Export or back up feature request

Great idea! The future feature list!

There doesn't even seem to be a way to completely backup a SINGLE aspect of a web computer, much less the whole thing.

RAID(or other distributed storage) is not Backup. Google it.

"greenup replied 9 months ago:
I would like to have an option in Airset Desktop Sync to do "backup to CSV". While it is gathering and comparing information with Outlook on its periodic basis, it could dump the info into a directory set aside for the purpose of these backups. (which also hopefully can be configured to have YYYYMMDD.csv style names)
...
"

"greenup replied 9 months ago:
...
You also mentioned the Wikipedia model. Thank you, you have highlighted something for me that I have been neglectful of. Backups. One reason wiki model works well is because defacements are easy to fix. All the previous versions are close at hand, so if someone scrubs a page, it takes Seconds to fix. With the old model, if someone scrubbed a group's contacts, I still had My copies. I'm sure you're going to say something about administrative permissions, but everybody gets grumpy some days, and how long will it be before someone in a position of trust violates it? Probably about as long as it takes a dot-com to go bust or change their model.
..."

ref: http://getsatisfaction.com/airset/top...
ref: http://getsatisfaction.com/airset/top...

http://getsatisfaction.com/airset/top...

"... backup that preserves accidential changes
I really would appreciate a backup functionality to have the opportunity to copy all of the webcomputers content with one klick and be able to restore parts of it or everything. I read already that you take great care for the data of your users, but this is no protection against accidential deleting of content by members.
"

http://getsatisfaction.com/airset/top...

Sorry if I sound a little negative, I have recently re-compiled my list of annoyances with Airset. It's pretty good for free, but I no longer obsess over it. It's not good enough to be a "must have", and I don't trust it enough either.

@Brian--

That is good information--the ability to perform a manual backup now. I didn't know of this method, but I will certainly put it into use.

For the development of the backup function, I'd suggest a radio button (select/de-select) on the admin page that would allow me to turn on/off a back up reminder. This should also have a setting that remembers where the backups are to be stored--a setting that can be changed as necessary:



Which would then pop up this question at the appropriate time before performing the backup:



Thanks for listening,

Jim

I just re-verified, and there is still not a way to backup the image/picture data associated with a contact, or the "last modified date" (which can't even be seen, but I would have to believe is a part of your data model, since you have a sync client)

Obviously, a "restore" for contact data would be a little tricky, too, since you are prompted to figure out what group to put the people in when you import.

For Calendar items, last I heard, there was a 1MB limit issue, for which the recommended workaround was "don't use more than that. Delete old data." Has this changed?

A related question I personally asked ( http://getsatisfaction.com/airset/top... ) suggested that the backup be incorporated into Desktop Sync to reduce coding needs, and make the whole mess quite automatic and painless for the end-user. That was "...passed on to the AirSet team. We agree that a back up feature is needed" and I could "stay tuned".

One thing that was disappointing about this particular post was that Jim stated above "Great idea, Jim... I will add it to my future feature list.", when (as I pointed out/linked) this EXACT idea (as far as I can tell) has been around for at least 6 months without meaningful progress that can be seen from outside.

"...a backup functionality to have the opportunity to copy all of the webcomputers content with one klick...you take great care for the data of your users, but this is no protection against accidential deleting of content by members.
- 6 Months ago"
http://getsatisfaction.com/airset/top...

I personally haven't bothered with Airset's web publish tool, or its bookmarks/links function, but from what I have seen before in those areas, they also do not have backup/restore functions.

I understand that you have a lot of feature requests, and I am sure many of them require extensive coding. This might not even be my highest priority wish. But it is one of the reasons I quit hopefully coming to getsatisfaction every week. "maybe." "someday." "if we remember to get to it".

I just checked, this post appears "quite Grumpy", but the truth is, I have come to terms with Airset's weaknesses. Airset is a quite usable service, just as windows 3.0 was a usable operating system, and I appreciate that I am able to use it at no monetary cost, only the slight attention/screenspace cost, small cpu cost and privacy cost of the ad banner. But like windows 3.0, I'm not going to rely on it too much. And try not to take it too personally when it is rejected for not being as good as a mac in some way. ( evite / facebook / ,,,)

Brian wrote: Calendar will export a backup in the industry standard .ics format (iCalendar) and contacts in .vcf (vCard). Both will also export to .csv (comma separated values).

I was looking for the calendar .csv export the other day, but didn't find it. I think the calendar will import .csv and .ics, but it will only export ics. If I'm wrong, I'd be interested to know how to export .csv. I don't really need it that badly, but like to have as much interoperability as I can get. :-)

Hi Chris,

Brian's post is incorrect, currently you can only export calendars in .ics format. Thanks for catching the error.