Data and help

Your data and backups

Where your data is kept, how it's backed up, and how to move it.

The desktop app

• Your data lives outside the app, so updating or reinstalling never touches it.
• Before a new version changes the database an older one made, it copies it to data/backups/before-upgrade-….db in that folder, next to the database itself, data/biomanager.db (the last ten are kept). Every release is tested opening a lab made by each earlier release, with nothing lost.
• Back that folder up with Time Machine or File History, copying it while BioManager is closed.

A lab server

A server backs up every night, restores the newest backup every week to prove it works, and can keep encrypted copies off-site — see Keeping the data safe.

A copy of the lab on your computer

The desktop app can keep a copy of your lab server's whole database, so the lab's records live on more than one machine:

1. On the server: Settings → Copies of the lab on your computers, name the computer and Make a key. Copy the key; it's shown once. (Admins always may; members when Lab setup allows it.)
2. On that computer, in the desktop app: Settings → Keep a copy of your lab server. Enter the server's address and the key, and Save and copy now.
3. From then on, while the app is open, it takes a fresh copy every day, checks it, keeps the last 14 and mirrors uploaded files. The card shows when the last copy was made; on the server, the list shows every computer and how fresh its copy is. Revoke stops a computer (a lost laptop, say) from taking more.

The copies sit beside the app's own data, which they never touch. An admin's copy is the whole lab, and can rebuild the server if it's ever lost (how): treat a computer holding one like the server itself. A member's copy holds what they can see in the app: no one's password, not other people's private notebook pages or personal databases, not the Audit log. Guests can't keep a copy.

One lab on many devices

One device holds the lab's master copy; every other one works on it through its address, so nothing is ever merged and nothing written in two places is lost. Settings → Devices shows which device it is, and every computer linked to the lab (by a key from Copies of the lab): how it uses the lab, its version, when it was last heard from.

• A lab server is the master copy unless an admin hands it on.
• Open the lab in this window (a linked desktop): the app's window opens the lab itself, as a browser would, and the computer keeps its daily copy. Go → This Computer's BioManager comes back to its own.
• Share this lab on the network (a desktop, admins): the computer becomes the master for every device on the same network, which opens the address it shows and signs in with an account there. It must stay on and awake. The connection isn't encrypted, so share only on a network you trust; for anywhere else, a lab server. Its own pages (setting up a server, its copies, its devices) are never offered to another device.
• Make it the master (on the master, admins): for a linked desktop with an admin's key, open now, on the same version. Within a minute it freezes the master (read only, so no change is lost), takes a last copy, keeps its own data in backups/before-taking-over-….db, and shares the lab on its network. The old master stays read only, with a banner pointing everyone there. Everyone signs in again with their lab account. Sign-ins to other services (Google Calendar) are not carried and are connected again.
• Give the master copy back (on the desktop holding it): its database and new files go back; the other device keeps what it had in backups/before-taking-back-….db and is the master again. The desktop turns read only and opens the lab there; Go back to this computer's own lab restores what it had before it took over.
• If the computer holding the master copy is lost, an admin on the old master chooses Make this the master again: what was changed on the lost computer since is not there.

Everyone

Export on any sheet downloads what it shows as CSV, which opens in Excel. On the Mice sheet, Export → Excel is a workbook that Import from Excel reads back. A note that starts with = stays text in every export, never a formula. Export my data (in the account menu, and in Settings) downloads your own mice, cages, weights, experiments and plasmids as CSV, your notebook pages and your profile, in one zip.

What BioManager sends its makers

Your records never leave your computer or your lab's server. So that BioManager's makers know how many labs use it, each installation sends one short message a day, with counts only:

• the version, whether it is the desktop app or a server, the operating system and the kind of database;
• how many members, and how many changed something this week, as ranges (1, 2–5, 6–15, 16–50, 51+);
• which built-in functions are on, and how many databases of each kind;
• a random id for the installation, so a lab counts once.

Never names, email addresses, anything anyone wrote, what your databases are called, or the computer's name or address. It goes to PostHog, which is asked not to work out where it came from. Admins see exactly what is sent on the Usage report (Feedback → Usage report) and can Switch off there; the setup survey asks first. On a server, BIOMANAGER_TELEMETRY=0 (or DO_NOT_TRACK=1) in .env turns it off for good.