Indexes
Indexes are critical in Salesforce for improving the performance of data retrieval, especially when dealing with large volumes of records. Salesforce uses multi-tenant architecture, meaning multiple customers share the same infrastructure, so query efficiency is extremely important. Indexes play a crucial role in databases for improving performance, especially in querying large datasets, by using Indexing on Salesforce objects we can achieve faster data retrieval, Improved query performance , Reduced load on large objects and enhanced sorting and filtering functionality.
By effectively using Indexes on Salesforce objects, we can achieve efficiency in Vault Back up, Compare operations and Live replication of Salesforce orgs.
Salesforce platform maintains default indexes on the following fields for most objects.
RecordTypeId
Division
CreatedDate
Systemmodstamp (LastModifiedDate)
Name
Email (for contacts and leads)
Foreign key relationships (lookups and master-detail)
The unique Salesforce record ID, which is the primary key for each object
Salesforce also supports custom indexes on custom fields, except for multi-select picklists, text areas (long), text areas (rich), non-deterministic formula fields, and encrypted text fields.
External IDs cause an index to be created on that field. The query optimizer then considers those fields; we can create External IDs only on the following fields.
Auto Number
Email
Number
Text
Field Type
Indexed by Default
Custom Index Possible
Notes
Text
✅
✅
Most commonly indexed
✅
✅
Indexed by default
Phone
✅
✅
Indexed by default
URL
✅
✅
Indexed by default
Number / Currency
❌
✅
Can be indexed via support
Date / DateTime
❌
✅
Can be indexed for filters or performance
Picklist
❌
✅ (limited use)
Only if required in WHERE clauses
Checkbox (Boolean)
❌
✅
Usually used in filters
Lookup / Master-Detail
❌ (only Name field indexed)
✅ (Foreign Key Index)
For joins or filtering
Geolocation
❌
❌
Not indexable for search
Long Text / Rich Text
❌
❌
Not indexable (not searchable in Global Search)
Encrypted Fields
❌
❌
Not searchable due to security
To view if a Field is Indexed/Searchable: Home -> Search Manager -> Index Management -> Select an Object to view the Indexed Fields:
For creating Indexes manually on Big Objects in Salesforce, create custom fields (Mandatory Checkbox – Always requires a value in this field in order to save the record).
Navigate to Index Tab and click New
Once Indexes are created, Validate the Index on the Big Object.
Important criteria to ensure a good fit for a custom index:
1. Record count for the indexed object must be greater than 1,000 rows (greater than 10,000 rows are recommended to be of significant benefit).
2. Queries should take 5 seconds or more to process.
3. Query must contain a WHERE clause with a value that somewhat unique (i.e., the custom index should be able to filter out ~ 90% of the records).
4. Some commonly used fields, external id fields, and reference (lookup/master-detail) fields are already standard indexed. Formula fields and certain other fields cannot be custom indexed.
5. For SOQL queries executed in Apex, it is common for developers to embed data binding variables to make the query dynamic; however, for analyzing the query for custom indexing, we need to know the typical values that will actually be used at runtime.
Performance Results of Synthetic Backup using Indexes in Vault tool:
As noticed on our QA Org, the below is the Impact of creating Indexes on SF Big Objects and using synthetic back ups
SF Org Back up taken prior to Indexing and Synthetic Back up (https://knowledgebase.autorabit.com/product-guides/vault/vault-features/backup/synthetic-backup) took approximately 8 hours for 3.2 million records now complete 8.9 million records back up with additional metadata in 1.5 hours.
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