News and backup: Difference between revisions

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=== How often should you run News and Backup? ===

The following are the '''minimally required news and backups''' and their reasons:

* at '''beginning of collection with a laptop''' before data entry

# at '''beginning of collection with a laptop''' before data entry

** this ensures that you have the newest version of the program

#*this ensures that you have the newest version of the program

* at '''end of collection with a laptop'''

# at '''end of collection day with a laptop''' (whether you send or not)

** very rarely things go wrong during sending; making a backup just before sending means we would be able to restore you to that version if sending corrupts your data

#* very rarely things go wrong during sending; making a backup just before sending means we would be able to restore you to that version if sending corrupts your data

** also, it gives main office data to go on if they have to do any "forensics" on your data if send made a mess at our end; sometimes the [[Data processor]] will re-send data from this backup so you don't have to.

#* also, it gives main office data to go on if they have to do any "forensics" on your data if send made a mess at our end; sometimes the [[Data processor]] will re-send data from this backup so you don't have to.

* '''after [[sending]]''' but '''before DELETING''' any files from laptop

# '''just before [[sending]]''''

** again, this gives the main office data to review in case something went wrong with the send.

# '''after [[sending]]''' but '''before DELETING''' any files from laptop

#* again, this gives the main office data to review in case something went wrong with the send.

You can additionally back up mid day. In theory you can do this as frequently as you want, but there are draw backs: we only keep the last 20 backups, so if you back up 10 times a day we only have 2 days of backups for you. So, if we found out that we want to know something that happened last week, then if you did 10 a day we would no longer have the data, but if you did 3 a day, we usually would still have the data. So, be reasonable in your backup frequency.

@@ Line 5: / Line 5: @@
 === How often should you run News and Backup? ===
 The following are the '''minimally required news and backups''' and their reasons:
-* at '''beginning of collection with a laptop''' before data entry
+# at '''beginning of collection with a laptop''' before data entry
-** this ensures that you have the newest version of the program
+#*this ensures that you have the newest version of the program
-* at '''end of collection with a laptop'''
+# at '''end of collection day with a laptop''' (whether you send or not)
-** very rarely things go wrong during sending; making a backup just before sending means we would be able to restore you to that version if sending corrupts your data
+#* very rarely things go wrong during sending; making a backup just before sending means we would be able to restore you to that version if sending corrupts your data
-** also, it gives main office data to go on if they have to do any "forensics" on your data if send made a mess at our end; sometimes the [[Data processor]] will re-send data from this backup so you don't have to.
+#* also, it gives main office data to go on if they have to do any "forensics" on your data if send made a mess at our end; sometimes the [[Data processor]] will re-send data from this backup so you don't have to.
-* '''after [[sending]]''' but '''before DELETING''' any files from laptop
+# '''just before [[sending]]''''
-** again, this gives the main office data to review in case something went wrong with the send.
+# '''after [[sending]]''' but '''before DELETING''' any files from laptop
+#* again, this gives the main office data to review in case something went wrong with the send.
 You can additionally back up mid day. In theory you can do this as frequently as you want, but there are draw backs: we only keep the last 20 backups, so if you back up 10 times a day we only have 2 days of backups for you. So, if we found out that we want to know something that happened last week, then if you did 10 a day we would no longer have the data, but if you did 3 a day, we usually would still have the data. So, be reasonable in your backup frequency.