Understanding Activity Archive Settings

Overview

Activity records in your Practifi organization are subject to limitations set by Salesforce's Activity Days settings. This article outlines the default Activity record archive settings, how to access archived records and considerations around increasing an organization's Activity Days. Please contact your firm's CSM or our Practifi Support team for additional questions and concerns.

• Default Activity Archive Settings
• Extending Activity Archive Settings
• Accessing Archived Activities
• Considerations

Default Activity Archive Settings

Activity archive settings in Practifi are called Activity Days by Salesforce. The default Activity Days settings per Salesforce are as follows:

• Default Setting - 365 days
• Maximum Limit - 3650 days (10 years)
• Recommended Maximum - 1826 days (5 years + 1 leap day) maximum

Activity records after 365 days are archived, but not deleted, from your organization. These records are retained for compliance reasons and archived to maintain optimal organizational performance. For this reason, Salesforce's default Activity Days setting of 365 days is honored by Practifi. Archived records will not display within your organization or within reports generated to improve the speed and performance of Activity reports and list views. 

Activity archive settings may be extended but have considerations for organization performance. Please review this article's Extending Activity Archive Settings and Considerations sections before requesting an extension of your Activity Days in your firm's organization. Any requests above ten years need to be reviewed by Salesforce Support with a strong business reason. There is no guarantee of approval from Salesforce for extension requests that large.

Extending Activity Archive Settings

Before you request an Archive Days increase, your firm must consider the performance implications that may impact your Practifi instance. Limit increases will affect activity reporting and list view performance and may cause them to time out as more records become available. For this reason, we recommend heavily considering this aspect before increasing your Activity Days. For optimal performance, we recommend your firm stay at the default Activity Settings and access archived records via Data Loader or Workbench. 

If your firm needs to access Activity records made more than 365 days ago often, it may be necessary for your organization to request an extension of your Activity Days settings. To request an extension of your firm's Activity Days, you must submit a ticket with our Practifi Support Team through Zendesk. They will communicate your extension request to Salesforce on your behalf. When submitting your request, please include the following information:

1. Increasing this limit will impact the performance of your Activity reports and list views if they are not correctly scoped by date ranges (For example, 'Created Date' equals 'This Year'). Activity reports and list views may time out once the limit is increased depending on the number of Activity records in your organization. Do you accept the potential risks to the performance of these areas?
2. What would you like to increase your organization's limit to?
3. Requested Duration -- will the increase be permanent or just for a certain period?

Our Support team will communicate this information to Salesforce Support and request the extension. Salesforce Support may deny the extension request. In this scenario, there is no appeals process with Salesforce, and their decision is final.  

If the extension request is granted, records up to the time your firm requested will gradually become available for reporting purposes in your organization. Depending on the number of records to be unarchived, the process may take a few hours.   

Accessing Archived Activities

Archived Activity records can be viewed using the Export All function within Data Loader or queried through Workbench. They will not display within your firm's reports or within your organization to maintain optimal performance. If your firm does not have a technical resource that is Salesforce certified or familiar with Data Loader or Workbench, please reach out to your firm's CSM before attempting to access these records. 

Considerations

• Increasing your firm's Activity Days settings may severely affect your firm's Practifi performance. Activity reporting and list view performance may be impacted, and your firm may experience page time-outs. 
• Salesforce's default setting of 365 days is chosen to maintain your organization's speed and performance. For this reason, we recommend your firm maintains this setting. Before requesting an increase, performance impacts should be considered. If you have additional questions about how this may impact your firm, please contact your firm's CSM.
• The maximum limit for an increase is 3650 days. Salesforce only recommends increasing to this maximum if there is a strong business reason. They may deny this request, and there is no appeals process if denied. 
• Archived Activity records are not deleted from your organization and can be accessed via Data Loader or Workbench if only needed to access occasionally. Only a Salesforce certified or familiar with Data Loader/Workbench individual should attempt to access these records.
• After an extension is granted, unarchived activity records will not display immediately in your organization. Depending on the number of records to become available, it may take a few hours for these records to display and be reported on.

For additional information about Activity Days setting limits and API management information with Activity Days, please consult this Salesforce Help article.