Understanding GRAX Archive
GRAX Archive will back up and delete the records you selected from your hierarchy (parent and all children) within a Salesforce org. With GRAX you can still access the data from within the Salesforce interface even though that data is now stored in your data storage environment. This setup allows you to improve your application performance while keeping your archived data live.
GRAX TIP
Go to the ‘Summary’ tab to create tables & charts to summarize and visualize all of your historical archive processes.
Stages of the GRAX Archive Hierarchy Process
You can select up to three (3) hierarchy levels for a GRAX archive, however, we do allow you to go up to 5-levels deep on chatter-related objects if you need it. These jobs run behind the scenes, and this is the order that the code will take when processing a hierarchy job:
Stage Description | |
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Process Parent | Process the very top-level node |
Process Children | After processing the parent, each second-level child node is processed. GRAX may cycle through multiple times (potentially at various times) |
Process Children | Following the processing of the children, each child’s children are processed as the third-level nodes (i.e. grandchildren of the main parent) |


GRAX Archive Options
When creating a GRAX Archive job, there are some additional options for your consideration:
Do Not Delete Parent | Override Object Hierarchy |
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This option will archive all objects selected except for the root parent, which can help you filter. We recommend proceeding with this option when you're first getting started with GRAX to avoid potential complications. | Proceed with caution! With this option, the system forces you to choose all master-detail relationships. If you miss selecting certain objects, this could cause undesired deletions. |
Creating Your Archive
- Click on the sub-tab Schedule to access the Archive option


- Click Create


- Fill in the Name of your process


- Select the main Salesforce Object (parent)


5.Select your Filter Criteria
*Date is the most used filter, which allows you to select any date field found on the Salesforce Object selected


- Select your Schedule for how often you would like this to run


- Review what’s checked in your Object Hierarchy for objects that will be archived


Best Practices & Pro Tips
A more exhaustive explanation of best practices that need to be understood before kicking off your first archive can be found here.
- Stagger archive jobs to avoid record locking
- Use exceptions to prevent setting off triggers, custom code, flows, & processes when deletes are done by a designated GRAX user
- Always have a unique external ID on objects that are being archived (aside from the lookup relationship fields) to prevent orphans
- Certain Salesforce objects cannot be archived and can block your process if selected
- We do not recommend archiving data for 3rd party package customizations/objects unless fully validated
- Ensure you understand all Salesforce considerations for relationships before running an archive job
- When running an initial archive job or large archive jobs, we recommend understanding the other DML operations that may be scheduled
Updated 3 months ago
What's Next
Now that you’ve mastered the basics, you can keep expanding your knowledge & mastery with our Knowledge Base:
Understand Permissions |
Review Best Practices |
Create an Archive |
Understand Advanced Options |