Backing up Salesforce Meta data

Clicks not code makes the Salesforce Admin a super hero, but might send jitters through the compliance and change management team's combined spines. How can you track all of these changes?

Tracking changes

Salesforce does record, when configured, changes in setup for 180 days. The format is a log that isn't actionable (e.g. rollback). An alternative to the build in function is BlueCanvas that stores meta data automatically into a git repository. It's part of their developer focused solution that also handles the deployment and rollback of source code

Downloading meta data

When you are not ready (or haven't allocated a budget yet) to fully automate this, there's a do-it-yourself alternative. A few steps:

• Make sure you have Java8 installed
• Deploy the Salesforce Ant Migration tool
• Download and deploy into your path PackageBuilder.jar developer by my colleague Kim Galant
• create a build.properties file (see below)
• create a build.xml file (see below)
• run the fetchSrc.sh shell command (see below)

PackageBuilder will, when called with no instructions read ALL meta data and create one or more package.xml files. Once created you can use ANT to retrieve the data

build.properties

# Parameters 
apiversion=44.0
sf.username=user@domain.com
sf.password=supersecret
sf.serverurl=https://login.salesforce.com
sf.maxPoll = 200

build.xml

<project name="Source backup for Salesforce" default="test" basedir="." xmlns:sf="antlib:com.salesforce">

    <property file="build.properties"/>
    <property environment="env"/>

    <!-- Setting default value for username, password and session id properties to empty string 
         so unset values are treated as empty. Without this, ant expressions such as ${sf.username}
         will be treated literally.
    -->
    <condition property="sf.username" value=""> <not> <isset property="sf.username"/> </not> </condition>
    <condition property="sf.password" value=""> <not> <isset property="sf.password"/> </not> </condition>
    <condition property="sf.sessionId" value=""> <not> <isset property="sf.sessionId"/> </not> </condition>

    <taskdef resource="com/salesforce/antlib.xml" uri="antlib:com.salesforce">
        <classpath>
            <pathelement location="ant-salesforce.jar" />         
        </classpath>
    </taskdef>

    <!-- Retrieve an unpackaged set of metadata from your org -->
    <!-- The file unpackaged/package.xml lists what is to be retrieved -->
    <target name="retrieveSrc">
      <mkdir dir="src"/>
      <!-- Retrieve the contents into another directory -->
      <sf:retrieve username="${sf.username}" password="${sf.password}" sessionId="${sf.sessionId}" serverurl="${sf.serverurl}" maxPoll="${sf.maxPoll}" retrieveTarget="src" unpackaged="packages/package.xml" pollWaitMillis="30000" />
    </target>
</project>

fetchSrc.sh

#!/bin/bash
java -jar PackageBuilder.jar -o build.properties -d packages
ant retrieveSrc
DATE=`date '+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'`
git add --all
git commit -m "incoming changes $DATE"
git push origin master
echo "Done with retrieval"

As usual YMMV