Web+Center Version 9.0 upgrades and recommended backup procedures and restore methods

Tech-Talk from Internet Software Sciences President Scott Vanderlip

Have some piece of mind knowing that you are properly backing up your Web+Center application in the event of a system crash.

Overview
The Web+Center Help Desk Application is a web-based, database-driven application. Certainly the most VALUABLE part of your Help Desk application is the data and information you have put into the Web+Center and is in the database itself. This value grows as you enter more and more solved support cases and customer information into the database. That can be used as a resource for knowledge based searches, asset inventory notes or customer sales leads or even critical business invoice information. You can always download a fresh version of the software if a re-installation is required but the data you put into the application can not be restored unless you have properly backed up the database and application folder. Proper regularly scheduled backing up of the Web+Center database is critical to restoring your data and application in the event of a disk or machine failure.  Unless you are using our Cloud based services, you must perform your own backups since we can not access your systems.

Version 9.0 Upgrades –
Version 9.0 is now production and we are now offering free version upgrades for licensed users with support contracts.  If you are running a free version, you can obtain a version upgrade kit with instructions and scripts once you purchase a minimum of a (3) tech license and annual support,.  Please contact Internet Software Sciences if you have questions about your upgrade options.
Lead your organization and company into the world of easily connected mobile apps, HTML 5 with Web+Center and your help desk without having to jump to another vendor.

Recommended Application backup procedures
The Web+Center application consists of two primary components. The first component is the Web+Center application code. It consists of ASP- Active Server Page modules, “include” files, graphics and some configuration files. All of these files can be found in the folder and sub folders typically installed under

c:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Software Sciences\Web+Center 9.0\…

This file structure should be backed up fairly regularly, especially if you are making customizations to the Web+Center ASP code. If you are storing  attached files for cases in a directory outside of the Web+Center folder, that folder should also be backed up. Attached files to cases are NOT stored in the database but stored in the physical file structure.

The Second component is the Web+Center database. For Microsoft Access database users, the database will be the webcenter80.mdb file located in the database subdirectory and will be backed up as part of your folder backup if you are properly backing up the entire Web+Center folder. If you are running SQL*Server as your backend server database, you must separately backup the webcenter80 database using SQL*Server database backup tools at regularly scheduled intervals. We highly recommend you do a test restore of a webcenter database backup to confirm that the backup is grabbing the production database, and the full data set (data, indexes, keys, etc). There are SQL  backup options that give more limited backups that will not work for a full database restore.
Important: If you have performed a Web+Center version database migrations sometime in the past, be sure that the database you are backing up is the database that you are using for your Web+Center application via the specified database DSN. It may be possible that the SQL or Access database that you are using is an upgraded webcenter50, or webcenter60, webcenter70 version so verify that you are backing up the correct SQL or Access database.

We recommend you backup your database daily and you should backup your application file directory tree probably weekly or every few weeks. We get calls all the time from Web+Center users who experienced hard-disk crashes on their web server or had their files wiped out through errant software or procedures. They then inquire as what utilities we have for database recovery and we have to sadly inform them that users are responsible for their own application and database backups.

Web+Center application Migration to a new server from backups
The Web+Center application is an easy application to migrate or duplicate on a test server.

The basic steps to migrating your Web+Center from one machine to another are outlined below. For more complete details on some of the installation steps listed below, please refer to the Web+Center installation guide on our Internet Software Sciences documentation page that is appropriate for your OS.

• Copy all of the Web+Center files to another machine. To be consistent, the files are typically installed under:
  c:\Program Files (x86)\Internet Software Sciences\Web+Center 9.0\…
• Re-create the Web+Center web virtual/application directories consisting of tech80, customer80,  language80, etc  using IIS (Internet Information Server).
• If you are using SQL*Server as the backend database, it must be backed-up and restored on the new server if you want to migrate it to a new server. An Access databases is just one file (webcenter80.mdb) located in the database sub directory of the Web+center 8.0 folder and it will be copied with all of the other files automatically when you copy the webcenter files.
• Re-create the Web+Center ODBC DSN (webcenter80_db) on the new machine. For complete ODBC DSN configuration steps, please refer to the installation guide.
• It will probably be necessary to re-register the ASP mailer dll called AOSMTP.dll located in the ASPMailer directory. To register this DLL, run the command “REGSVR32 aosmpt.dll” inside of the ASPMailer directory within a DOS command prompt window. You must first navigate to the directory or specify the path of the dll for it to be successfully registered.  Our online FAQ can provide additional help with configing the ASP mailer DLL/
• The file security permissions for the Web+Center 8.0 folder and all sub folders must be set for Everyone (Full Control) and no other users. You must break inheritance from any directories above the Web+Center folder, especially if you are in the Program Files folder where inherited permissions are often set for child folders. A complete system reboot is required once file permissions have been applied to completely set all of the “Access control lists” required for proper operation.
• Always verify the operation of the new Web+Center before switching users or deleting any code or databases.
• When you ran the original webcenter80.exe installation executable, it did place some minimal information into the registry which is used when doing un-installs but these registry settings are not required for the web+center operation and re-installing from original webcenter80.exe executable is not necessary.
• If you have questions, please contact the Internet Software Sciences support center by reviewing numerous support options on  their web-based support site or call their support center at Toll Free (888) 949-0942 or (650) 949-0942. (California, USA)

Sincerely,