You never know when someone might accidentally delete one or more groups. Or delete a workflow that contains your message templates and integrations. Or worse, an automated user sync incorrectly deletes a batch of users and their devices. Suddenly people aren’t receiving notifications and incidents go unresolved.
While xMatters has its own disaster and data recovery processes in place, it may not be possible to recover data that your users and/or system have modified or deleted. For information on xMatters’ disaster and data recovery documentation, visit the Everbridge Trust Center at https://trust.everbridge.com.
Adding regular data backups is recommended so that you can restore your data and/or configuration if an accidental deletion occurs. Let’s take a look at what data you can get from and restore to xMatters.
Common xMatters data
It’s not necessary to get everything in your xMatters instance, but to create a backup you should probably export the following information from xMatters regularly:
- Users and their devices
- Groups and shifts configuration
- Workflows for communication templates and integrations
Exporting your data
From the xMatters web interface, you can manually export certain types of data to save it offline for future use. The following sections describe how to export various types of data, and how to restore the data in xMatters if an accidental deletion occurs. To generate export files, you’ll need to have the appropriate permissions for your instance.
Users and their devices
From the Users menu, select the Users submenu. The Users screen has an Export button located on the top-right side. When clicked, a .csv file of all user data is downloaded to your computer. This file contains the list of all users, their devices, supervisor information, as well as additional information.
If users or devices are deleted accidentally from your system, you can upload either the complete file or modify it to only include the users you want to add back into your system. To import the list of users and their devices, expand the Import menu and select Create Upload. For more information on uploading users or modifying the exported file, see https://help.xmatters.com/ondemand/ #cshid=UserUpload.
Groups and shift configurations
From the Groups menu, select the Groups submenu. On the Groups page, you will find the Export button on the top right side that will export the data of your on-call and broadcast groups to a .csv file. This file contains the list of all the on-call groups, their shifts and the shift members, as well as additional information such as shift escalations and rotations (if applicable). Broadcast groups are included in the export, but are listed as "Empty Group" because they can't contain shift information.
You don’t have to export every group in your instance; you can use filters and settings to only show the groups you’re most interested in, then export only those specific groups. Filters are especially useful if you have an extremely large number of groups in your instance as generating the export file for a all groups can take a fair amount of time.
Unlike the User Upload feature, it is not possible to upload the file of groups to xMatters. If a group, or any data related to its shifts is accidentally deleted, it must be recreated manually in the xMatters user interface. For more information on how to export your groups, see https://help.xmatters.com/ondemand/#cshid=GroupsExport.
Workflows for communication templates and integrations
From the Workflows menu, select the Workflows submenu. For each workflow you want to backup expand the options menu and select Export.
When you need to restore the workflow from the exported backup, use the “Import” button found at the top of the Workflows screen. The import button makes it very easy to restore many of the templates, settings, and configurations in the workflow. However, not everything is exported/imported. For more information on the export/import process, see https://help.xmatters.com/ondemand/#cshid=ImportWorkflow.
Automate the backup and restore process
If you would like to automate the backup process, so that it runs automatically on a daily/weekly/monthly basis, you can use the xMatters REST API to implement a script to run this process. The API also allows you to implement a script to automatically restore the data when needed.
Note: Using any automated option still requires some manual configuration post-restoration, as not all data can be retrieved or restored. These are typically configuration changes such as URLs, endpoints, APIs, user authentication, etc.
Using xmtoolbox for backup/restore
xmtoolbox is a JavaScript package that simplifies interaction with xMatters. By providing a wrapper to documented xMatters APIs, xmtoolbox makes backup/restoration and user/group synchronization easy. You can quickly and easily set up logic-driven data management and retrieval from your xMatters instance.
For the downloadable package and installation instructions, go to xmtoolbox on NPM. Once installed, you can download a quick start project, or view the workshop on Getting Started with xmtoolbox .
- Recorded webinar for using xmtoolbox
- NPM project site and download
- Quick Starts – including backup and restore
- Technical support for xMToolBox
Please note that xmtoolbox is managed only as an xMatters Professional Services offering and is not an official xMatters product nor is it supported by xMatters Support.
Using the xMatters REST API
You can also use the xMatters REST API endpoints directly for users and groups. This option provides the most flexibility as you can decide which data objects you want to backup and restore.
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