MLS Backup - Again?

[ffrsqpilot]

Previously with the transition to CUBs there was a discussion about not getting the standard "Backup MLS" message popup after doing any financial business. Some felt it was an omission (bug?) in the system that would be fixed in a future update. Others felt that it was intentionally omitted with the transition. Not sure it was ever resolved on this fourm. However - ( there is always a however)!:D

During one of my calls to LUS I asked about the backup feature and if we needed to continue doing a back up after financial actions and the answer I was given was "No, backups are no longer required as what MLS shows is what the Church computers show in real time". So being the good follower that I try to be, I stopped doing any backups. However - (another one of those silly howevers)

This past Sunday was that first time that I was on the computer in about a week and upon starting MLS I saw the "You have at least one Urgent Task....." message. I clicked on the Urgent Task button and low and behold one of the tasks was the message that I hadn't backed up MLS recently.

Thus - do we or don't we need to be doing backups? Or are we doing backups for the membership portion of MLS that wasn't affected by CUBs, or is this a reminder to do backups till the "bug" is fixed? Anyone know?

[aebrown]

Thus - do we or don't we need to be doing backups? Or are we doing backups for the membership portion of MLS that wasn't affected by CUBs, or is this a reminder to do backups till the "bug" is fixed? Anyone know?

I don't really care if anyone says that backups are no longer required. I will continue to make them. In the event of a hard drive crash, there is far more to be lost than just the financial information that is transmitted to CHQ. Even if CHQ has the ability to restore a large portion of what is in MLS, they certainly can't restore all of it. They don't have my custom reports, or custom member fields, for starters. And even if CHQ can help me restore lost data, they certainly can't do it as fast as I can from a backup.

That said, I don't know what will happen to MLS in this regard. I wish there were more frequent reminders. They're not very annoying, and as I explained above, I consider backups to be useful, so I appreciate the reminder.

[crislapi]

I also still backup at least once a week. In addition to the reasons Alan_Brown gave, I would add that CHQ also does not record my sub-subcategories in any financial field. They will only store financial information at the sub-category level (the default categories they sent down w/ conversion that we cannot edit). If it's one thing we are all acutely aware of with the conversion to CUBS it is how annoying it is to lose that detailed expense/budget information.

Next year my entire stake is expected to receive new computers. I would prefer to restore from a backup instead of through CHQ's records.

[crislapi]

I noticed today that one of my units running 3.3.0 b7 received a pop-up today when logging out that forced them to backup because changes had been made to the finances. My units on 3.2.4 did not have this, but since we're all transitioning to 3.3 in January anyway, I consider this feature as having been put back in.