Summer time, but I do not want to miss the opportunity so share something even if this post is sorter than usual.

A year ago I completed Platform Encryption Trailhead  but I have started working with it few months ago.

What is Platform Encryption and Why do we need it?

You can find more information here, but basically it would allow us to protect some data, so that, it would not be visible. However this does not mean that the data is stored in database with a mask “****”. It is going to be saved as usual, but if your user doesn’t have certain rights, it will not be visible, and he would have a mask “****” as view effect .

Ok, let’s explain a bit better. If I need a field encrypted, because it is a password, I will use the existing Text (encrypted) field type. If I need to have my data visible in my organization, but if this is stoles, for instance, it should not be visible, then, I need to use existing field types, but enable Platform Encryption on those that have sensible data.

How to enable Platform Encryption?

First of all, you need to have rights, to manage encrypted data. For that, the first thing to do is to create a Permission Set, under System Mode, select Manage Encryption Keys.  Remember to assign it to your user.

If you need to see also encrypted data, you need to add to the same Permission Set, or a new one, View Encrypted Data right.

Then, you need to go to Setup, under Administration Setup you can find Platform Encryption

The very first time you also need to generate a Tenant Secret just clicking on the button.

 

The last step is to decide what you need to encrypt. Right now Salesforce allows you to encrypt certain fields on certain Standard Objects.

Leads fields are in beta

And you can also encrypt custom fields on Standard and Custom objects as long as their field type are: Email, Phone, Text, Text Area, Long Text Area, URL, Date or Date/Time.

But before encrypt any field you need to be aware that there are certain limitations. Maybe one of the most important one is that you cannot filter, order or group by an encrypted field, so that your code can fail once you enable this feature in your organization.

 

Reviewing the code

Now it is time to review your current code to check if there is something failing now. The easiest example of failure is this SOQL in your code.

Select Id, Name From Account Where Name = :accName;

But now it fails at compilation time. And if you turn Encryption off, it continues failing … so what should you do at this point?

If your next step is to move to dynamic SOQL, it’s a good try. Now it saves, but it would fail at run time.

You need to find another way to get the information. Salesforce suggests to use SOSL, and this is an easy solution, as we only need to move to this piece of code. So let’s go for it and solve this issue.

Account acc = new Account();Account acc = new Account();        
acc.Name = 'PE Blog Test';        
insert acc;         

List<List<Account>> accList = [FIND 'PE Blog Test' 
                               IN ALL FIELDS 
                               RETURNING Account(Id, Name)];        

System.debug('Testing: ' + accList);

Reviewing Unit Tests

Ok, this section sound similar to the previous one. Yes, you are right, but I wanted to highlight it here, because I was not used to work with SOSL and I found something interesting to share.

If I have below method:

public static testMethod void testAcountsWithSOSL() 
{ 
   List<Account> accList = [Select Id from Account]; 
   System.assertEquals(0, accList.size(), 'Error: There should not be any account.');
   
   Account acc = new Account(Name = 'Test'); 
   insert acc;
   accList = [Select Id from Account]; 
   System.assertEquals(1, accList.size(), 'Error: There should be an account.'); 

   List<List<Account>> accList2 = [FIND 'Test' IN ALL FIELDS RETURNING Account];
   System.assertEquals(1, accList2.get(0).size(), 'Error: There should be an account. And result is = ' + accList2); 
}

And run the test, the result is the below one:

Exactly, it fails because accList2 is empty although I was expecting to get an element.

Doing some researches, I found this article about unit test. So it seems they provide a Test method that allows you to insert the Id of the record you need to look for and get it back. So that, the solution would be this:

public static testMethod void testAcountsWithSOSLFollowingGuide() 
{ 
   List<Account> accList = [Select Id from Account]; 
   System.assertEquals(0, accList.size(), 'Error: There should not be any account.');

   Account acc = new Account(Name = 'Test'); 
   insert acc;
   accList = [Select Id from Account]; 
   System.assertEquals(1, accList.size(), 'Error: There should be an account.'); 

   Id [] fixedSearchResults= new Id[1]; 
   fixedSearchResults[0] = acc.Id;
   Test.setFixedSearchResults(fixedSearchResults); 
   List<List<SObject>> searchList = [FIND 'Test' IN ALL FIELDS RETURNING Account(Id, Name)]; 
   System.assertEquals(1, searchList.get(0).size(), 'Error: There should be an account. And result is = ' + searchList);    
}

Ok, so doing in this way, you are saved. However, be aware that your tests have the SeeAllData=false and you do not expect to get data from your org, other wise, it would fail too.

I hope this post help you to be closer to understand what you need to do before enabling Platform Encryption in your org.