Exploring QuicKeys for Windows Make a simple backup system

January 2005 Exploring QuicKeys Make a simple backup system (Windows)

The introduction and general description of this tutorial were covered in the January 2005 issue of TRIGGERED. This web page is meant to provide more detailed instructions on how to set up the actions themselves. These instructions assume you are using QuicKeys 2.5 or later and running on Windows XP.

Part 1: Daily backups

As a prerequisite for creating these automated backup actions you need to decide which folders you want to back up, and you need to determine a location to which these folders will be copied. A file server is an ideal backup destination, a removable hard drive works well too, and a second internal hard drive or partition is pretty safe for all but the theft or destruction of your computer. At worst, but still worth doing, is backing up to a second location on your current hard drive. While this does nothing for you in case of a hard drive crash, it does provide redundancy in the case of accidental data deletion.

I'm going to describe setting up actions that save to a shared network drive as it is slightly more involved than saving to a drive physically attached or inside your computer. Let's get started by creating Monday's backup action:

1. One step of preparation is needed before we create the action, and that is to change QuicKeys' Setup Wizard behavior if you have not already done so. Using the Wizards significantly lengthens a tutorial, so open the QuicKeys Editor and select "Options" from the View menu. Uncheck the box named "Always use Setup Wizards for editing" and click the "OK" button. If you want to use QuicKeys Setup Wizards to build actions in the future there is no need to turn this option back on, just select them from the "Setup Wizards" tab in the main QuicKeys Editor window.

2. Decide which folders you want to back up, and decide exactly where you want to copy those folders.

3. Create 5 new folders in the backup destination location and name them Backup Monday, Backup Tuesday, Backup Wednesday, Backup Thursday, Backup Friday.

4. Bring up the QuicKeys editor and from the Create menu select Sequence to create a new multi-step action.

5. Go ahead and name it "Daily Backup Monday" and give it a hot key if you like, although a hot key trigger isn't really necessary. But I would recommend adding this action to your QuicKeys menu (check the box as shown above) so you can easily trigger this action if you feel the need to manually run a backup out of schedule.

6. Let's set the timer trigger next. Make sure the scope is set to Universal then proceed to the Timed Triggers tab. Set the "Trigger Action at" timer to Monday's date and pick a good time for the backup action to run. I set mine to 5:30PM to ensure it will not interfere with my typical work hours.
Note: If your computer is set to deep sleep after a period of inactivity you will need to make sure that deep sleep does not occur before your backup action is to be triggered. Deep sleep prevents QuicKeys' timed triggers from operating.

7. Check the "Repeat every" box and enter 7 days as the frequency. That's it for the timer, you've just told QuicKeys to run this action on Monday's date and then every 7 days thereafter.

On to the action steps: If you are backing up your files to a network volume you may want to set up your action to first mount that volume then do the file copy. Steps 8 and 9 cover this option; if you are backing up locally to an internal or external attached hard drive you can skip to step 10.

8. (Skip this step if you will be copying your files to a local drive or a network volume which is always mounted) In your sequence, go to the Create menu and select Network Tools > Network Drives. This will create your first step; fill out the required fields to connect and log in, or click on the Browse button to find your desired network volume. Be sure to check the "Remember name and password" box.
Note: If you use this step in your sequence you will want to set the Step results handling to "Continue to next step" on failure rather than leave it on Stop & Notify. If the network drive is already mounted this step will fail which is just fine as long as the sequence continues on its merry way.

9. (Skip this step if you will be copying your files to a local drive or a network volume which is always mounted) Go back to the Create menu and select Sequence Tools > Pause to create a second step of the sequence. Estimate how much time it takes your system to mount the desired network volume and enter that as the pause duration.

10. Now we designate which files get copied to the Backup Monday folder you created in your backup location. Go to the Create menu and select File & Folder Tools > File Handler. In the resulting sequence step, ensure the Action popup is set to "Copy".

11. In the "Source of files" section, change the radio button to "Specified file or folder". Browse to the file or folder that you want to back up or type in the path to that file or folder. I highly recommend you back up folders rather than individual files (for most cases) so you can more easily back up your important work simply by saving those files into the Source folder.

12. To set the destination for the file copy, ensure the Copy pop-up is set to "To specified folder" and the "Overwrite existing files" box is checked (If you don't check it you'll only get one week's worth of backups before this action begins failing due to not being able to overwrite the files backed up the prior week.). In the "Folder" field either type in the path to which you want your data copied, or click the Browse button to navigate there.

