Metazoa Snapshot

Purpose-Built for Educational Institutions

Snapshot delivers powerful automation and deep visibility to help colleges, universities, and education organizations manage complex Salesforce environments, protect student data, support compliance, and streamline administrative processes.

Snapshot helps educational institutions meet data privacy and security requirements while managing complex Salesforce environments.

Educational organizations must protect student information, ensure data accuracy, and support institutional accountability across departments and campuses. Snapshot provides the visibility, automation, and control needed to enforce policies, streamline operations, and maintain compliance with standards like FERPA.

Compliance and Institutional Reporting

Snapshot automates the documentation needed to support FERPA compliance, internal audits, and accreditation reviews. Track changes across metadata, access settings, and configuration history to maintain a clear, provable record of your Salesforce environment over time.

Security Oversight and Access Management

Gain visibility into how staff, faculty, and students access data through profiles, permission sets, and sharing rules. Snapshot helps institutions identify excess access, inactive users, and misconfigured roles, improving security and supporting consistent data stewardship across the campus.

Visibility Across Departments and Systems

Snapshot provides a clear view into how your Salesforce environment is structured and used. Understand metadata relationships, highlight unused assets, and map how page layouts, fields, and automation support operations across admissions, advancement, and student services.

System Cleanup and Optimization

Educational orgs often carry legacy metadata from past initiatives and system migrations. Snapshot helps identify unused customizations, outdated automation, and redundant fields. Cleaning up technical debt improves performance, reduces administrative burden, and ensures long-term sustainability.

Higher Education Case Study

Higher education institutions rely on Salesforce to support student success, academic operations, advancement, and engagement. As digital self-service expands, ensuring that students, faculty, and administrators only access the data appropriate to their roles is critical for protecting privacy and meeting compliance obligations. This case study highlights how a state college used Metazoa Snapshot to document access control, simplify permission management, and support FERPA compliance during the rollout of a new student portal.

Challenges

A mid-sized public college serving over 15,000 students across multiple campuses launched a new Salesforce-based self-service portal to improve the student experience. The project required fine-tuned visibility rules, strict data segmentation, and documentation of access rights to satisfy compliance requirements under FERPA. The college’s Salesforce environment had grown over several years, with inconsistent permission assignments and a legacy profile model that complicated user access management.

Inconsistent Permission Architecture
Students, faculty, and administrative staff were granted access through a mixture of legacy profiles and ad hoc permission sets. There was no reliable way to confirm who could see what data, and permission overlaps introduced unintended access.
FERPA Documentation Gaps
The college was unable to produce accurate, exportable records showing how access was configured and enforced. Audits required clear documentation of field-level security and sharing rules, but this information was scattered and manually maintained.
Student Portal Security Requirements
To protect sensitive academic and personal information, the portal required that students could only view their own data—not class rosters, advisor notes, or administrative records. The team lacked tools to validate these visibility rules at scale before go-live.

Solution

Metazoa Snapshot was deployed to give the college full visibility into its access model, simplify permission management, and ensure the new portal launch met institutional security and compliance expectations.

Permission Set Optimization and Role Review
Snapshot generated matrix reports showing effective access across all user types, including students, faculty, and administrative staff. Redundant profiles were consolidated, permission sets were refined, and users were reassigned as needed to enforce least-privilege access.
FERPA-Aligned Compliance Reporting
Snapshot produced exportable reports that documented access at the profile, permission set, and field level. These reports were used to demonstrate compliance with FERPA requirements and supported internal reviews conducted by the Office of Information Security and the Registrar.
Security Validation for the Student Portal
Using Snapshot’s metadata visibility tools, the team verified that student users could only access the correct records and fields. Sharing rules, object-level access, and field visibility were reviewed in detail prior to launch, preventing exposure of non-student data.
Automation and Ongoing Oversight
The college scheduled regular Snapshot reports to monitor changes in user access over time, ensuring that permission models remained compliant and aligned with institutional policy—even as roles evolved or new academic programs were added.

Results

By implementing Metazoa Snapshot, the college successfully launched its self-service portal while improving access control, supporting compliance, and simplifying long-term Salesforce management.

FERPA Compliance Strengthened
Detailed access reports gave the college the ability to demonstrate how student data was protected and who had access to which records and fields, supporting both internal audits and external reviews.
Security Risks Eliminated
The institution removed overprovisioned access, retired outdated profiles, and validated visibility rules—reducing the chance of data leaks or user error.
Portal Launch Delivered with Confidence
The student portal was launched on schedule, with validated access control in place, and positive feedback from student services and compliance stakeholders.
Improved Access Governance
Snapshot created a foundation for sustainable user access management, making it easier for IT and security teams to maintain appropriate access controls as users and programs evolve.

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Metazoa Snapshot

Purpose-Built for Educational Institutions

Snapshot helps educational institutions meet data privacy and security requirements while managing complex Salesforce environments.

Compliance and Institutional Reporting

Security Oversight and Access Management

Visibility Across Departments and Systems

System Cleanup and Optimization

Higher Education Case Study

Challenges

Solution

Results

White Papers

White Papers

White Papers

COMPANY

COMMUNITY

Products

Metazoa Snapshot

Purpose-Built for Educational Institutions

Snapshot helps educational institutions meet data privacy and security requirements while managing complex Salesforce environments.

Compliance and Institutional Reporting

Security Oversight and Access Management

Visibility Across Departments and Systems

System Cleanup and Optimization

Higher Education Case Study

Challenges

Solution

Results

White Papers

White Papers

White Papers

COMPANY

COMMUNITY

Products

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