n-Every Salesforce Record Lives in an Object. Here's the Data Model, and How to Get Data Out.
Salesforce stores everything, Accounts, Contacts, Opportunities, and anything custom you've added, as a record inside an object, which works a lot like a database table with fields as its columns. Standard objects come built in; custom objects and custom fields let you model whatever's specific to your business. Getting data back out, for a backup, a report, or another system, means an export, a report download, or the API, since there's no single built-in "export everything" button. We work directly with Salesforce's data model and its APIs to move data in and out safely, and to recover what shouldn't have been deleted in the first place.
How Salesforce actually structures your data
An object is the table; a record is the row. Standard objects, Account, Contact, Opportunity, and dozens more, ship with Salesforce and already have the fields most businesses need. When something doesn't fit, you build a custom object (anything from "Equipment" to "Warranty Claim") through Object Manager in Setup, with its own custom fields alongside it.
Fields come in real data types, not just generic text boxes: picklists for a fixed set of choices, lookup and master-detail fields for relationships between objects, formula fields that calculate a value from other fields, plus the usual currency, date, and address types. Lookups and master-detail relationships are what let one object reference another, an Opportunity pointing to its Account, say, and a junction object is how you model a relationship that goes both ways, like a Contact that's affiliated with more than one Account.
Getting data out, and getting it back
Setup's Data Export tool is the closest thing to a full export: Enterprise and Unlimited editions can schedule it to run automatically, other editions have to request it manually, and either way you get your org's data as a set of CSV files. For something smaller or more targeted, exporting a report straight to CSV or Excel works, though it's capped at a row limit. For precise or very large exports, the same API we build integrations against (plus tools like Data Loader) can pull exactly the records and fields you need.
Deleted records don't vanish immediately. They sit in the Recycle Bin for 15 days, or until your org's storage allocation for deleted data fills up, whichever comes first, and after that they're gone unless you've got a dedicated recovery process in place. The common failure mode is a bulk delete that someone runs without realizing either limit applies, and finds out about the 15-day window only once it's already closed.
Most teams end up exporting manually on a schedule nobody really owns, or discover the recycle bin's limits the hard way. If the system on the receiving end of that export, a warehouse, a BI tool, a reporting system, doesn't have an API of its own either, that's exactly the kind of gap browser automation closes: pulling from whatever screen is available instead of waiting on an export feature that was never built.
What we build around Salesforce data
Exports that just happen
Key objects get backed up to a warehouse or spreadsheet system on a real schedule, automatically, instead of relying on someone remembering to run Data Export before it slips another month.
A safety net before a bulk change runs
Before a mass update or mass delete job fires, a snapshot gets taken automatically, so a bad bulk edit can actually be rolled back instead of hoping the 15-day recycle bin window is still open.
Worried about your next bulk change in Salesforce?
Tell us what you're about to run, or what you've already lost, and we'll look at what's realistic to put in place before it happens again.
Still exporting Salesforce data by hand, or nervous about the next bulk delete?
Tell us what you're pulling out manually or what you're afraid to lose, and we'll scope what can run on its own. Salesforce data is one example; the same manual-export, no-safety-net pattern shows up in plenty of other systems too, and we automate it there as well.
Let's talk