Back up your site (lock and clone)

Before each day’s tasks, you should take a backup of the current site. The backup provides a restoration point if you need it later in the day.

Why backups are important

A backup creates a complete copy of your site at a specific point in time. This snapshot protects your work against unexpected issues by giving you a reliable restore point. It also allows you to test alternative scenarios without affecting the live planning environment. Taking a backup before making significant changes is a best practice for maintaining data integrity and reducing risk.

Prerequisite

You must have a site to work on.

If you need a site, refer to Prepare A New Site for information about setting up sites.

How to back up a site

To back up the scenario

  1. Open Config.

  2. Locate the tile of the site you’re going to work on.

  3. On the tile, click Edit.

  4. Click Clone Site.

  5. Enter a meaningful name for the backed up site.

    It’s best to follow a naming convention, such as Backup <dd-mm-yy> (for example, this could create Backup 30-03-28).

  6. Click Clone.

    The software clones the site, which may take a while. In the meantime, you can continue working.

  7. After the site is cloned, lock the cloned site by clicking Lock Site on its tile

    This prevents additional server load.

About backups

Backing up (cloning) a site creates a fully self-contained copy of the original site, including all associated data and configuration settings. This is useful for testing changes, running alternative scenarios, or preserving a snapshot of a site at a specific point in time.

Clone a site

To clone a site, click Clone Site. The system will begin creating a duplicate of the selected site.

During the cloning process, the original site remains fully operational. For example, if you're cloning a site named KSGM, the new site (e.g., KSGM (2)) will be created in the background while KSGM continues to function normally.

Cloning status and availability

While a site is being cloned, the new site is temporarily unavailable. Once the cloning process is complete, the cloned site will appear in a Ready state, meaning it’s stopped by default and not yet active.

If you don’t see the cloned site in your list, check that the Active Site filter is not applied. Since cloned sites are initially inactive, they may be hidden by this filter.

About locking a site

The Lock Site option prevents further changes to a site’s configuration or schedule. This is useful for preserving a specific site state during critical planning or review phases.

Locking a site also prevents additional server load, ensuring additional resources aren’t being used to retrieve data feeds until the scenario is required.

Lock a site

To lock a site, click Lock Site. This action immediately applies the lock and updates the site’s status across all open instances.

Click Lock Site again to unlock the site.

Lock status and visibility

Once a site is locked:

Any user can lock or unlock a site.

Snapshot

When a site is locked, the software takes a snapshot of the current global configuration settings. These settings remain in effect while the site is locked. Once the site is unlocked, the most recent global configuration settings are reapplied.

What you can do in a locked site

Although configuration and scheduling changes are restricted, several actions remain available: