MDR: Backup Procedures

MDR Capture, MDR Backup and Report Generator Backup Instructions

The Infinity MDR program keeps track of all the statistics for your call center, making it possible to bill clients for all the work you do for each of your clients.

The MDR Capture program writes information to two Microsoft Access database files (default paths of C:Program FilesMDR CaptureMDR.MDB and C:Program FilesMDR CaptureCTE.MDB). These two files are accessed by the Report Generator program to create reports. Therefore, it is crucial to have a current backup copy of each of these files in case something occurred with the MDR computer.

There are a number of ways that this can be accomplished. The best approach is to have a second computer running an on-line MDR Capture program. Each MDR Capture program on the network runs independently and writes information to its own database file. If something did occur with one of the database files, the missing information or the entire database can be copied from the second MDR database to rebuild the first MDR database.

In addition to this, you should also have the MDR Backup program installed on at least one of the MDR computers. This program creates an exact copy of both databases on a nightly basis. This program should be configured to write the backup files to another drive, preferably a network drive if available. The daily and weekly options determine which files the Backup program creates. Daily creates DAILY.MDB and CTEDAILY.MDB for each day selected, and overwrites the previous day's backup files. Weekly creates a day-named file and overwrites itself on a weekly basis. The minimum recommended configuration is to select daily for all but one day of the week and weekly for the remaining day (on that day it will create a weekly file and will not overwrite the daily.mdb).

Backing up the MDB files to tape using a third-party backup utility is another method of safe guarding the MDB files. However since the database files are always open, depending upon the abilities of the backup utility, it may skip over the database files, or worse, may close them in order to back the files up, which usually results in a broken database file that needs to be repaired using Access. 

A great way to use a third-party backup utility is to combine the backup utility and the MDR Backup program. Configure the MDR Backup program to write a daily backup to a drive that would be backed up using the third-party software. These two backup actions would need to be scheduled at separate times in order to ensure that the MDR Backup had completed prior to the tape backup initiating.

The other MDR files that should be backed up are the data copy files that have been created using the Report Generator's Data Copy utility. These files are databases that have been created while doing the Purge/Compact routine and are typically named using a date scheme to identify the date range that exists in the database file (example C:My Documents10102-030102.MDB). They contain older information that has been purged out of the original MDR and CTE databases to decrease the file sizes. These could be copied to a network drive, a backup tape, or CD-ROM, although they may need to be restored to a hard drive if you ever need to access the information.