Please Note:

Any bookings that have an outstanding balance will not be removed during this archive process. They will be placed into an Archived Status and will continue to count towards your booking limit.

Taking a "Data Snapshot"

To make the Data Snapshot, select open the Utilities pull-down Menu from within Maintain, and select "Create Data Archive Data Set" from the list.  This opens the Company Archive form (fig 1).  All you need to do now is enter a folder name for the location on your server where the data tables will be stored, plus give the data set a name - this is the name which will be seen on the main t28 shell window - and select a colour for the background.  Use these features wisely to clearly distinguish the snapshot from a live data set to avoid any operator confusion.  It's even a good idea to select a wholly inappropriate colour for the background to make sure no users mistake it for the live data set!

Fig 1

Taking a Data Snapshot prior to archiving

Once the form is complete, click Make and t28 will make a copy of the live dataset into the archive folder plus it will enter the data set into the Company Selection list but only on your current workstation.  If other users need access to archived data sets, they will need to be entered manually into the Select Company list.

When the process is complete, close all open t28 forms and select Open Company from the FILE pull-down menu and double click on the newly created entry and satisfy yourself that it is a complete replica of the live dataset.  You can then return to the true LIVE dataset and resume the Archiving process.

Removing Finished Tours

Before you even contemplate removing completed tours, ensure that you have taken a full backup of your tours data for PERMANENT storage and that you have printed out all the reports you are likely to require for the period you intend to archive. A Data Snapshot helps here in that if anything reports have been missed, all is not lost.

It is essential that any unpaid balances are collected and allocated, and that any outstanding refunds have been processed.  All bookings with a non-zero balance will be retained by the system and will show up on debtor reports, but it is still good practice to ensure that they are all cleared before archiving commences.

From the Maintain Toolbar (fig 2) click the Archive Button to open the Archive Completed Tours window (fig 3).

fig 2

fig 3

The first step is to enter the date range for archiving - this is done to help prevent accidental removal of tours, which have not yet departed.  (You can still choose to remove tours, which may have been incorrectly loaded!)

Next you will need to select in turn each tour in the Tours on System browser and click the > button to copy it to the list on the right.  Use the >> button to copy over all the tours in the selected date range.

Once all the required tour have been copied, and after thoroughly checking your work, click the large Start Archiving button. t28 will then prepare each tour for deletion from the system.  At this point, no data has been purged and it is possible to reverse the process on a tour by tour basis.

To finally purge the data files of all unwanted records, and reduce them in size, you should use the File Re-Index utility (fig 4) accessed from Maintain --> Tools drop down menu --> File Re-Index.   Ensure that all other users are completely out of t28 (and remain so until the process is completed) check the Pack Files box and click the Do All button.

fig 4

Please Note:

Any bookings that have an outstanding balance will not be removed during this archive process. They will be placed into an Archived Status and will continue to count towards your booking limit.