Archive for the ‘Business Central’ category

Microsoft to end new Dynamics GP sales and will move BC to subscription only licenses.

August 6th, 2023

Microsoft recently alerted partners of plans to end the sale of Dynamics GP to new customers over the next three years. Microsoft will stop selling new perpetual licenses for new customers Dynamics GP in October 2025, and the sale of new Dynamics GP subscription licenses for new customers will end in October 2026. The change effectively sets an end date for new customer sales of GP.

These decisions do not impact the ability of existing customers of GP and BC on-prem to run their systems, to add users, or to license capabilities.

This change doesn’t impact Microsoft’s plans for providing necessary regulatory/security/usability updates for Dynamics GP beyond this date. New customers seeking an on-premises ERP solution consider Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises or Dynamics 365 for Operations on-premises, Enterprise Edition. 

Dynamics 365 Business Central on-premises solutions will move to subscription-based licensing only, ending the perpetual license option.

Co-Pilot and Business Central ask Synergy Software Systems

May 23rd, 2023

This video guides you through the minimal steps necessary to get started quickly in creating a chatbot with expanded natural language capabilities inside of Business Central. Copilot provides AI-powered writing assistance for Business Central users responsible authoring marketing text (product descriptions) on items sold in online shops, like Shopify. With the click of a button, Copilot generates text that’s engaging, creative, and highlights key attributes of the specific item. With a bit of reviewing and editing, it’s ready to publish. Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central help small and medium-sized businesses to bring new products to market faster by producing AI-generated product descriptions.

 Launch of the new Microsoft Dynamics 365 Copilot 

March 7th, 2023

 Provide interactive, AI-powered assistance across business functions. With Dynamics 365 Copilot, organizations empower their workers with AI tools built for sales, service, marketing, operations and supply chain roles. These AI capabilities allow everyone to spend more time on the best parts of their jobs and less time on mundane tasks.

According to a Microsoft recent survey on business trends, nearly 9 out of 10 workers hope to use AI to reduce repetitive tasks in their jobs.

Customer relationship management (CRM) and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems are mission-critical; however, these both frequently require burdensome tasks like manual data entry, content generation and notetaking.

Dynamics 365 Copilot uses recent advancements in generative AI to automate these tedious tasks to unlock the full creativity of the workforce.

This is not the first time Microsoft has used the term “copilot” in relation to its AI technology. When it announced in February that Bing was incorporating AI, the company said the search engine is now an “AI-powered co-pilot for the web.”

Dynamics 365 Copilot puts CRM and ERP can accelerate pace of innovation and improve business outcomes in every line of business:

  • Copilot in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Sales and Viva Sales helps sellers to dramatically reduce the time spent on clerical tasks. AI can help to write email responses to customers and to create an email summary of a Teams meeting in Outlook. The meeting summary also pulls in details from the seller’s CRM such as product and pricing information, and insights from the recorded Teams call.
  • With sellers spending as much as 66% of their day checking and responding to emails, this presents a significant business upside to give the seller more time with their customers.
  • Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Service empowers agents to deliver exceptional customer care. Dynamics 365 Copilot can drafts contextual answers to queries in both chat and email. Interactive chat experience uses knowledge bases and case history and this AI-powered expertise is always available to answer questions.
  • Customer service departments can now build virtual agents in minutes with conversation boosters in Power Virtual Agents,to harnesses the power of the Azure OpenAI Service and Bing to provide answers from company websites and internal knowledge bases.
  • Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights and Dynamics 365 Marketing empowers marketers to simplify data exploration, audience segmentation and content creation.
    • With Copilot in Dynamics 365 Customer Insights, marketers can curate highly personalized and targeted customer segments, using dialogue with their customer data platform in natural language.
    • Marketing staff can receive suggestions about additional segments not previously considered. This new capability can handle complex calculations and match customers that fit a select profile.
    • In Copilot for Dynamics 365 Marketing, marketers can describe their customer segment in their own words to create a target segment with the query assist feature.
    • Marketers can also use Dynamics 365 Copilot tfor inspiration for fresh email campaign content based on a simple request. Copilot makes suggestions based on: key topics entered by the marketer, the organization’s existing marketing emails, and from a range of internet sources to increase the relevance of generated ideas.
  • Copilot in Dynamics 365 Business Central streamlines the creation of product listings for online commerce. Use Product attributes such as colour, material and size to create compelling product descriptions for online storefronts in seconds. Tailor the descriptions and choose tone of voice, format and length. Business Central customers who use Shopify can seamlessly publish the products and their descriptions to their Shopify store in just a few clicks.
  •  Microsoft Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management customers can access Copilot in Microsoft Supply Chain Center, to proactively flag external issues such as weather, financials and geography that impact key supply chain processes.
  • Predictive insights can then
  • surface impacted orders across materials, inventory, carrier, distribution network and more. Supply chain planners can automatically draft an email generated by Dynamics 365 Copilot to alert impacted partners and mitigate potential disruptions before they happen.

