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Backup and Promote Wizard

Create a backup job that saves BusinessObjects content to disk or promotes it to another environment, on demand or on a schedule.

For concepts, archive storage and restore, see Backup and Restore.

Before you begin

  • Your MetaMiner role grants Tab: Backup/Promote on every loaded environment, and Export on the source environment. Promotion also needs Import on the target. See Permissions Reference.
  • Promotion targets must be loaded in the MetaMiner Client (MMC) and run the same or a newer BusinessObjects major version.
  • The archive location has enough free space (see MMS Free Disk in the tab toolbar).
  • With a Basic Edition license a job can only save to disk, not promote.

Steps

1. Open the New Backup dialog

  1. Open the Backup/Promote tab.
  2. Click New Backup... in the toolbar. The Add New Backup Job dialog opens with the tabs General, Schedule, Notifications and Retention Policy.

Image of the Add New Backup Job dialog, General tab, Wizard-based type with contents chosen and a promotion target

../../images/client/backup-new-job-general.png

2. Fill in the General tab

Field What to enter
Source ENV The environment to back up.
Type Wizard-based: a fixed list of objects you pick. SQL-based: a query that selects objects at each run.
Name The job name shown in the jobs table.
Choose Contents / IDs Wizard-based only. Opens Choose Contents for Backup, a CMS Explorer tree where you tick folders and objects. The IDs field lists the selected object IDs.
SQL / Modify Script SQL-based only. A query against the MetaMiner Database (MMDB) that returns an OBJECTID column (integer) and a CMSID column (string).
Backup name The archive file name for each run.
Promote to A target environment, or Do not promote (save to disk instead).
Use path matching When promoting, matches existing target objects by folder path and name instead of CUID.
Include security Includes the objects' security in the archive or promotion.
Auto-include parents Adds the parent folders of selected objects so they restore into the same structure (on by default).
Override default backup path / Custom backup path Writes this job's archives to another local or UNC path instead of the server default.

Wizard-based jobs do not pick up new content

A wizard-based job backs up exactly the objects you selected. New documents added later to a selected folder's neighbours are not included. Use an SQL-based job for content that changes, for example "everything under Public Folders/Sales".

Example SQL-based selection: every Web Intelligence document in one environment
SELECT d.cmsid, d.objectid
FROM documents d
WHERE d.kind = 'Webi'
  AND d.cmsid = '<environment id>';

TODO: verify example column names and the environment id format against the MMDB schema

3. Set the schedule

  1. Open the Schedule tab and click Modify Schedule.
  2. In the schedule dialog choose Repeats (Minutes, Hourly, Daily, Every weekday (Monday to Friday), Weekly, Monthly), Every, Starts on, and Ends (Never, After a number of occurrences, or On a date). Next runs previews the next run times.
  3. Close the dialog and tick the enable box at the bottom of the main dialog (Backup Job enabled).

Without a schedule the job runs only when you choose Run Now.

4. Set notifications (optional)

On the Notifications tab, tick Enabled? under Email Notifications, enter To:, Cc:, Bcc: and a Message, and optionally Send only on failure. Use Test Notifications to send a test e-mail. E-mail delivery uses the server SMTP settings in Email settings.

5. Set retention

On the Retention Policy tab choose Keep backups for last: N runs, or Don't set policy to keep all archives.

6. Save and run

  1. Click OK to save the job.
  2. Right-click the job and choose Run Now to test it. A long backup asks for confirmation and can run in the background.
  3. Select the job and check the new row in the archives table: Total Items, Export Issues and Import Issues.

Manage jobs

Right-click a job in the jobs table:

Action What it does
Modify... Edits the job. The type cannot be changed after creation.
Clone... Creates a copy of the job to edit.
Delete... Deletes the job definition.
Enable... / Disable... Turns the schedule on or off.
Run Now Runs the job immediately.
Reset Run Count / Reset Status Resets the successful-run counter or the last status.
View Backup History Shows each run with action type, start, end, duration and user.
Restore Backup... Opens the restore wizard. See Backup and Restore.

Verify

  • The jobs table shows the last run time, an increasing Successful Runs count and the Next Run time.
  • The archives table lists a new archive with no export issues.
  • For promotion jobs, the objects appear in the target environment after the next pull or an F5 refresh.

Troubleshooting

Your MetaMiner license allows you only to save to disk, not to promote

Basic Edition limit. Set Promote to to Do not promote (save to disk instead).

SQL-based job will not save

The query must return OBJECTID (integer) and CMSID (string) columns. Test it first in Meta Query.

Backup could be saved but could not be enabled

The job was saved but the schedule could not be activated, usually because no valid schedule is set. Open Modify..., set the schedule, and enable it again.

Next steps