Salesforce has several ways to store files including features and tabs like attachments, Files, Content, Chatter, Documents, and Knowledge. Salesforce allocates around 10GB of file storage per org plus an allocation of 2GB per user license. This means a company with 200 licenses gets about 410GB of file storage (or 410,000 x 1MB files). That's a lot of reading but, for many reasons, it is not enough for some organizations. The challenge then becomes, where else can you store important information, and how do you keep it in context?
Those companies that use Micro Focus Content Manager, or for that matter, any enterprise record management system (EDRMS) are in luck. It's simply a matter of finding an integration that moves Salesforce files to the EDRMS and replaces them with links. This makes great sense as an EDRMS is a requirement for many organizations so why not maximize its use, and at the same time, add robust record-keeping processes and structures around your Salesforce files.
If you are already storing EDRMS data locally, local storage is cheaper than cloud storage - it's just less available to those who need to access it from afar or use a range of devices. But wait, there is a link in Salesforce so that problem goes away. A fair argument against local storage is the data is exposed to acts of God (fire and brimstone) but given the importance of the existing EDRMS data, one would hope there will already be risk mitigation around this.
Typically an EDRMS has a long lifetime. Once a company selects a vendor and commits documents into the system, it can be difficult to migrate the often huge volumes of data to another system. The volume of data is also the reason why cloud-based solutions can become expensive. This leaves organizations keeping their local server-based EDRMS systems longer while looking for ways to automate and extend EDRMS usability to meet modern practices.
An EDRMS does much more than save files. It provides a governance framework including taxonomies, policies, processes, systems, tools, and techniques to create trustworthy evidence of business activity in the form of records. For each record, this means:
- the origin (provenance) can be traced and confirmed
- the record is complete and accurate
- the record is preserved materially unchanged over time
- records can be located, retrieved, presented, and interpreted
Moving files from Salesforce to an EDMS needs to consider these principles. The key is enabling the creation of file metadata in Salesforce. This can then be pushed to the EDRMS when the file is removed from Salesforce (and replaced by a link). If the file is a Salesforce attachment, it can be linked to the owner (usually a lead, contact, or case) by pushing the Salesforce object id to the EDRMS in a metadata field.
Another consideration is around mapping the Salesforce schema to the EDRMS taxonomy. For Micro Focus Content Manager, it is easy to create a taxonomy that mirrors Salesforce and auto-populate named sub-folders based on criteria in Salesforce e.g. the record type, metadata values, or document type.
Finally, a plug for our S2T and T4S products that integrate Salesforce with Micro Fous Content Manager. These were designed to make it easy for users to efficiently work with Content Manager but recently we are seeing customers using it to unburden Salesforce from the build-up of files in Salesforce. This can arise due to business growth, the proliferation of large video and image files, failure to clear out old data, a low Salesforce license count reducing the storage limit, etc.
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