dschibster / bighistory

a template for making a more effective field audit tool in Salesforce using Big Objects

BigHistory

If you have ever wanted to track more than 20 Field Histories on one sObject, BigHistory is here for you! Use Big Objects to audit all your fields with an Apex Action for Flow and a Lightning Component for your pages

Version 1.0:

Use

Flow Action

You can use the BigHistory class in an Apex trigger, but the best way to use it is with Record-Triggered Flows.

1. Using a Record-Triggered Flow you can take advantage of the new $Record and $Record__Prior variables (with a caveat, see Known Issues) to automatically capture all updated values
   
2. Some quirk of Flow doesn't hand $Record__Prior to the Apex as a true sObject, so you need to first create a wrapper "Record" variable of the same type as the $Record itself
   
3. After that you add the BigHistory action. The "Original Record" input field is marked as optional to accomodate blank data when a record is first created, but it is necessary to catch any changes
   
4. The simplest Flow will look something like this:
   

Lightning Component

You can then add the BigHistoryList Lightning Component to Record Pages to see the history.

If there are sensitive fields you do not want listed in the field history you can use a comma-separated list of field API names in the Exclusion List field.

Known Issues/Caveats

• Record__Prior - must be assigned to a Flow variable. For some reason Flow does not treat Record__Prior as a true sObject when handing off to Apex, so it must be copied into a holder variable
• Security - be aware of BigObject security, which is everything for everyone. Big Objects don't have sharing rules, so be sure that anyone who has access to the Big Object has clearance to see the recorded fields. UPDATE: you can use the inclusive and exclusive field lists in both the Action and the Lightning Component to further restrict what is recorded and what is displayed
• Merge handling - be aware history will not be transfered when records are merged. The entries associated with the original record will still exist, but you will have to know the old record ID and do custom Big Object query in order to see them

Roadmap/Future

• Add report summary Custom Object with query options built-in
• Look for ways to handle merge data better, may require an ondelete something, trigger or flow
• Add "Include Fields" to Lightning Component for when there are fewer fields you want tracked than you want excluded