Activate a New Salesforce Backup Task
Activating a new backup service varies from service to service. This section details the process of creating a new Salesforce backup service. Before CloudAlly can access your Salesforce account, you need to enable API access in your Salesforce user profile by performing the following procedure:
- Login to your Salesforce account.
- Click Setup at the top of the page.
- Under Administration Setup expand Manage Users then click Profiles.
- Click Edit for the appropriate Profile.
- Under Administrative Permissions check API Enabled, View All Data, and Modify All Data.
Perform the following procedure in the CloudAlly web application to create a Salesforce backup:
- Login to your CloudAlly account, if you haven’t done so yet.
- Click on + Add Backup Task in the Backups page

3. Click on the Salesforce option. The Salesforce Backup Task Settings screen appears:

- Fill-in the name of the backup task. This name is used in the notifications and reports and it can be changed later.
- Select the radio button adjacent to the required Backup type. Available options are the following: Production backup, Sandbox backup. This option can’t be changed later.
- Click Authenticate in Salesforce button to begin the authorization process. You will be redirected to the Salesforce authorization page. Click the Allow button from the Allow Access page.
- When prompted, enter your Salesforce Admin credentials from the Salesforce login screen and click Authorize.
- You will be redirected to the Backup Task page, where you can adjust the settings of the backup.

In this page you can adjust the backup settings and activate data and metadata comparison tasks. Please see the sections below for the detailed procedures.
Backup Settings
This set of options enable you to preset the backup options for the selected account.

- You can change the name of the Backup Task by clicking the
button next to it.
- The indicator found in the top portion of the backup task page displays whether the CloudAlly application was able to connect to the specified Salesforce account. In case the authentication token granted for the CloudAlly application becomes invalid (e.g. it expires due to inactivity, if you put the backup task on pause for a long time), the green Connected indicator changes to the red Disconnected. In order to grant the application a new token you can click on the indicator to open the authentication dialog and repeat the authentication.
- Enter the daily Salesforce API usage limit in the Throughput field. The default value is 0.75 and the maximum value is 1.0, which corresponds to the fraction of the total daily API limit (75% and 100% respectively).
- In order to provide the granular search and restore functions, the data is unencrypted temporarily to build the search index. Once the index is built, both the data and the index are encrypted. By default, Index all data for search checkbox is checked and your archives will be indexed for use in the granular search and restore function. Uncheck the Index all data for search checkbox if you do not want indexing to occur. This will disable the granular search and restore function, but you can still browse backups via date.
Note: The CloudAlly application performs an indexing process for all items except for attachments. - The fields Backup Datacenter and Retention Period are “display only” and their values can’t be changed here.
- The Backup Datacenter field displays the Data Center location you have selected during your registration with CloudAlly.
Contact support@cloudally.com if you would like to change the location. - The Retention Period field displays "Unlimited" since in SalesForce we provide unlimited retention of your daily backups for as long as you maintain your account subscription.
- The Backup Datacenter field displays the Data Center location you have selected during your registration with CloudAlly.
- Click the drop-down list adjacent to Backup hour (UTC) field and select the backup hour. Click the drop-down list adjacent to Backup frequency field and select the backup frequency. Available options are the following:
- Daily
- Every 3 Days
- Weekly
Click the Save button to save the backup details.
- You can click the Compare button to initiate the data or metadata comparison process. This operation compares data or metadata between two backup snapshots or a backup snapshot and production database. Please see section Compare your data or metadata for detailed instructions.
Manage Your Salesforce Backup
This section explains the process of managing your Salesforce backup tasks.
- Click the Backups element from the Navigation Panel. The Backup Tasks page is displayed.
- Locate the backup task you want to work with. You can use the search bar in the top section of the page in order to filter the tasks.
- Clicking the backup task leads you to the task details screen:

This page displays the task summary, provides controls over the task execution and contains data comparison tasks and results. You can change the settings of the task by clicking the Edit button. The task can be paused, started and deleted from this page with the Backup actions panel.
Quick Actions on Accounts
You can perform the following actions on your Salesforce Backup task, by clicking the corresponding icons in the Backups screen:
- Click the
icon to edit the backup task details.
- Click the
icon to pause the backup process.
- Click the
icon to start/restart the backup process.
- Click the
icon to run backup immediately.
- Click the
icon to cancel backup process.
- Click the
icon to delete the backup task. Please note that if you delete a backup task, all the associated backup data is removed.