Sage HRMS

Sage Abra Suite - Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery

In the light of recent weather events, please follow these steps to restore your Sage Abra Suite program and data if it becomes necessary to work from a new location for a period of time.

• Perform a new installation of the software
• Apply the most recent updates available on the Sage Customer Portal https://customers.sagenorthamerica.com
• Restore Live Data for Sage Abra Suite and the SQL databases for Employee Self Service

• Employee Self Service serial number and installation code can be found on the System Maintenance tab in the lower right hand corner
• Sage Abra Suite serial number and installation code can be found by opening the Reginfo.ini file stored in the Data folder
• Sage Abra Suite serial number and installation code can also found on the Customer Portal from the menu bar click Products, Details

Backing up Sage Abra Suite

Sage strongly recommends full external backups of the \AbraSuite\DATA folder (v9.x and higher) be performed nightly and retained for at least three months. Note: If your Live Data resides in a different location you would back up that folder also.

The external backup may be done, by burning a copy of the data to a CD or DVD, by copying it to a tape drive or, copying to another area on a local drive, network drive, or an external drive

Incremental backups are not recommended due to the difficulty with restoration. In most cases, Sage Abra Suite data is changing every day or several times a week. If an incremental backup of the Abra databases were performed, the latest full back up must be restored first. Following this, each day's incremental backup should be restored until the data reaches the desired point.

These time periods may vary on a case by case basis, but please note that in the event of a system failure these backups may be the only source of data. If a backup of the currently installed version does not exist, it may be necessary to either reregister or uninstall and reinstall Abra from the network to get to the correct version installed as restored data must be the same version as the installed application.

NOTE: The procedure to create an internal backup will not result in a full copy of the data folder. In addition, when an internal backup is created it will overwrite the previous backup. Only one internal backup is available for restoration at any given time.

Backing up Sage Employee Self Service

1. From the Sage HRMS desktop, select "Employee Self Service" icon on the toolbar. It will present a drop down box that allows the user to select "Backup and Restore". If this is not available to the user, check the "User" and "Group Security" in Sage Abra Suite to make sure that it is accessible. This will launch another web page that allows the user to Lock Employee Self Service prior to initializing a backup. Follow the directions located on the page to complete the backup procedure.
2. A backup can also be done in the System Maintenance utility for Employee Self Service. On the first tab, lock the program from users. On the second tab, follow the instructions on how to perform the backup procedure for the data. Once the backup is complete, unlock users on the first tab.
3. It is also possible to perform Backups through Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio by the SQL Administrator.

The backups by default are saved to the SQL folder on the server that contains the SQL databases, in a folder called Backup. If they cannot be found there, verify that the path was not changed in the System Maintenance utility

For Business Continuity\Disaster Recovery a new installation of the software can be performed and the Data folder for Sage Abra Suite and the SQL databases for Employee Self Service can be restored.

The Serial number and installation code for Employee Self Service can be found on the System Maintenance Configuration and Settings tab.

The Serial number and installation code for Sage Abra Suite can be found in the Reginfo.ini file stored in the Data folder.