Apex-Based Time Machine Triggers Retirement

What was done?

GRAX has ended support for Salesforce Apex-based Triggers (formerly known as Object Time Machine Triggers) that were part of the GRAX Time Machine product offering. This feature had allowed GRAX customers to trigger custom event-based Salesforce object backups any time a record was created, updated, or deleted - where historical Salesforce data versions captured were viewable in the Single Record Restore component.

Why did GRAX retire this feature?

Data Loss Risk : Salesforce Failure to (re)Transmit
Due to Salesforce and Heroku performance issues and limitations, overuse of Salesforce Apex-based triggers commonly leads to data failing to transmit from Salesforce to Heroku. Heroku compute limitations can get overwhelmed, crash, hang, and/or restart. The Salesforce async subsystem then retries transmitting data and then fails which requires Salesforce administrators to manually retry failed messages. The Salesforce async failed message queue also purges and leads to failed messages moving from Salesforce to Heroku. Salesforce Administrators are required to monitor the async queue and failed messages and notify Support if you detect this immediately.

HIGH PRIORITY - Eliminate Time Machine Triggers

Enable Auto Backup

The GRAX engineering and product teams have created next-generation features in GRAX 3.90, including the GRAX Data Viewer component. This new lightning web component empowers customers with the ability to:

View and manage archived data and hierarchical data within the Salesforce UI,
Track deleted data and its details that have been backed up by GRAX previously,
Easily navigate between the Salesforce UI and the GRAX webapp.

The GRAX Data Viewer is designed to improve data visibility across your organization and offer a simple to use and seamless experience for all Salesforce admins and Salesforce end users.

With this component and automated high-frequency backups, it's no longer necessary for customers to rely on traditional Salesforce Apex-based Triggers for a robust GRAX Time Machine experience.

What's the recommended workaround?

We recommend using Auto Backup on the objects that your organization has deemed critical. We also recommend that you view all versions of your backed up and archived data with the GRAX Data Viewer, as it's a more robust option for viewing and managing your data.

How does this impact me?

We encourage customers who previously utilized Apex-based Time Machine Triggers (a.k.a. Object Time Machine Triggers) to reach out and get updated to the latest version of GRAX. This is the first step to get you access to the GRAX Data Viewer.

We can work with you and your team to get automated high-frequency backups using Auto Backup so that you can maintain the highest fidelity of your historical datasets.

Timing

GRAX ended support for this feature on March 1, 2022.

How do I get more information?

If you have questions or need more information, please open a support ticket.