Fixing an activity issue

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pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Fixing an activity issue

Post by pbumc »

Hi,

We're on PC 11.55. We use activity 1002 to track worship attendance. Normally about 210 people are in this activity. Our new admin, doing Fast Data Entry around 12/15/19, was not finding some people, so she added all 1400 individuals in the database to the 1002 activity. Now we have five weeks of attendance showing 1200+ people absent, which is messing up the consecutive absences report.

I can think of two options:

1. Restore the 12/14/19 backup. All work done since then must be done again. [Edit: just remembered we also have weeks of contribution data, so this is probably impractical.]

2. Make a backup now. Temporarily restore the 12/14/19 backup. Print a report of the 210 people who should be in the activity. Restore today's backup. Remove everyone from the 1002 activity, then manually add back the 210 from the printed report. Optionally clear out and re-do attendance recorded since 12/15, or just ignore absences in the last few weeks.

Which would you choose? Is there a better/simpler way to fix this?

Thanks,
Mark Berry

NeilZ
Posts: 10209
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:20 am
Location: Dexter NM
Contact:

Re: Fixing an activity issue

Post by NeilZ »

pbumc wrote:Hi,

We're on PC 11.55. We use activity 1002 to track worship attendance. Normally about 210 people are in this activity. Our new admin, doing Fast Data Entry around 12/15/19, was not finding some people, so she added all 1400 individuals in the database to the 1002 activity. Now we have five weeks of attendance showing 1200+ people absent, which is messing up the consecutive absences report.

I can think of two options:

1. Restore the 12/14/19 backup. All work done since then must be done again. [Edit: just remembered we also have weeks of contribution data, so this is probably impractical.]

2. Make a backup now. Temporarily restore the 12/14/19 backup. Print a report of the 210 people who should be in the activity. Restore today's backup. Remove everyone from the 1002 activity, then manually add back the 210 from the printed report. Optionally clear out and re-do attendance recorded since 12/15, or just ignore absences in the last few weeks.

Which would you choose? Is there a better/simpler way to fix this?

Thanks,
There is actually a better way. You will have to update Membership to cover changes since 12/14/19, but this will be easier. This is assuming that you haven't changed envelope numbers since 12/14.

1. Make a FULL backup of the database.
2. Restore the 12/14 backup to the system.
3. Restart the program, then backup ONLY the Membership files.
4. Restore the backup made in step 1.
5. Restart the program, then RESTORE the membership backup made in step 3.
6. Make any changes to the membership database that are needed.

Then I would setup an automated backup on your 'server' using the directions listed in this Knowledgebase article:

https://www.powerchurch.com/support/438 ... -fall-2014.

While it doesn't list Windows 10, the Task Scheduler hasn't changed I believe. I have this setup to do a backup twice a week. Once after the Sunday Contributions are counted and entered, and once at the end of the work week.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

pbumc
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Mar 10, 2007 4:28 pm
Location: San Diego, CA

Re: Fixing an activity issue

Post by pbumc »

Neil,

Thank you SO much for taking the time to write up that suggestion. The one thing that concerned me is that we might lose some membership data e.g. visitors. But it got me thinking about a "surgical" fix rather than a whole-database fix.

I did some programming against PowerChurch years ago. Pulling up that program, I found that the SK files store the list of who participates in what activities (SKills) and the ATDATA files store the actual ATtendance DATA. After making a current backup, all I had to do was restore these files from right before the error:

ATDATA.DBF
ATDATA.CDX
SK.DBF
SK.CDX

Tapping individual dBASE files is living on the edge, I know, but so far that looks like it reverted only the two pieces of data we need: activity participation and attendance.
Mark Berry

NeilZ
Posts: 10209
Joined: Wed Oct 08, 2003 1:20 am
Location: Dexter NM
Contact:

Re: Fixing an activity issue

Post by NeilZ »

FWIW ... doing that is not for the faint of heart, nor for the average user, which is why the database restores would have worked.

One this I should have added was to run a membership report to pull all the new data updated and/or added since 12/14. This would have given you the data to reenter if needed.

Glad to hear you got it working. BTW .. the database engine is Foxpro, not dBase. They may look the same, but there are definite differences.
Neil Zampella

Using PC+ since 1999.

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