The next era of business applications is already transforming with generative AI. Users will increasingly expect their CRM and ERP applications to include AI-powered expertise.

The recent AI momentum incorporates the next generation of AI capabilities across Microsoft 365, Dynamics 365, and the Power Platform and includes::

  • Viva Sales, which helps sellers by bringing a sales copilot to their flow of work in Microsoft 365;
  • Power Apps, enabling citizen developers to write code using natural language.
  • Microsoft Teams, the collaboration platform for work with more than 280 million monthly active users; 

Business Central is now the time? – ask Synergy Software Systems, Dubai.

January 25th, 2023

See a collection of features designed for a particular role, and learn how to get to other features in the application.

Dynamics 365 Business Central is an all-in-one business management application . Upgrade your legacy ERP system or accounting software to a comprehensive solution to seamlessly manage your finances, operations, sales, and customer services.

Twice a year, Microsoft releases feature updates for Dynamics 365 Business Central. The first update is in February and the second one is in October. Microsoft has named these updates as release waves – 1, 2, 3, and so on. These updates both improve BC’s features and enhance its performance, to help users be more productive and more efficient.

How to implement Business Central in my business?

It’s easy contacting us to or schedule a meeting to assess your current ERP system, and business operations, challenges and future needs to assess how well whether Business Central fits.

Dynamics 365 Business Central 2022 release wave 2 – ask Synergy Software Systems

October 6th, 2022

This covers the new functionalities planned to be delivered to market from October 2022 to March 2023. 

Updates in 2022 release wave 2 include:

  • Seamless service: No matter the industry type of a small or midsized business (SMB), business users expect a dependable service and platform that they can run their business on.
  • Administration: Business Central delivers a set of features for better and improved communication about the health of each environment.
  • Application: Improve integration with Shopify. The finance and supply chain capabilities in Business Central are improved with several optimizations and enhancements so that users can run their business processes more efficiently.
  • Better with Microsoft 365: Improved the efficiency of collaborative business processes in Microsoft Teams. Users can pin cards inside Teams, and delegated admins can now use the Excel add-in.
  • Country and regional: In 2022 release wave 2, Business Central is generally available in more countries and regions.
  • Onboarding: Organizations can get to productive usage faster because it’s easier to discover and install apps.
  • Development tools: Now entirely Visual Studio Code
  • Power Platform: More efficient automation with Power Automate so that users can set up workflows for the specific needs of their organization.
  • This release wave contains features that must be enabled or configured by administrators, makers, or business analysts to be available for their users. For the complete list, look for all features tagged “Users by admins, makers, or analysts” in the release plan.

FUNCTIONAL ENHANCEMENTS

FeatureEnabled forPublic previewGeneral availability
Better bank reconciliation for checks and improved reportingUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Extended text functionality for VAT clausesUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Financial reporting replaces account schedulesUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Find posted and non-posted document lines in searchUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Flexible sorting in the Planning Worksheet pageUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Make entry of variant codes requiredUsers by admins, makers, or analysts Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Post item charges for each step of the processUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Service – minor improvementsUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Simpler Shopify connectionUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
Track items that are used in projects, including picksUsers, automatically Sep 1, 2022Oct 2022
New VAT Date field on documents and entriesUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Oct 2022
Set up data exchange more easilyUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Oct 2022
Use multiple remit-to addresses for vendorsUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Oct 2022
Reverse payment reconciliation journal entriesUsers, automaticallyOct 2022Nov 2022

