Real-Time Data Replication

Your documents and data are replicated across multiple locations. This eliminates risk from an isolated storage system failure.

Database Snapshots

"Snapshots" are point-in-time copies of your database data. Snapshots allow you to rollback to a previous point in time. Rolling back to a snapshot is not done very often since you will lose any data entered between the time of the snapshot and the current time. However there are some circumstances where going back to a snapshot may be useful; for example if you accidentally delete a lot of good data, or you import a some bad data. Snapshots are most often used when initially setting up your system and importing data from your previous system.

Actionstep automatically makes regular snapshots of your system. You can view your available snapshots by looking in Admin > General > Database Snapshots.

Requesting a database be rolled back using a Snapshot 

Snapshots can be used to "roll back" a database. This means all of the settings, data, and documents present at the time of the snapshot will be restored. This also means all data entered subsequently will be erased. To request your database be rolled back using a snapshot you can contact support@actionstep.com with your name, orgkey, and the date of the snapshot you would like to use. If you have not taken a manual snapshot, the team will have access to one of the snapshots automatically created during your maintenance window.

Please note that this is a manual process and involves a one-time charge of $300/£210.

Downloadable Backups

The documents and data that you upload to Actionstep are your property. You can request a copy of your data and documents at any time.

Requesting a Backup

In order for your request to be processed the support team will need to verify that you have the necessary authority within your organization to receive the backup.

Most backup requests will be completed within 1 business day of receiving the request, however if you have a particularly large data set then this might be slightly longer.  When the backup has been completed you will be sent an email message with a download link. You will be called separately to provide you with a password to decrypt the backup (we don't send the password and the download link in the same email message for security purposes).

What's Included in Your Backup

The email you receive will contain link(s) to download one or more password-protected, ZIP files (for large backups we spread the data across several zip files to make it easier to download). You should download the zip files and then uncompress them using the password that was provided to you by support.

The first zip file will contain your database data and possibly some documents. Subsequent zip files (if any) will contain the rest of your documents.

Database Data

In the first zip file there will be a folder called "Data". Inside this folder there will be several CSV files that you can open up in Microsoft Excel or any text editor. 

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Each data file contains rows of data and their associated unique keys (usually numeric with a column name containing "id"). You can use the keys to relate rows of data together from several data files. This makes it easier to import this data into another relational database system. Here is an explanation of what is contained in each data file:

Documents

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