How to backup & restore your account

A super admin user has the ability to create an account backup on-demand, as well as restore the account to an existing backup that was created within the past seven days. Currently, creating a backup or restoring to an existing backup is an account-wide update, meaning it is not specific to individual applications. Therefore, only super admin users have the ability to create a backup or restore an account to a prior version.

There are a few things to consider when creating a backup:

• Backups are taken of the account, and are not specific to an app or table.
• You can take as many backups as needed, however you can only restore from a backup taken within the last seven days.
• Once a file is deleted, it cannot be restored. This includes documents, images, and microservices.
• Backups cannot be downloaded from your account.
• Backups cannot be restored to a different account.
• There is not a way to preview any data in an existing backup file, so we recommend adding detailed notes every time a backup is created.
• Backups cannot be created on a recurring basis. At this time, they need to be manually requested by a super admin user.

How to create a backup

1. Navigate to My Account, then select Backup & Restore.
   
   
   
2. Click Backup Now.
   
   
3. Create a Backup Name and add Backup Notes. For accounts that have multiple super admin users, we recommend the backup notes have detailed information containing the purpose of the backup. This can help differentiate between multiple backup files. The requesting user will receive an email confirmation when the backup is complete. Larger accounts will take longer to process. Note: In our testing, it took roughly 60 minutes to process a backup for an account size of 3.5 GB. 
   
   
   
4. Once complete, you can view the Activity Log. The log will contain the date/time the backup was requested and completed, as well as the requesting user, notes, and any transactions which experienced an error. Errors will be displayed in red font.
   
   

In the event that a resource was deleted, or unintentional changes were made, you can now restore the account from an existing backup.

Before attempting a restore, there are a few things to be aware of:

• We cannot preview or extract data from a backup file.
• The restore feature is account-wide. At this time, apps and tables may not be restored individually.
• Any changes made in the account between the time the backup was taken, and the time you choose to restore, the account will be lost. Any users that were added to the account in this window will need to be re-added.
• You can restore an account from any backup created in the past seven days.
• When a restore is in progress, all users will be logged out, and the account will be in maintenance mode until the restore completes. We recommend communicating with your users before processing a restore, so they are aware the account will be temporarily inaccessible.
• The length of time for the restore to complete will vary depending on the size of the account. This means it could take anywhere from a couple of minutes, or a few hours. We do not have a way to estimate the length of time your account will be in maintenance mode.
• A restore can fail when an import is running, a sandbox is being created, or if another backup or restore process is already running for the same account.
• Restoring an account does not bring back any files a user deleted. This applies to all documents, images, and microservices. For example, if a table containing images is accidentally deleted, restoring the account will bring back the table and record data, but the images will be lost. You may still see an image name; however, any attempt to download that file will result in an error.
• When processing restores, a backup will automatically be created before the restore is initiated.
  
  

How to restore an account from a backup