Dynamics 365 – Wave 2 highlights for 2022

July 13th, 2022
  • Dynamics 365 Marketing brings real-time customer journey orchestration to enable business-to-business (B2B) brands to hyper-personalize experiences across the entire buying journey.
  • Confidently grow your marketing and customer experience programs to target up to 100 million customers with up to 300 million messages and interactions per month.
  • Intuitive lead capture forms, leads nurturing hands-off automation, and a new analytics dashboard enable alignment between sales and marketing teams like never before.
  • Organizations can reach new levels of marketing maturity with AI-powered next best content selection and increased support for business units.  
  • Dynamics 365 Sales continues to optimize the seller experience using data and AI .
  • Help sellers to prioritize their work, blending business with productivity tools to meet sellers where they are.
  • Drive in-the-moment, collaboration experiences, so that every seller can engage with their colleagues and customers efficiently, reclaiming their time and being more productive.  
  • Dynamics 365 Customer Service is focused on delivering the capabilities that help run contact centers optimally.
  • Enhancements in unified routing with features such as percentage-based routing, preferred agent routing, and longest idle routing are new features
  • Customer support swarming in Microsoft Teams will help agents resolve complex cases through collaboration.
  • Organizations can empower their customers with options to leave voicemail, callback, and dial agents directly in the voice channel.
  • The agent experience is modernized with an enhanced conversation timeline, horizontal multisession navigation, and AI-powered conversation summary.
  • Supervisors can view Microsoft Power Virtual Agents analytics within their omnichannel analytics dashboards.
  • Dynamics 365 Field Service brings new capabilities that enable organizations to better orchestrate service operations for workers. Organizations can now:
    • build and maintain location and assets for large facilities,
    • keep their cost at bay by configuring “not to exceed” limits,
    • and group similar incident types under “trade” for ease of management.
  • Optimization improvements include booking lock constraints and i myriad of user experience improvements to the mobile app to further empower frontline workers.  
  • Dynamics 365 Finance launches the general availability of vendor invoice optical character recognition (OCR) which automates the reading and recognition of vendor invoices.
  • There are additional capabilities for subscription billing use cases.
  • The Tax calculation service will be integrated with Dynamics 365 Project Operations (preview)
  • The electronic invoicing service will be extended to support new and upcoming e-invoice legislations for: France, Poland, and Saudi Arabia. 
  • Dynamics 365 Supply Chain Management continues to invest in capabilities that drive agility and resilience across the supply chain.
  • New analytics and support for multiple vendors in planning optimization help organizations optimize their sourcing strategies.’
  • Inventory visibility lets organizations track real-time consumption within allocated quantities in support of promotions, special events, and new product introductions.
  • Guided warehouse implementation and configuration experiences enable rapid reconfiguration of supply chains .
  • Manufacturers in the process industry can use Planning Optimization to shorten their planning cycles. 
  • Dynamics 365 Intelligent Order Management expands its ecosystem of providers and builds on the continued success of FedEx. There are now 14 providers that span the supply chain lifecycle from order ingestion to last-mile delivery.
  • In the upcoming release, there is support for various order types—back orders, subscription orders, manual orders, and purchase orders.
  • You can also simulate fulfillment to model and understand the impact of choosing various fulfillment strategies.
  • Contextual collaboration features allow an order to be shared with multiple stakeholders using embedded Microsoft Teams. 
  • Dynamics 365 Project Operations Empower project managers and project teams in this release wave with project budgeting and time-phased forecasting, baselines and snapshots,
  • The application experiences on the web and mobile form factors is modernised.
  • For both project accountants and back-office personas, w advanced subcontracting and subscription billing capabilities are added.
  • Across-the-board investments will ease the complexity of interaction patterns.
  • Modern and fluent controls are also targeted for this release wave.
  • Dynamics 365 Guides Improve collaboration experiences for authors and operators on Microsoft HoloLens 2.
  • The application will also be updated to provide more advanced content authoring workflows versioning and publishing of guides in the coming wave. 
  • Dynamics 365 Human Resources We can now to tailor experiences and automatically complete processes where manual decisions and tasks are needed today.
  • Improved efficiency is available to managers and employees by providing notifications outside of the application for benefits processes and tasks.
  • Integrating employee skill and compensation, and leaving information to resource managers in Dynamics 365 Project Operations will also improve collaboration and efficiency.  
  • Dynamics 365 Commerce New and updated B2B experiences, include sales agreements across channels and customer-specific catalogs.
  • Omnichannel media management features streamline workflows.
  • Key point of sale investments includes a Store Commerce app availability for iOS and Android devices.
  • Apple Pay and Google Pay digital wallet integration,
  • New customer support options through virtual agent and live agent integration will be available for e-commerce.
  • Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection will offer a new transaction acceptance booster (TAB) offering that allows merchants to increase their bank approval rates without having to rip and replace their incumbent fraud provider solution.
  • To replace a merchant’s incumbent fraud solution is costly and timely, and this enables the merchant to benefit from Dynamics 365 Fraud Protection TAB capabilities with minimal disruption to their business.
  • Dynamics 365 Business Central continues to improve the reporting capabilities for customers, including new report datasets for Excel and improvements to the Microsoft Power BI reports which now will support dimensions.
  • The Microsoft Power Apps and Microsoft Power Automate integration offer new capabilities for low-code development.
  • The application will get several improvements like: helping users do reverse entries in the payment reconciliation journal and several improvements to the supply chain functionality.
  • There are steps to scale productivity via more efficient and performant tooling for development and administration.
  • Dynamics 365 Customer Insights continues to invest in accelerating customer understanding by enhancing time to value with quicker out-of-the-box insights, predictions, segments, and measures with limitless extensibility across technology ecosystems.
  • New features will power personalized experiences with real-time insights, analytics, and activations to deliver industry-leading personalization and moments-based marketing.
  • New features also enable ubiquitous insights for an integrated data flow across Microsoft Dataverse, Dynamics 365, and Microsoft Power Platform for seamless workflows.
  • Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces now supports alerts and notifications via Teams or Outlook when business AI-skills detect actionable patterns within a physical space.
  • Customers can now use Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces in Germany (besides US and UK) and connect up to 10 cameras for each Azure Stack Edge device maximizing their existing investments in expanding Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces across their physical footprint.
  • Customers can also leverage the Azure Stack Edge Pro 2 device for configuring Dynamics 365 Connected Spaces at the edge in addition to the existing Pro 1 devices.

