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Time Recording: Backup & Restore
(1) Intro
• The app natively supports Google Drive and Dropbox. For other cloud providers see here.
• More infos on "Restore / Local backup" see here.
• In addition to our custom backup solution, Time Recording has the standard "Android Backup Agent" enabled,
making it part of the system wide app and data backup.
However, even though this has been added to the Android framework many years ago, in our experience it still does not work reliably. Issues we've seen:
on some phone brands it fails silently, "restore" might pick up an outdated backup, it's not possible to perform on-demand backup and restore, and more.
This is why we strongly suggest you use the app's custom "Backup and restore" solution.
• Do not confuse "Backup and Restore" with "Reports":
- Backup/Restore is used for keeping your data safe, and for data recovery on a replacement phone in case of phone loss. Backup files cannot be opened outside of the app.
- If you want to pull your timesheet (e.g. in Excel spreadsheet format) use "Reports" instead.
(2) Backup to Google Drive or Dropbox
• "Create backup" copies all your Time Recording app data and settings to your Cloud provider (Google Drive or Dropbox). You'll need this backup file when moving to a new phone, or for data recovery after factory reset.
• We strongly recommend you enable "Auto backup" if you regularly use Time Recording - if your phone gets lost or stolen, having a recent Cloud backup is the only way to recover your data.
• Note regarding Dropbox: for historic reason, the app requires full read/write access to your Dropbox. If this is a concern to you then use Google Drive instead, where the app has "own files only" restricted access.
(3) Restore
• Restore will download the latest backup file from your Cloud account, then copy over all data and settings from that backup file into the app.
• Note all previously existing data within the app gets overwritten. I.e. when moving to a new phone, make sure you recover your data *before* adding new entries.
(4) Restore if you have file "timerec.db.gz" available
See this page
(5) Partial restore
"Restore" replaces all existing data.
If you rather want to merge partial data from the backup into your existing data, then use "Import".
Using this mode will recover time stamps and day notes for the given date range.
(6) Backup to "External storage"
Be careful when using "Backup | External storage":
backup files that you store on the internal device storage or on the internal non-removable SD card are lost unrecoverably
• if the device gets lost or stolen.
• if the device is fatally damaged and doesn't let you log in anymore.
• when you perform a "factory reset".
Options to avoid this:
• Save the backup file to an off-device "external storage" location (see "ownCloud" example).
• Use the built-in Google Drive or Dropbox backup targets.
• Set up your own off-device backup solution (e.g. sync the "external storage" folder with a cloud provider 3rd party app, swap removable SD cards, or similar).
