Backups

Taking a complete copy of your workspace, encrypting it, keeping copies in storage you control, and putting one back.

The Backups page

The Backups page opens with the promise that you can download a complete copy of your organisation's data at any time, and it tells you when your data was last backed up automatically.

Screenshot: the Backups page listing recent copies with their status.

Creating a backup

If your role may download backups, you also see a Create backup now button. A manual backup is capped per day, so it is not a button to lean on. Backups also run on a schedule of their own, without anyone asking.

A backup is Pending while it runs, and then either Success or Failed. The kinds you will see are Scheduled, Manual, a safety copy taken automatically before a restore, and an offboarding copy.

Downloading a copy

Each successful row has a Download button. It asks whether you want an encrypted archive, using AES 256 with a password you choose, which is recommended, or a plain one.

The password is used to write the archive and is never stored. You can open the archive with ordinary tools and without CommonLynk, which is the point; it also means that CommonLynk cannot open it for you and cannot recover a lost password.

The archive is assembled when you ask for it, so there is a short wait. The ready copy stays available for a few days and then expires, and you simply build another.

Every administrator on the account is emailed when a backup is created and when one is downloaded. That is deliberate: taking a copy of everything a workspace holds should never be a quiet act.

The schedule, and how long copies are kept

Settings on the same page choose daily, weekly, monthly or a custom day.

Copies are kept as a set of recent daily, weekly and monthly ones, plus a number of manual ones. When a copy ages out its files are removed and the row remains, marked as no longer downloadable, so your history stays readable. There is no button to delete a backup yourself.

A copy in your own storage

Backup settings can also send every new backup to storage you control: S3 compatible storage, Google Drive, Dropbox or OneDrive. You connect the destination yourself from that page, and set the passphrase the copies are encrypted with.

This is part of the higher plan. On a plan without it the section is still visible, with its controls switched off and a note about upgrading.

Restoring

Restoring is a separate permission from downloading, and deliberately so: being able to take a copy away does not let you write one back.

From a successful backup you can restore your workspace. A restore can be undone within a stated deadline, which is shown on the page for as long as it is still possible. There is also a targeted restore, which puts back a single module or a single record rather than everything.