How do OpenCRM backups work?

8 Jun 2020

One of the earliest questions we typically get from prospective users is about our backups. Specifically whether and how often their data is going to be backed up.

Having a backup of your system is one of those things, like knowing your data is stored in the UK, that is important for people’s peace of mind.

People want to know that, if they make a mistake, their data is not ruined or lost.

So without further ado, here is our backup policy:

• We backup all customer servers every night.
• We also take a weekly backup of individual customer databases and store this in a separate facility from the rest of our infrastructure…just in case.
• We also take an additional backup at the end of every month.

What is included in a backup?

In addition to the information stored directly in the fields of your records, our backups contains your configuration and customisation.

This includes:

• Links and relationships between records (i.e. Contacts to Company)
• Attachments and Document files
• Reports and Custom Views
• Email, PDF, and other Templates
• Custom fields, permissions, workflow, and all your other settings
• Audit logs (i.e. what changes have been made to records)

So if a backup has to be restored for any reason, you don’t lose the configuration that makes the system unique to your business.

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How long are these stored?

Every single nightly backup is stored for seven days. This means that, if you make a mistake on Monday and don’t discover it until Friday, there is a copy of your system available before the mistake was made.

Which we could then restore either the whole system or just the area of the system where the mistake was made.

If you need us to restore a backup of your system, please get in touch with your account manager.

The weekly and monthly backups, on the other hand, are stored for at least six months. So if you don’t discover that mistake until halfway through a month, you will still be able to retrieve the data. 

Right to be Forgotten and restoring a backup

There are many important things to think about when you restore a backup. But one of the biggest is what happens with any automation you have set up.

Any records that match the triggers in your workflow or other automations will be run as normal. Either overnight or on saving a record.

But what about those records relating to individuals who have made a Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) request?

Well, in OpenCRM, if you use the tools outlined in this FAQ, all of your RTBF rules are run on your backup BEFORE any of your users can access the system.

This means that you don’t accidentally gain access to records that you shouldn’t. 

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It’s a kind of backup

In addition to the different backups of your system, we also run real time mirrors of our servers. Two of them, fact. One of which is in totally a separate data centre.

This is more about the resilience of our infrastructure than a true backup.

But in the (incredibly) unlikely event that something happened with our primary servers, we can keep OpenCRM running for all of our users.