13. Click Save & Exit and that's it. QuicKeys will now back up that particular folder to the Backup Monday folder every Monday at 5:30PM. If you want to add more folders to this action, just select your File Handler step and hit Control+C to copy it and Control+V to paste it, duplicating the step. Designate a new folder for backup in the step you just created. Repeat as necessary until you have all desired folders set up in your backup action.
Note: Make sure you check your backup locations frequently to ensure the file copies are actually happening!

14. If you want to back up these exact same folders every day of the week all you need to do is go to the main editor window, select the "My Actions" tab, and duplicate the entire Daily Backup Monday sequence by copying and pasting it. Give it a new name, change the Timed Trigger, and Save & Exit. Repeat for each day of the week that you want to do this particular backup.

15. Add more day & time triggers as needed. You may also want to add a Menu trigger and/or a hot key trigger so you can manually trigger the backup event if you are leaving the office early and want to shut down your machine before the designated backup time.

Part 2: Weekly backups

The idea behind weekly backups is to copy larger chunks of data or less frequently changed files that you may not feel the need to duplicate on a daily basis. Weekly backups are set up much like the daily backups.

Part 2 of this tutorial has prerequisites similar to those of Part 1. You need to figure out which folders you want to back up each week and where you want them copied. Once this is decided, create folders in the backup location named Week 1, Week 2, Week 3, Week 4, and Week 5. You also need to decide what time of day you want these backups to occur.

We create five weekly backup folders because we don't want to overwrite our backup every week but instead want a separate copy for each week of the month. We'll need to build 5 separate actions each being triggered only in the proper week to achieve this. Why five?

If you look at a 31-day month on a calendar you'll see that there it is possible to span 5 weeks with any given day of the week. For example, a 31-day month has up to five Mondays, or in the case of January 2005, there are five Saturdays and Sundays. Even February gets in on the 5-week act on Leap Years. This means we need 5 separate actions to effectively give ourselves a unique backup each week of any given month.

1. Bring up the QuicKeys editor, go to My Actions, and duplicate one of your Daily Backup actions using Copy & Paste. Rename the action to "Weekly Backup 1" and if it has a Hot key assigned, give it a new unique Hot key or clear the current one.

2. Set the "Trigger Action at" field to the first of the month and the time to something that will not conflict with any other actions you have on timers. Set the trigger to repeat every "1 months". This action will now automatically run on the first of every month.

3. This trigger is ready to go, now you need to edit the File Handler sequence step. Set up as many file copy steps as needed just like you did for the daily backup actions.

You'll need to create 4 more actions with similar triggers to complete your weekly backup project. It's easiest to go to the QuicKeys main editor window, My Actions tab, and duplicate your Weekly Backup 1 action 4 times. Then just edit the Timed Triggers so that Weekly Backup 2 happens on the 8th of the month, week 3 on the 15th, week 4 on the 22nd, and week 5 on the 29th.

Part 3: Adding an "Are you sure?" dialog

"What if I'm working late?"

Actions working on timers are great, but since our schedules are not set in stone there are times when you may find a timed triggered action interfering with your work. If you want to reduce this annoyance you can simply add an "Are you sure?" dialog step to your sequence. This step will be the first in the sequence and will put up a dialog asking you if you are sure you want QuicKeys to take over. If you are there to answer you can hit Okay to continue or you can Cancel it so that you can continue working uninterrupted. If you are not at your desk when this dialog window appears a 10 second countdown timer will expire and the action will proceed.

1. Open the potentially offending sequence, click on the first step in that sequence to select it (this also places the new step insertion point above the current step #1), and go to the Create menu to choose Sequence Tools > Message. This will add a Message step to your sequence.

2. Type in a message similar to the one shown at right.

3. Turn on the checkboxes for Show OK button, Show Cancel button, and Continue automatically after xx seconds. I typically use 10 seconds as my time-out setting.

4. When you use a Message step in your sequences you will almost always want to set the Step results handling to "Stop sequence" on failure rather than leave it at "Stop sequence and notify me". If you cancel a sequence playback through a Message step like this, QuicKeys considers the step as having failed, which is just fine but we don't want an alert popping up telling us a step has failed when we intentionally cancelled playback.

This "Are you sure?" Message step technique can be used in any situation where you may want to be able to manually abort a timed action when it fires. It can also be used as a first step of any particularly "dangerous" or disruptive actions you might accidentally trigger with a hot key. A slip of the fingers which would normally launch a 500 step sequence could instead ask you nicely before taking over your machine for the next 10 minutes.

There are backups and there are backups

I really can't over state the importance of backing up valued data. QuicKeys can help by removing the need to copy files by hand. This saves you time and ensures that the backups actually get done. But while QuicKeys is an effective way to keep a few sets of backed up data, failsafe backup solutions require dedicated software and hardware. Don't take chances with your irreplaceable data!