You are here: Chapter 10: Database Administration > Database Maintenance > Archiving data from the current project

Archiving Data from the Current Project

The archive function removes issues that meet specified search criteria in the source Project, copies those issues to the archive Project that you specify, and then removes those issues from the Project's issue table.

  1. Select Administration | System | Projects, then click the   GO button in the Database Maintenance section.
  2. Select the Archive option as the Action to Take.
  3. The Status and Date Criteria of Applicable Issues section allows you to define the selection criteria for Purge.  This can be based on either the Issue’s current status, the date it was last edited/created, or a combination of both. 
  1. By default, only the Deletedstatus is highlighted. 
  2. Highlight additional statuses as needed. 
  3. Choose issues based on one specific date that they were created or last edited or choose all issues before or after a particular date. 
  4. Choose AND to select issues that must meet both the status and date criteria
  5. Choose OR to select issues that meet either the status or the date criteria.

Tip

Set up an escalation rule that automatically changes the status of closed issues to Deleted for issues that are a certain age.  Then you can skip this step and just use the default highlighted status of Deleted. 

  1. Type in your password and click  GO.
  2. Matching Issues For Purge—All issues that meet the Purge search criteria are listed here and highlighted.  Review the list to ensure you are purging issues that meet your intended criteria.  You can deselect issues by holding the CTRL key and left clicking the issue with your mouse.  Only highlighted issues are purged.
  3. SQL Query—FootPrints displays the query that was used to retrieve the issues that have met the archive search criteria for your review.
  4. Archive Location—Each “source” Project has a designated “destination” archive project.  The first time you archive Issues, you must provide a name for the archive Project.
  1. Name of new archive project—The first time you archive Issues from a given Project, you must set up some archive Project information.  Give your archive Project a name.  It is suggested that you use a name that is similar to the original Project for your archive Project, but not too similar.  If your Project’s name is Helpdesk try using Archived Helpdesk instead of Helpdesk (Archive).  This tells you which Project is archived, but does not confuse people by starting with the same name. 
  2. Name of new project’s address book—You can choose to create a new Address Book for the archive Project or link to the existing one.  You must provide a Project name if you are creating a new one.  If linking to an existing Project, check the Link to current project's address book instead box if you do not want to create and archive the Address Book.  We suggest you link to the original. 
  3. All subsequent archive attempts from the same Project present an option to use the same archive Project or create a new one.  Your business needs determine whether you want one or multiple archive Projects for a single source Project.  If you are reporting on data by year, you might consider creating separate archive Projects for each year, especially if you have many issues to archive that you use for reporting.
  1. Scheduled Run-Time—Archive jobs can be run immediately or at a time when server activity is light (if you have a large job with many issues to archive).
  1. Start Immediately—Run immediately.  Immediately means the archive begins the next time the FootPrints scheduled service runs, which could be up to one minute from the time you enter your password and click  GO. 
  2. Start at the following data and time—Enter the date and time you want to run the job.  Since the entire process could take a long time to finish, depending on the number of records selected, you may want to schedule large jobs when there is little server activity to avoid server overload, e.g., on weekends or late at night.
  1. Scheduled Jobs Pending In Current Project—This section lists those jobs scheduled to run in the future, as configured in the previous step.
  2. Type in your password and click  GO.  After clicking the  GO button, click OK when asked to confirm that you want to complete the purge.  After clicking OK, FootPrints schedules the purge to run as a background process based on the time set up in the Scheduled Run-Time step.  This include jobs scheduled to run immediately.
  3. When the purge runs, FootPrints generates a dump (.dmp) file for any Issues removed so that they can be easily restored.  FootPrints saves this file in the Project’s directory on the server.  For example, Project #1’s recovery files are stored in the footprints\db\MASTER1\MR\DumpsFromPurgesdirectory.