Back up item-level objects through Administrative Backup (Project Server 2013)

Summary: Use the Administrative Backup page in SharePoint Central Administration to back up Project Server 2013 objects.
Applies to: Project Server 2013

This article describes how to back up specific project items in Project Web App. This procedure does not back up the physical files of a database (.mdb), but creates backups of specific items in the database. These items are backed up from the Published section to the Archive section in the Project Web App database.

In order to perform these procedures, you must be a farm administrator.

Backing up item-level objects

You can use the procedures in this article to back up the following project items:

Item Description
Project
Includes project resources, assignments, tasks, custom field values, baseline data
Enterprise resource pool and calendars
Includes enterprise resources and enterprise calendars
Enterprise custom field
Includes enterprise custom field metadata, enterprise lookup table metadata, enterprise lookup table values
Enterprise global template
Includes all Project Professional table, macro, and view definitions
View definition
Includes statusing, Project Center, Portfolio Analyzer, and Resource Center view definitions
Category and group settings
Includes settings for all Project Server categories and groups.

Important

Item-level backup and restore of category and group settings only applies to Project Permission Mode. For more information about security modes in Project Server 2013, see Plan user access in Project Server.

The following procedure allows you to select the Project Server 2013 items you would like to backup. When the procedure is completed, the backup job is immediately sent to the queue for processing. If you would like to schedule a daily backup of these items, this is done through the Daily Backup Schedule settings page. For more information on scheduling daily backups of Project Server 2013 items, see Daily Schedule Backup (Project Server 2013).

To back up items manually

  1. In SharePoint Central Administration, click Application Management.

  2. On the Application Management page, in the Service Application section, click Manage Service Applications.

  3. On the Service Applications page, click the Project Application Service that contains the Project Web App instance for which you want to access the Administrative Backup settings.

  4. On the Manage Project Web Apps page, click the drop-down menu for the PWA instance for which you want to access the Administrative Backup settings, and click Manage.

  5. On the Project Web App Server Settings page, in the Queue and Database Administration section, click Administrative Backup.

  6. In the Select Items section, select the check box next to each project item that you want to back up.

  7. Click Backup. A message box will display telling you that the selected items will be queued for backup. Click OK to back up the selected items.

When you backup projects for the first time, all projects are backed up. After the initial project backup, all subsequent project backups will only backup projects that have been updated since the last backup. This ensures that the latest version of the project is backed up for all projects. Note that you can configure the number of versions of a project that you would like to back up through the Project Retention Policy setting that is available in the Daily Schedule Backup page. The Project Retention policy pertains to both scheduled and manual administrative backups of projects. For more information about the Project Retention Policy setting, see Daily Schedule Backup (Project Server 2013).

All Project Server 2013 items backed up through the Administrative Backup page can be restored through the Administrative Restore page. For more information about restoring backed up Project Server 2013 items, see Restore item-level objects through Administrative Restore (Project Server 2013).

See also

Restore item-level objects through Administrative Restore (Project Server 2013)

Daily Schedule Backup (Project Server 2013)