Async SOQL Use Cases | Force.com SOQL and SOSL Reference

Customer 360 Degree and Filtering

In this use case, administrators load various customer engagement data from external sources into Salesforce big objects and then process the data to enrich customer profiles in Salesforce. The goal is to store customer transactions and interactions, such as point-of-sale data, orders, and line items in big objects and then process and correlate that data with your core CRM data. Anchoring customer transactions and interactions with core master data provides a richer 360-degree view that translates into an enhanced customer experience.

The following example analyzes the customer data stored in the Rider record of a car-sharing service. The source big object, Rider_Record_b, has a lookup relationship with the Contact object, allowing for an enriched view of the contact’s riding history. You can see that the query includes Rider__r.FirstName, Rider__r.LastName, Rider__r.Email as part of the SELECT clause. This example demonstrates the ability to join big object data (Rider_Record__b) with Contact data (FirstName, LastName, Email) in a single Async SOQL query.

Example URI
Example POST request body
Example POST response body

Field Audit Trail

Field Audit Trail lets you define a policy to retain archived field history data up to 10 years, independent of field history tracking. This feature helps you comply with industry regulations related to audit capability and data retention.

You define a Field Audit Trail policy using the HistoryRetentionPolicy object for each object you want to archive. The field history data for that object is then moved from the History related list into the FieldHistoryArchive object at periodic intervals, as specified by the policy. For more information, see the Field Audit Trail Implementation Guide.

You can use Async SOQL to query archived fields stored in the FieldHistoryArchive object. You can use the WHERE clause to filter the query by specifying comparison expressions for the FieldHistoryType, ParentId, and CreatedDate fields, as long as you specify them in that order.

This example queries archived accounts created within the last month.

Example URI
Example POST request body
Example POST response body

All number fields returned from a SOQL query of archived objects are in standard notation, not scientific notation, as in the number fields in the entity history of standard objects.

Note

Event Monitoring

Login Forensics and Real-Time Events, currently in pilot, enable you to track who is accessing confidential and sensitive data in your Salesforce org. You can view information about individual events or track trends in events to swiftly identify unusual behavior and safeguard your company’s data. This feature is useful for compliance with regulatory and audit requirements.

These features are available to select customers through a pilot program. To be nominated to join this pilot program, contact salesforce.com.

Note

In the current pilot, you can monitor data accessed through API calls, which covers many common scenarios because more than 50% of SOQL queries occur using the SOAP, REST, or Bulk APIs. Key information about each query, such as the Username, UserId, UserAgent, and SourceIP, is stored in the ApiEvent object. You can then run SOQL queries on this object to find out details of user activity in your org.

For example, let’s say you want to know everyone who viewed the contact record of your company’s CEO, Jane Doe. The key to this query is the CEO’s contact record ID: 003D000000QYVZ5. (You can also query the ID using SOQL: SELECT Id FROM Contact WHERE Name = 'Jane Doe'). You can use the following Async SOQL query to determine all users who saw their contact information, including when, how, and where they saw it.

Example URI
Example POST request body
Example POST response body

All number fields returned from a SOQL query of archived objects are in standard notation, not scientific notation, as in the number fields in the entity history of standard objects.

Note

If you ask this question on a repeated basis for audit purposes, you can automate the query using a cURL script.

Another event monitoring use case is to identify all users who accessed a sensitive field, such as Social Security Number or Email. For example, you can use the following Async SOQL query to determine the users who saw social security numbers and the records in which those numbers were exposed.

Example URI
Example POST request body
Example POST response body