If you're a Salesforce administrator, you've probably had someone ask you about a field. You've probably said it to yourself as well; let's face it. Fortunately, Salesforce provides field history tracking, which enables you to track changes to specific fields and review them later to determine what transpired. This guide covers the main that you need to know:

For standard items, such as. g. When viewing Fields and Relationships for a specific object in Object Manager (e.g., Lead, Account, Contact, etc.), click "Set History Tracking.". Select "Enable Object Name History" and choose the field you want to track on the following screen. Finding the field history tracking report salesforce can be a straightforward procedure.

Limitations on tracking field history

Maintaining a record of all these changes can result in significant data generation in your Salesforce org. Fortunately, field history tracking is not counted toward your organization's data limits. To prevent your data from becoming unmanageable, Salesforce imposes the following restrictions:

The maximum number of fields per object is 20; though this may seem excessive, most Salesforce org I've seen have at least some of their things maxed out.

No formula or roll-up summary fields: Although it would be nice to snapshot these fields, it makes sense that they can't be included in history because they frequently need to be recalculated in response to changes to another data source.

Values should be entered at most 255 characters in text fields because Salesforce will only note that a change occurred without stating precisely what changed. Even though it makes sense in some cases to avoid snapshotting thousands of symbols on each edit for a large text field, it can still be irritating. To take a snapshot of this, you'll have to handle it manually using custom automation.

Second precision can result in out-of-order history - Like all Salesforce objects, it only stores a Date Time that is recorded down to the second. Changes made within the exact second may appear out of order because it represents when the change was made. This isn't usually a problem, but it can be inconvenient, especially if you have automation that launches immediately on a tracked field's creation or update. The sequence in which specific changes occurred is impossible to determine.

Salesforce only retains a certain amount of history, so you can only keep it for a while field history tracking report salesforce. Here's how it goes:

Last 18 months: Using related lists, reports, and SOQL queries, you can directly access the previous 18 months in your organization. Salesforce keeps this data for 18 to 24 months, but accessing it requires the Data Loader or the API.

Beyond 24 months, it is lost. For long-term storage for compliance purposes, if you need to keep data for longer than two years. (Be ready to make a payment. ).

Viewing the field history.

Just like a related list, field history functions similarly. It is simple to incorporate into both custom and standard object page layouts. Only the last 18 months of field history will be visible, so keep that in mind. As a result, if the record you are viewing was last modified more than 18 months ago, you can anticipate that the list-related list will be empty.

Which fields need to track their history?

To start with, make sure you're tracking ownership changes. We advise enabling field history tracking for the Owner field on everyday objects like Lead, Account, Contact, Opportunity, and Task. Other custom fields that you have that represent ownership should also have history tracking enabled.

In particular, if you use round-robin assignment and the assignee is not determined by territory rules, these ownership fields are essential to managing sales rep assignments throughout the customer lifecycle. You must respond to a sales rep's (or manager's) inquiry about how something was transferred out of their name since this can affect everything from close rates to rep compensation.

"Stages" or progression through a lifecycle are another critical area to monitor. If your database contains fields for this (e.g., g. a Status picklist), you ought to activate field history monitoring. In this manner, you can always retrace a particular record's steps.