then write below code to track history on account.This way you don't need to worry about history tracking limit per object.

trigger AccountHistoryTracker on Account (after update) {

    final List<Schema.FieldSetMember> trackedFields = 
        SObjectType.Account.FieldSets.HistoryTracking.getFields();

    if (trackedFields.isEmpty()) return;

    final List<AccountHistoryTracking__c> fieldChanges = 
        new List<AccountHistoryTracking__c>();

    if(!trigger.isUpdate)
        return;

    for (Account newAccount : trigger.new) {

        final Account oldAccount = trigger.oldmap.get(newAccount.Id);

        for (Schema.FieldSetMember fsm : trackedFields) {

            String fieldName  = fsm.getFieldPath();
            String fieldLabel = fsm.getLabel();

            if (newAccount.get(fieldName) == oldAccount.get(fieldName))
                continue;

            String oldValue = String.valueOf(oldAccount.get(fieldName));
            String newValue = String.valueOf(newAccount.get(fieldName));

            if (oldValue != null && oldValue.length()>255) 
                oldValue = oldValue.substring(0,255);

            if (newValue != null && newValue.length()>255) 
                newValue = newValue.substring(0,255); 

            final AccountHistoryTracking__c accountHistory = 
                new AccountHistoryTracking__c();

            accountHistory.name         = fieldLabel;
            accountHistory.apiName__c   = fieldName;
            accountHistory.User__c      = newAccount.Id;
            accountHistory.ChangedBy__c = UserInfo.getUserId();
            accountHistory.OldValue__c  = oldValue;
            accountHistory.NewValue__c  = newValue;

            fieldChanges.add(accountHistory);
        }
    }

    if (!fieldChanges.isEmpty()) {
        insert fieldChanges;
    }
}

[SalesForce] History tracking of object

I can't find this in Apex, but I can find it in the Tooling API and in the Metadata API.

For the Tooling API, check the CustomField object: https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_tooling.meta/api_tooling/tooling_api_objects_customfield.htm

For the Metadata API, there is, for each field on an object, a "trackHistory" attribute. https://developer.salesforce.com/docs/atlas.en-us.api_meta.meta/api_meta/customfield.htm

Andy Fawcett has written an Apex wrapper for the Metadata API. For more information, see https://andyinthecloud.com/category/metadata-api/ and https://github.com/financialforcedev/apex-mdapi.

(I'd go with the Metadata API and would use the wrapper. It's an easy deploy from the GitHub repository.

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