Environment Monitoring
Salesforce is a cloud-based CRM platform that underpins business-critical processes: sales automation, customer service, integration with external systems, and analytics. All of this operates within a distributed architecture and platform constraints — including resource limits, security, data, and code.
As projects grow, and the number of users and integrations increases, monitoring becomes not just a useful practice but a vital requirement for system stability and security compliance.
Automation failures, data leaks, limit breaches, and production incidents are easier to prevent when using Salesforce’s built-in capabilities and external monitoring tools. As with many things, a properly configured monitoring and backup system anticipates problems and helps avoid emergencies down the line.
This section contains introductory articles on monitoring and configuring backups for both data and metadata.
Types of Monitoring
The main types of monitoring tasks and their corresponding tools:
| Purpose | Tools |
|---|---|
| Limits and resource monitoring | System Overview, Debug Logs |
| Error detection | Apex Exception Email, Debug Logs |
| Security | Security Health Check |
| Activity audit | Event Monitoring, Real-Time Monitoring |
| Backup | Data Backup, Metadata Backup |
Each of the articles below is dedicated to a specific area of Salesforce monitoring or management and includes best practices for using each approach or tool. For comprehensive environment management, it’s recommended to use these tools in combination, selecting those that best match your project’s needs and requirements.
Article Overview
System Overview — basic monitoring of limits and resources
Allows tracking of API usage, storage volume, license counts, and other resource metrics.
Especially useful as a first-level check, particularly during CI/CD releases and migrations.
Note: It doesn’t support automatic alerts, so it’s recommended to set up CLI notification scripts for timely responses to critical events.
Debug Logs — debugging processes, Flows, Apex, and errors
A key tool for debugging and identifying issues in Apex code, automations, and integrations. Also useful for tracking Governor Limit overflows and analyzing failures.
Particularly helpful when working on complex processes, triggers, and in production environments.
Note: Not suitable for continuous monitoring — log limits can be exceeded quickly if not configured properly.
Apex Exception Email — alerts for unhandled exceptions
A convenient built-in alert system that automatically notifies admins and developers of critical unhandled exceptions in Apex code.
Especially useful for small to mid-size projects to quickly detect and resolve issues.
Note: Only works for unhandled errors and lacks flexible routing. In case of widespread failures, it may generate excessive notifications ("noise"). In some cases, implementing custom alerts may be a better choice.
Event Monitoring and Real-Time Monitoring — event and security audit
Enables tracking of user actions, API activity, report exports, and detection of suspicious behavior. You can also configure automated responses, including through Transaction Security, though additional licenses may be required.
Note: Log retention is time-limited and requires export configuration. Real-Time Event Monitoring is only available with a Salesforce Shield license.
Security Health Check — security posture assessment
Provides a quick and convenient overview of current security settings (passwords, IPs, sessions, 2FA), compared to standard or custom Baseline Standards — such as configurations aligned with GDPR or HIPAA. Fixes can also be applied directly from within the tool.
Note: Does not deeply analyze individual access rights, role hierarchies, sharing rules, or maintain a history of security scores.
Data Backup — backing up critical business data
This article outlines approaches to prevent the loss or corruption of business-critical data in the event of system failures, cyberattacks, or integration errors. Choosing the right tool and backup frequency helps minimize recovery time and reduce potential risks. It covers native solutions, Data Loader, and third-party products (Own, Veeam, Spanning).
Metadata Backup — backing up configuration and setup
Metadata includes object configuration, user interface, business logic, and security settings. This article covers various approaches to performing backups.
It helps you build a proper backup process and strategy tailored to your project's needs.
Conclusion
Monitoring in Salesforce isn’t solved by a single tool — it’s a smart combination of approaches, adapted to the project’s maturity, risks, and scale.
The articles in this section will help you build a roadmap for an effective strategy around control, diagnostics, and security for your Salesforce environment.