Field Audit Trail Implementation Guide

Field Audit Trail
Delete Field History and Field Audit Trail Data
Examples
Metadata API Reference
SOAP API Reference
Tooling API Reference
SOQL Reference
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Field Audit Trail

With Field Audit Trail, you can define a policy to retain archived field history data. This feature helps you comply with industry regulations related to audit capability and data retention.

Async SOQL is scheduled for retirement in all Salesforce orgs as of Summer ’23.

Note

Available in: Salesforce Classic (not available in all orgs), Lightning Experience, and the Salesforce mobile app
Available in: Enterprise, Performance, and Unlimited Editions

User Permissions Needed
To specify a field history retention policy: Retain Field History

Use Salesforce Metadata API to define a field history retention policy for those fields that have history tracking enabled. Then use REST API, SOAP API, and Tooling API to work with your archived data. For information about enabling Field Audit Trail, contact your Salesforce representative.

Field history is copied from the History related list into the FieldHistoryArchive big object. You define one HistoryRetentionPolicy for your related history lists, such as Account History, to specify Field Audit Trail retention policies for the objects that you want to archive. Then use Metadata API to deploy your policy. You can update the retention policy on an object as often as needed. With Field Audit Trail, you can track up to 60 fields per object. Without it, you can track only 20 fields per object. With Field Audit Trail, archived field history data is stored until you manually delete it. You can manually delete data that falls outside of your policy window.

Field history tracking data and Field Audit Trail data don’t count against your data storage limits.

Important

You can set field history retention policies on these objects.

  • Accounts, including Person Accounts
  • Assets
  • Authorization Form Consent
  • Campaigns
  • Cases
  • Communication Subscription Consent
  • Contacts
  • Contact Point Consent
  • Contact Point Type Consent
  • Contracts
  • Contract Line Items
  • Crisis
  • Employee
  • Employee Crisis Assessment
  • Entitlements
  • Individuals
  • Internal Organization Unit
  • Leads
  • Opportunities
  • Orders
  • Order Products
  • Party Consent
  • Price Books
  • Price Book Entries
  • Products
  • Service Appointments
  • Service Contracts
  • Solutions
  • Work Orders
  • Work Order Line Items
  • Custom objects with field history tracking enabled

When Field Audit Trail is enabled, HistoryRetentionPolicy is automatically set on the supported objects. By default, data is archived after 18 months in production, after one month in sandboxes, and all archived data is stored until you manually delete it. The default retention policy isn’t included when retrieving the object’s definition through Metadata API. Only custom retention policies are retrieved along with the object definition.

Note

You can include field history retention policies in managed and unmanaged packages.

These fields can’t be tracked.

  • Formula, roll-up summary, or auto-number fields
  • Created By and Last Modified By
  • Expected Revenue field on opportunities
  • Master Solution Title or the Master Solution Details fields on solutions
  • Long text fields
  • Multi-select fields

After you define and deploy a Field Audit Trail policy, production data is migrated from related history lists such as Account History into the FieldHistoryArchive big object. The first copy writes the field history that’s defined by your policy to archive storage and sometimes takes a long time. Subsequent copies transfer only the changes since the last copy and are faster. A bounded set of SOQL is available to query your archived data. If you delete a record in your production data, the delete cascades to the associated history tracking records, but the history copied into the FieldHistoryArchive big object isn’t deleted. To delete data in FieldHistoryArchive, see Delete Field History and Field Audit Trail Data.

Use Async SOQL to build aggregate reports from a custom object based on the volume of the data in the FieldHistoryArchive big object.

If you enable Platform Encryption in your org and use Field Audit Trail to track encrypted fields, there are limitations on using Async SOQL. Using Async SOQL to query the NewValue or OldValue fields of the FieldHistoryArchive big object isn’t supported. Use SOQL to query both encrypted and unencrypted NewValue and OldValue fields of FieldHistoryArchive.

Important

Previously archived data remains unencrypted if you turn on Platform Encryption later. For example, your organization uses Field Audit Trail to define a data history retention policy for an account field, such as the phone number field. After enabling Platform Encryption, you turn on encryption for that field, and phone number data in the account is encrypted. New phone number records and previous updates stored in the Account History related list are encrypted. But phone number history data already archived in the FieldHistoryArchive object remains stored without encryption. To encrypt previously archived data, contact Salesforce to encrypt and rearchive the stored field history data, then delete the unencrypted archive.

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