Guide to Salesforce Data Purging for Data Retention Policies

Introducing GRAX’s purge tool to strategically preserve mission-critical Salesforce data while balancing data retention and purging policies.

Data has become an invaluable asset in today’s climate, where proper data management is crucial for staying competitive and compliant. Within the Salesforce ecosystem, the trio of data purging, data retention policies, and data management holds significant sway due to its importance in data privacy, data security, and data compliance. The concept of data purging involves removing data and mass deleting of records in Salesforce; it underscores the strategic orchestration of data, emphasizing its critical role in the broader landscape of Salesforce data management within the platform.

What is data purging?

Data purging is the meticulous process of removing outdated or irrelevant records to keep your data storage and Salesforce application agile and efficient. Simultaneously, data retention policies set the guidelines for preserving essential information, striking a delicate balance between adhering to legal requirements and the necessity of maintaining historical data. This purge process plays a pivotal role in maintaining system efficiency, ensuring compliance with data privacy regulations, and optimizing storage costs and performance.

Why it matters

Data is the lifeblood of organizations, driving decision-making and shaping their competitive edge. However, the over-accumulation of data can pose significant challenges, making the purge process indispensable. 

Data purging can provide your organization with the following:

• Enhanced Efficiency – Regular data archiving with data purging prevents data storage bloat, ensuring that the Salesforce application and your data protection solution function efficiently even as data grows.
  
• Compliance with Data Retention Laws – Data purging ensures that your organization complies with specific data retention laws and regulations, avoiding legal consequences and potential fines for retaining data longer than permitted.
  
• Reduced Legal Liability – Purge data that is older than the mandatory retention period so that it can’t be requested in legal discovery and impact your business negatively. 

• Data Privacy Compliance – Purging obsolete, stale, and old data is essential for adhering to data privacy regulations, protecting sensitive personal data from unauthorized access, and minimizing the impact of data breaches.
  
• Reduced Security Risks – By deleting data that is no longer crucial to your organization, you reduce the potential attack surface for cyber threats, minimizing security risks and vulnerabilities associated with storing excessive data.

• Cost Optimization – By reducing Salesforce application storage, organizations can effectively manage their Salesforce costs while improving application performance.
  
• Improved Data Cleanliness – Data purging helps maintain data quality by eliminating outdated or inaccurate information, ensuring decision-makers can trust and rely on accurate and relevant data.

GRAX Data Purge was designed with one clear mission: to empower Salesforce users to take control of their data. It’s the best tool for effortlessly acting on data retention policies by deleting data that are unnecessary while staying compliant with global and state data regulations. With this latest functionality, you can automate data retention and deletion, reducing the risk of legal liabilities tied to improper data storage. It’s all about putting you in charge of your own data destiny.

Kirk Anderson, Head of Product @ GRAX

How it works

GRAX Purge can be run on archived records or those records that have been deleted in Salesforce. This two-step process provides an inherent safety mechanism against accidental purges of data. After records have been successfully archived or deleted, you can input a list of RecordIDs into GRAX Purge or you run a search for records that meet the last modified date and field filter criteria. Once a search to Purge job has been completed, you can set that search as an Auto Purge in job details. Auto Purge will schedule search and Purge jobs that will automatically delete batches of records that meet your Purge criteria automatically. 

What it includes

GRAX Data Purge is included as part of our Data Archive & Lifecycle Management offering as it serves as a critical component of strategic Salesforce data lifecycle management. This feature will enable users to define purge events and automated enforcement of data retention policies and also features:

• Global Search for Data Purge – Allows for even finer and granular control to search, filter, and preview records for deletion based on any custom needs. 

• Automated Data Purging –  Enables organizations to automatically set up and manage the deletion of specified datasets past their retention period. 

• GRAX Purge Log – Easily export hard delete logs of permanently deleted data for auditability.
  

With this latest feature release, Salesforce users can trust that their data is preserved as needed and certain types of data are deleted as dictated by government regulations. 

Who it benefits and impacts

GRAX Data Purge isn’t just a data management tool; it’s a solution that empowers various key stakeholders within an organization. From data managers and administrators seeking enhanced efficiency to IT departments aiming for improved performance, and from compliance and legal teams navigating regulatory complexities to security teams safeguarding against cyber threats, the benefits of data purging are far-reaching. 

• Data Managers and Administrators – Data managers and administrators benefit from data purging as it simplifies their tasks by reducing the volume of data they need to oversee,  allowing them to improve efficiency and organization.

• IT Departments – IT departments experience improved application performance and reduced resource utilization with data purging.

• Compliance and Legal Teams – Data purging helps organizations adhere to data privacy and retention regulations, reducing the risk of non-compliance and associated legal penalties. Compliance and legal teams can rest assured that data is managed under the law.

• Security Teams – Security teams benefit from data purging as it reduces the potential attack surface for cyber threats. Fewer stored records mean fewer opportunities for data breaches or unauthorized access.

• Executive Leadership – Executives benefit from data purging through improved data-driven decision-making. A cleaner dataset provides more accurate insights, helping executives make informed strategic choices.
  
• Finance Teams – Reducing data storage costs directly impacts the finance department’s budget. By purging unnecessary data, organizations can optimize their spending.
  
• Sales and Marketing Teams – Sales and marketing teams benefit from faster access to relevant customer data. Removing outdated or irrelevant records streamlines their processes, producing more effective targeting and decision-making.
  

GRAX Data Purge is designed to cater to the diverse needs of these crucial teams so that they can obtain peace of mind knowing that their data is preserved for as long as needed and deleted when no longer needed. 

Learn more

• Try out GRAX Data Purge for free by signing up here and enabling it. 
• Spin up a risk-free trial of GRAX and start backups in less than 10 minutes here.
• Speak with a GRAX product expert to see how our solution can help your organization here.

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GRAX Data Purge is generally available soon. Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases, public statements, or public materials are not currently generally available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase GRAX should make their purchase decisions based on currently available features.