Data Sources for eDiscovery Professionals
salesforce.com
Company Snapshot
Salesforce.com, Inc. (CRM) is the world’s largest provider of customer relationship management (CRM) software delivered entirely via the cloud. It serves more than 150,000 organizations globally, from small businesses to the Fortune 100, and generated $9.83 billion in quarterly revenue (FY Q1 2026)
Origin
Salesforce was founded in March 1999 by former Oracle executive Marc Benioff and three co‑founders in a San Francisco apartment. Their idea—“No‑software”—replaced shrink‑wrapped CRM packages with a multi‑tenant web application that customers could access through an ordinary browser and pay for by subscription. The company went public on the NYSE in 2004 and has since expanded through continuous platform innovation and strategic acquisitions.
The Salesforce Platform
Force.com is Salesforce’s multi‑tenant application platform‑as‑a‑service (PaaS). Rather than compiling code or provisioning tables, developers define objects, fields, logic, and UI as metadata; at runtime the platform materializes the necessary SQL, storage, and execution layers on demand. This architecture lets every tenant run on the same code line while keeping data logically isolated, supporting continuous upgrades with no downtime.
Key traits important to eDiscovery teams:
- Shared‑nothing data isolation with robust role‑based security.
- Field History, Shield, and Event Monitoring features that preserve change logs.
- Custom objects and Apex code mean that relevant evidence may live outside standard tables.
Extracting Salesforce Data for Investigation
| Method | What you get | Typical Volume | Pro Tips |
| Data Export Service (Setup ➜ Data Export) | Weekly or monthly ZIPs containing CSV per object, including attachments if selected | Up to entire org | Use for initial snapshot or defensible backups. Be sure to record export time stamps. |
| Data Loader (GUI/CLI) | CSV extract per SOQL query; supports incremental pulls via SystemModStamp | Up to 5 million rows per job | Automate with the CLI version and hash files on receipt. |
| Bulk API 2.0 / REST API | JSON or CSV; supports parallel queries and large jobs. | Low | Correlate user activity with content changes and data exports. |
| AppExchange eDiscovery connectors | Vendor‑optimized exports that map metadata | Varies | Can embed legal‑hold acknowledgments and chain‑of‑custody tagging. |
Preservation tip: Always capture the accompanying package.xml or Object Metadata for each export to document field definitions at collection time.
Common eDiscovery & Investigation Use Cases
- Internal investigations & HR disputes – Pull Chatter posts, tasks, and case comments to reconstruct employee activity timelines.
- Regulatory & compliance reviews – Extract opportunity and quote data for SEC or DOJ inquiries into revenue recognition or FCPA issues.
- Litigation discovery – Produce customer communications, service case logs, and email messages stored inside Salesforce.
- M&A due diligence – Validate pipeline data and customer contracts for representations and warranties.
- Privacy & DSAR responses – Locate and export personal data across custom objects to comply with GDPR/CCPA.
- Business operations audit – Pull customer support records and measure for service volumes, types of issues, or response times.
Other Salesforce Products
- Slack – Enterprise messaging; integrates with Sales & Service Cloud for collaboration.
- Tableau – Analytics & visualization platform enabling advanced reporting on exported data.
- Quip – Document collaboration with embedded Salesforce Live Apps.
- Commerce Cloud – eCommerce platform.
- Marketing Cloud – Email and marketing automation.
- Data Cloud – Real‑time customer data platform.
- Field Service – Scheduling and mobile workforce data.
- Industry Clouds – Pre‑built data models for regulated sectors.
- Own Company – Backup & recovery SaaS.
- Informatica – Data integration to enhance AI insights.