Salesforce Maintenance and Instance Refresh FAQs

In addition to the three major releases each year, Salesforce continuously enhances our application infrastructure to better serve our customers. Impact on Salesforce Org During Maintenance. We post scheduled maintenance details on trust.salesforce.com, which provides a forward 12-month view. To minimize the impact of maintenance windows, we have implemented read-only capabilities, allowing customers to view their data even during maintenance.

Here are some frequently asked questions about how Salesforce maintenance might affect your org. Please note that actions may be required on your part.


Frequently Asked Questions Impact on Salesforce Org During Maintenance

  1. When are maintenance windows scheduled? Maintenance is typically scheduled during the instance’s standard maintenance window, which usually occurs during low-usage hours. For details on standard maintenance windows, refer to the Salesforce Maintenance Schedule article.
  2. Will my Salesforce org be available during maintenance? The availability of your instance during maintenance is indicated on trust.salesforce.com, with the following options:
    • “This instance will not be available during this maintenance window.” Users will not have access to the Salesforce instance during this period.
    • “This instance will be generally available during this maintenance window.” Users may experience temporary interruptions but can generally use the instance as normal.
    • “The instance will be available in read-only mode during this maintenance window.” Users can view and report on data but cannot add, edit, or delete data. For more details on Read-Only Mode, see the Read-Only Mode Overview article.
    • “This instance will be available during this maintenance window.” The org should not be impacted, unless specified otherwise (e.g., during an Org Migration).
  3. Will there be any impact to Search after maintenance? No, Search functionality will remain unaffected after maintenance is completed.
  4. What happens to Weekly Exports during maintenance? Weekly Exports will be paused during maintenance and will resume once maintenance is complete.
  5. What happens to Physical Delete during maintenance? Physical Delete operations will be suspended during maintenance and will resume afterward.
  6. Will Email Thread IDs change after maintenance? Existing Email Thread IDs will remain unchanged. However, new Thread IDs may reflect the new instance ID format. Avoid creating custom Thread ID formats as they may affect Email-to-Case (E2C) functionality. For more information, see the Updating Hard-coded References FAQ article.
  7. What happens to Email-to-X (e.g., Email-to-Case) or Web-to-X (e.g., Web-to-Case) after maintenance? Emails and web submissions will be queued and processed once maintenance is complete.
  8. Do I need to take any action on batch, scheduled, long-running transactions, or bulk API jobs before maintenance? No action is required. Salesforce will queue and process all jobs after maintenance.
  9. Will this maintenance impact SSO? If you follow our network settings best practices, outlined in the Network Settings FAQ article, SSO should not be affected. The outbound SSO certificate will remain unchanged.
  10. Can I control what my end users see when trying to access my partner portal or community during the maintenance window?
    • Site Type & Behavior Matrix:
      • HTTP-Only Domain, No SNA: Generic service unavailable page
      • HTTP-Only Domain, SNA Set: Custom service unavailable page
      • HTTPS Domain, No SNA: Blank page or connection error message
      • HTTPS Domain, SNA Set: Blank page or connection error message
    • To set up maintenance or error pages, refer to the Assigning Force.com Error Pages | Salesforce article.
  11. Does my org ID change following maintenance? No, your org ID will remain the same after maintenance.
  12. Does my Email Service Address change following maintenance? No, your Email Service Address will remain unchanged after maintenance.
  13. How does Salesforce notify customers about maintenance windows? Maintenance details are posted on trust.salesforce.com. For maintenance requiring advance preparation, Salesforce will email admins (those with “Modify All Data” and “Manage All Users” permissions) and provide notifications via Product and Service Notifications. For more information, see the Product & Service Notifications article.
  14. What will users see if they attempt to log in during maintenance when Read-Only Mode is not available? Users may see a message such as: “Salesforce.com is currently unavailable due to planned maintenance. For more information, please visit trust.salesforce.com. We appreciate your patience during this maintenance window.”
  15. What should I know about Chat maintenance? For information on Chat maintenance and expected behavior, refer to the Chat Maintenance Information article.
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