Way to Backup My Records
According to customer support, there is no way to get a data dump of my records. A simple csv file or excel file, or even a sql dump seems like a very easy thing to provide and it is the MAJOR REASON that I have not fully utilized your software and plan on going in-house, Copy and paste does not cut it. Requiring me to do that to protect myself in case of you losing my data is crazy.
What I personally would like would be able to schedule an automatic weekly download of all my information in a usable format initiated from my system as an ftp request through a script. Just give me a file name and address and it is done. No one does manual backups anymore. I do not even require the csv format like your typical user could utilize.
The software would be just what I need right now with that exception. Has there been anything done yet in that direction? and if so, what is the eta for the functionality that allows me that peace of mind? I know you have hosting fees and bandwith considerations, and everything seems to make a difference. However per your story page you know what it feels like to be hit with a big fine for not having what you needed because of a computer malfunction.
Does anyone else see the need for a backup? If I start putting everything in I am kind of stuck with you whether I want to be or not because you have my data and I need that for compliance. It feels like a hostage situation.
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Hi David - I'm one of the developers working on TruckingOffice.
You are not the first person to ask about it, but I think you summed up the situation the best so I wanted to make sure you got a response.
First - let me say that we think of it as your data. There are a lot of companies on the internet that don't look at it that way, but we aren't one of them. It is not our goal to hold you or your data hostage.
At the moment, we are in the middle of a large overhaul of the systems that run TruckingOffice. This has prevented us from making progress on this issue because how we store the data itself is about to change dramatically. It is currently in testing and we are hoping to start rolling it out in the next two months.
Once the switch over happens the goal of giving you your data is very high on our list. We have struggled in the past to find the best way to give you your data in a "usable" form - which is why dumping to CSV comes up - since almost everyone is familiar with that format. You mentioned a SQL dump - that is very technically specific and I'm not sure most of our customers would know what to do with it if we were handing it out. This is made more complex because we are starting to mix in non-sql data stores into the system. So we would most likely produce a set of de-normalized CSV files which would contain all your data. Your point about automating it from an FTP is one way - though I would tend to favor syncing it to a third party storage like Google Drive or Dropbox.
The other option we had on the table for consideration is a "Read Only" Account. When you cancel your account right now - we delete your account after a certain period of time. We could offer you the option to keep your data in the system - so you could refer to it but you would no longer be able to edit it. This would allow more customers access to their data and make it easy in the event you are audited. Would that be something you are interested in - or just the data dump?
I know this doesn't solve your problem right now, but I wanted to be clear that this is very much on our mind. In the event that you decide to go forward with us - I'd love to discuss more how you want your data - so we can give it to you in a way that allows it to be a long term storage separate from us.
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Thanks for addressing my comments/request
I see two potential uses of my data. First, should I want to run any kind of numbers other than the ones that are already presented in Trucking Office, I would need to load all of that info into a spreadsheet. This more than likely would result in "material" form in a csv dump or other excel friendly file. There should be a csv or equivalent file for every list in the system comprising of info that I put in or that was generated from my data. In addition to this, a key complement would be that I may restore my data if it was ever lost.
Secondly, in the event that I no longer was using trucking office, I need a simple way to let nosy government intruders access my old data. For that, any easy to browse and see format would work. Ideally a static version of the trucking office site incorporating my data would seem the perfect solution from the consumer side. Have it populate the records as if it were being viewed and package all of that into a zip file to be downloaded. It would seem that a web crawler application might could do that with minimal development time. Just unzip and click on index. or default.html and it is accessible in your browser. Depending on the volume of records, this process might require a good bit of processing time.
The other issue is access. The reason that I mentioned ftp is that it can be automated. I can create a script to go and get my file without having to manually download each part of trucking office or visit it in any way. Backup should be automatic. A second idea would be an automatic backup program. This would be more likely to be utilized but also adds another TSR program to the user's computer start-up program list. The geek would by far rather have the ftp. The development of these two options might not be too bad, these are pretty common. The impact of these changes adds bandwidth use and costs processing time. Be that as it may, these features are essential, and reducing their impact is the way to go as opposed to not providing these features.
You mentioned google drive or dropbox. Since I have my own hosting, I do not use these services. There are a lot of people that do. Integration with these services would be great. I see it as just another program running at startup, and I keep those to a minimum, so a non-TSR option would also be helpful. (TSR just means terminate and stay resident, it is simply a program that runs all of the time in the backgroud consuming resources. Really as resources have gotten so cheap it is almost become a non-issue but the change from scarcity to abundance in this area takes effort I have not fully committed to yet.)
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A read-only account would work too from an auditor standpoint, but that requires you to keep it on your system for up to 7 years I think in some cases. This seems impractical from a storage standpoint but storage has become cheaper and that may not be too bad.
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Ok I'll be looking into both options - 1. That there is data you want to manipulate outside of TruckingOffice. 2. That you want to have a safe copy of your data for the long term in the event you leave us or we have problems and can no longer serve up your data.
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Hi guys
We are new here and I see 3+ years have expired since this discussion.
Is there any change since then - is our data available for backup to our own local hard drives?
Thanks
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Hello,
All of the reports on the right side of the dashboard page are able to be exported to a spreadsheet or printed.
We also have an Export feature on the Pro version where you can export addresses, customers, vendors, and loads to a spreadsheet.
If you have any other questions, please feel free to give us a call at 1(800)253-9647. We are here Monday-Friday from 9AM-5PM eastern time. Have a great day!
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