'Major' Salesforce Outage Whacks Firm's Marketing Automation Customers

Salesforce says the issue impacts current and former customers of the company’s Pardot marketing automation software, where the deployment of a database script resulted in granting users broader data access than intended.

Salesforce told customers Friday that it is experiencing a “major issue with its service” and is attempting to resolve it as quickly as possible.

"To all of our @salesforce customers, please be aware that we are experiencing a major issue with our service and apologize for the impact it is having on you," Salesforce Co-Founder and CTO Parker Harris wrote on Twitter at 12:40 p.m. ET Friday. "Please know that we have all hands on this issue and are resolving as quickly as possible."

Harris said in a tweet 55 minutes later that Salesforce had to disable access to its service to customers affected in order to help resolve the issue. Salesforce expects to be able to restore access soon as it continues to work through this issue, Harris wrote.

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"It appears to be massive," one channel partner told CRN anonymously. "Many of my Salesforce connections have reached out about and have been impacted in one way or another.”

Salesforce said in a 1:33 p.m. ET message on its website that the issue impacts customers who use Pardot marketing automation software, or have used Pardot in the past. Specifically, the company said the deployment of a database script resulted in granting users broader data access than intended.

"To protect our customers, we have blocked access to all instances that contain affected customers until we can complete the removal of the inadvertent permissions in the affected customer orgs," the company wrote on its Trust status website. "As a result, customers who were not impacted may experience service disruption."

Salesforce said it is working in parallel to restore the original permissions as quickly as possible. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CRN.

Customers have been reporting issues with Salesforce since 9:22 a.m. ET today, according to downdetector.com, with the number of outage reports peaking at 3,262 shortly before 1 p.m. ET. An outage map on downdetector.com indicates significant problems with Salesforce in Boston, New York, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Chicago, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Salesforce users took to Twitter to complain about the outage.

Everyone without #salesforce right now. Go explore the outside. Take a deep breath and look at real clouds. It’s ok. It’ll come back up. #SalesforceDown pic.twitter.com/RjRPbrdWFp

— Collin A. Zimmerman (@collinz) May 17, 2019

Been using @salesforce for over a decade and today is the first time I've been impacted by #salesforcedown. I'm sure impressed how I went over a decade without having down time. All I can say is in @parkerharris we trust.

— Nick Lindberg (@NickersUniverse) May 17, 2019

Sadness and stress! #salesforcedown

— Julianne (@Julianne0223) May 17, 2019

Additional reporting from Joseph Tsidulko