FAQ

Q1 – What do your Salesforce Apps do?

Field Dump and Field Dump Pro apps provide a way to generate a single Excel spreadsheet that contains information about your Salesforce objects and fields.  Each object is presented on a separate Excel tab.  You are able to choose what standard or custom objects you want to include.

Field Dump is free.

Field Dump Pro offers extra functionality and is charged for on a per prod org / year basis.

Q2 – …and Field Dump it’s totally free?

Yes. Totally. And will remain so, even with the introduction of Field Dump Pro.

Q3 – …and Field Dump it’s not artificially limited…

Correct. It is a fully operational and a feature rich app. To date, it has been installed on over fifty thousand Salesforce orgs and 87% of reviews on AppExchange are either 4 or 5 star!

Q4 – Is p0p crazy for not trying to make some money out of Field Dump?

Probably. It has allowed us to get really great feedback that has allowed us to build Field Dump Pro.

Q5 – So whats the difference between Field Dumper and Field Dump Pro?

Where do we start? A good place is our comparison document.

We have added several new features and made numerous improvements. We are able to extract more metadata, document output is more refined. Links back to Salesforce and for Excel navigation have been added, we have introduced an object index page and a single tab export mode. Batch mode can be used for large schemas and output can be delivered in PDF format. Output files are stored in Salesforce.

Q6 -What is Field Dump Pro’s single killer feature?

It gets additional metadata (by using the Salesforce tooling api) including the much requested ‘Description‘ field for object and fields.

Q7 – How does it work under the hood?

It uses Salesforce native schema apex commands to extract information about each field for the selected objects.

Field Dump Pro also utilises Salesforce’s Tooling API to get more object and field metadata. This includes description, layout info, field created and last modified data. Future calls are made to maximise Salesforce apex limits to produces the largest outputs possible.

Q8 – What about the multi-tabbed excel?

Ahh yeah,  Visualforce page with renderas is used to produce the excel out.  We use a trick with XML to allow a multi tabbed spreadsheet to be be defined.

Q9 – What’s the max number of fields or objects I can export?

It will depend on your Salesforce schema.  There are some Salesforce limits (data size needed to produce spreadsheet etc) that will come into play for large schemas but we have tried our hardest to make it as efficient as possible.

For a ballpark metric, during testing we have managed to produce a spreadsheet with 150 tabs / exported 150 objects, each with 10 fields.  Obviously every schema is different in terms of objects, field count, and field meta data size so your experience may be different.

Field Dump Pro delivers better performance due to its use of ‘future’ processing. It can also utilise a ‘batch’ mode to split objects over several different Excel workbooks.

Let us know how you get on.

Q10 – Can I use it with the Salesforce classic UI?

Yes (for the Object Picker page)

Q11 – What about the Salesforce Lightning UI?

Yes, that too.

Q12Must I have excel to view export?

Yes. You must have excel installed on windows or mac. Unfortunately excel online, google sheets, open office or office conversion tools on chromebook will not work. Field Dump Pro provides alternative export formats of html and pdf.

Q13 – Is my Salesforce schema data exposed to any third parties, including external APIs or Web Services?

Absolutely not.  Your schema data is processed and the Excel file is produced entirely within your own Salesforce org using Salesforce native apex code.  Your schema data never leaves your Salesforce org.  (Take care of the produced excel sheet though!)

Q14 – Is my org NPPI (Non-public Personal Information) information exposed?

Absolutely not.  Your org schema data is read and processed but you actual data (records) are not accessed.

Q15 – Why did you write these apps?

I wasted too much of my time clicking through multiple pages to review config.

Q16 – Where can I download it from?

Field Dumper is available for free on the Salesforce AppExchange here : https://appexchange.salesforce.com/listingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000EJg2hUAD

Field Dump Pro is available on the Salesforce AppExchange with a 15 day free trial here:

https://appexchange.salesforce.com/appxListingDetail?listingId=a0N3A00000FR4MfUAL