Backup Strategy
Answered
What is the recommended backup strategy for an organization / Employee Network? It looks like the only way to backup is to export the app items to Excel, one app at a time, and then you lose the conversation (comments).
Is there a way to use the API to loop through all apps in a company and export the data on a nightly basis? Has anyone written sharable code for this, or what do you suggest for an automated backup solution?
We Love Podio, thanks!!
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Official comment
Hey guys,
We already do back up data on our end, all data is backed up nightly in separate hosted location.
To back-up your data we currently enable you to export all your app data into excel. In this way you can copy the exact data you need.
All your data are programmatically accessible via the Podio API: https://developers.podio.com/ If you can not use the API in house, we can advice on finding a developer to do it for you.
Our partners provide back-up via the API, I recommend to check these extensions on Back-up for Podio:
Our Partner Momentum: https://momentumtools.io/
Our Partner Phases: https://backupod.com/
Cheers,
Sara - Podio
Comment actions -
Hi Greg and Doug,
The best way to get everything out is via the API. We don't offer comments on Excel export right now as it's always two way and there would be now way to restore them.
As long as you haven't specifically deleted content, it's always there in the space, so you can go back in time. If you have deleted content, we will keep it as deleted, but available via the API for a grace period of 3 months, after which it will be erased.
We may offer a full backup solution in future, based on demand.
Hope this helps.
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Thanks Phil! I'd love to see a white paper on backup and restore, or best practices for accomplishing. We LOVE what you have, and it is flexible enough to be the operating system for our company. I just feels uneasy running everything on a platform without a function to easily backup and restore items, apps, workspaces, etc.
Don't get me wrong, we are still using Podio as it is the best thing I've ever seen! We would just love to see backup and restore, and more robust permissions. I understand the complexity you mention with comments, and I am sure restoring items is tricky as well. Thanks, and good luck!
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I found a python script that someone has created and posted on an old Google Group to dump all data from the API into a directory structure. https://gist.github.com/1112229
After testing this it doesn't seem to pull all of our records, for example one app has 281 records and it only pulls 19 of them. I'm a Python noob so I'm not really able to debug it, but it _looks _like it should be working fine.
Has anyone else used this, had any luck with it, or have any suggestions for improvements?
Thanks.
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Thanks Phil! This would be our demand: We want to export and manage all of our account's, Employee Network's, workspaces’ and apps' data according our company’s policies. We need to schedule daily or weekly data exports (backups) for legal and regulatory compliance. Without a reliable backup solution we cannot move on to fully integrate and rely on Podio in our workstream yet.
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I would definitely think either offering built-in backups or talking to someone like Backupify.com to make this more enterprise friendly. Backups are critical and if they can't be automated, they are not reliable or feasible in my opinion. Is there a place we're supposed to vote on issues?
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When I started this post I had a feeling others were in the same boat! I wish there was some way we could get connected with someone who has built a backup system using the API. I would gladly pay to use a solution someone has built, or for someone to build one for us. Any suggestions to assist us with an interim solution would be much appreciated! Still loving Podio despite the risk. The thing that scares me the most are To Dos, as we cannot export them and are starting to rely heavily on them. Thanks!
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Definitely, I think too any professional user needs a reliable backup mechanism.
To backup the files stored in podio repository, it could be nice to have an option to synch podio file repository with a local user folder, in order to keep it under a local backup policy. Or to allow administrator to force users to use ONLY an external file synch service like dropbox gdocs sugarsync, under the administrator control. -
I agree with what has been said. Critical to enterprise adoption of Podio (and it's coming as more companies look to the cloud for infrastructure), is a solid backup strategy. In lieu of, it would be nice for someone at Podio to explain their own server backup strategies. So, perhaps can the Podio CTO talk to how they have tried to build a robust (how many 9's?) infrastructure and what their fail-over scenario looks like?
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Please Podio listen to your users, Backup is essential, I am not pouring hours of my time and all related business docs & transactions into podio without backup, Love the product but it still feels a let down based on the backup /sync feature. Any Ideas of a timeframe?
Keep up the good work
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Hi All,
Would be great to get a discussion going about what an acceptable (for you!) backup solution looks like.
Things that are workable conceptually:
Export all files to a corresponding folder hierarchy in Dropbox/Google Drive etc
Export all apps as XLS to the same structure
Challenges:
There is no concept of a super-admin in Podio. The backup has to run as a user, so if you are not in the workspace, you do not have access to the data to backup. Is that an issue for people? This is obviously also by design and is a security feature.
Comment history does not map neatly into XLS/CSV in terms of importing it back in.
Are you generally just looking for a fail-safe or are you expecting the type of backup you could restore your Podio account to a point in time? The former could be mostly cover, the latter would have to be handled "in-product" most probably.
Just to talk a little bit about our internal backup strategy. We have two main types of storage: the database and the file storage.
Database: master/mutliple slave config, with off-site slave too. Full backup nightly, stored in multiple locations, hourly incremental backups.
File storage: we're using Amazon S3 for file storage, and replicating to Google. They claim 99.999999999 durability on files, but we've replicated it just the same.
On versioning:
Many objects in Podio are versioned, and some of that is exposed in the frontend (e.g. edit history on items). You can restore item versions from the frontend, and you can get at all (even deleted) objects from the API up to 3 months from the data of deletion. After that time, they will be deleted permanently.
Cheers,
Phil
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