Auto Backup

The P3Software Automatic Backup system is a data preservation service provided by P3Software to certain customers. The service gathers customer data stored on the P3Software server and sends a copy of that data to a customer defined FTP location on a daily basis. The customer provides P3Software with access credentials to an FTP server that the customer maintains. Each day (24 hours) the P3Software Automatic Backup system creates a ZIP archive of the customer's data and delivers the archive to the customer's FTP server and sends an email with the delivery status.

The Automatic Backup service also sends a copy of the most recent version of the P3Software application. The Application is updated periodically as new versions are released. The application is delivered to the customer's FTP server to provide access to the ZIP archives' data should they need to be accessed.

Setup

The customer must setup an FTP server and provide P3Software with the appropriate credentials for sending files to the server. These credentials are:

  • Host name
  • User name
  • User password
  • An optional directory in which to store received ZIP archive files
  • An optional password to be used to encrypt the ZIP archive files
  • Email address to receive notifications that an archive has been sent

SFTP/SCP is also available if desired.

The Archive Files

Each daily backup will be a single zip file that will have a name of "NPBackup" concatenated with the date and time (down to the second) and will have a ".zip" extension. e.g. NPBackup20110329101505.zip. The zip file will be in a standard format so applications such as PKZIP will be able to extract a backup file's content.

Accessing the Backup Archives

These instructions assume you will be using a PC running Microsoft Windows XP, Vista or Windows 7. Depending on your version of Windows, you must also have software installed on your PC to extract the files in the ZIP backups. Windows 7 already has the capability of extracting files from ZIP archives.

  1. Right click in an empty place on your Windows Desktop and when the menu list pops up, point at the New selection and click on the Folder option when the secondary list menu appears. This will create a folder icon on your Desktop and you can enter a folder name. Enter P3Backup for the new folder name.
  2. Double click on the new folder you just created on your Desktop to open a Windows Explorer window. Copy one of the ZIP archive files from your FTP server into the new folder. The ZIP archive file will have a name something like NPBackup20110329101505.zip. Most Windows PCs will not show the .zip part of the file name when viewing a Zip file in a Windows Explorer window.
  3. Extract the files from the ZIP archive file into a sub-folder in the new folder containing the ZIP archive file. If you are using a PC running Windows 7, right-click the ZIP archive file and select Extract All.... In the window that pops up, just click on the Extract button to accept the default. If you provided a password to encrypt the files, you will be prompted to enter it at this time. You should end up with a sub-folder with a name something like NPBackup20110329101505. Double click on the sub-folder to view the extracted files.
  4. Copy the file named p3expeditor.jar from your FTP server into the NPBackup20110329101505 sub-folder.
  5. Locate the file named AutoBackupRun.bat and double click on it. In a few moments the P3 application splash screen will display followed by a dialog box entitled "Backup Recovery Mode" with a drop list of the user's email addresses in your enterprise.
  6. Select one of the user email addresses in the drop list and click on the OK button. The application will begin operation as the selected user.

P3Expeditor Backup Recovery Mode

When operating a P3 application in "Backup Recovery Mode" the user only has access to the data in the files extracted from the ZIP backup file and located in the same directory/folder as the application .jar file. Communications with P3Software server(s) is not allowed to ensure the separation of the back up and primary data files. If the user attempts to use communications functions, a dialog will be displayed indicating that the operation is not allowed. "Backup Recovery Mode" is solely intended to provide access to your data in the event your service with P3Software is, for some reason, no longer available.

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