Power BI autp install for TEAMS is coming.

September 17th, 2021
  • Power BI will begin automatically installing the Power BI app for Teams for users when they visit the Power BI service
  • Power BI admins can choose not to auto-install through a new Power BI tenant setting
  • The tenant setting has started to roll-out now, giving admins time to opt-out if desired.
  • The automatic installation will start to take effect in November 2021, for organizations with the setting enabled.

Auto-install for Power BI app for Microsoft Teams

When the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams is installed, users get better experiences without leaving Teams, like:

These capabilities are available once the Power BI app for Teams is installed for a user

The Install Power BI app for Microsoft Teams automatically tenant setting is added to the Power BI admin portal. Power BI admins can control the auto-install behavior. By default, the auto-install is enabled.

Power BI tenant setting that controls automatically installation of the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams for a user.

The automatic installation happens for a user under the following conditions:

  1. The Power BI app for Microsoft Teams is set to allowed in the Microsoft Teams admin portal
  2. The Power BI tenant setting Install Power BI app for Microsoft Teams automatically is enabled
  3. The user has a Microsoft Teams license
  4. The user opens the Power BI service (e.g. app.powerbi.com) in a web browser

Initially, auto-install applies to new users the first time they visit the Power BI service in a web browser. In the future, auto-install will occur for all active users of the Power BI service who meet the criteria.

When auto-install occurs, the following notification is shown in the Power BI service notification pane.

Graphical user interface, text, application Description automatically generated

Questions and Answers

What happening today?

Pre-announcing auto-install of Power BI in Teams.

Starting to roll-out a Power BI tenant admin setting which enables Power BI admins to choose to opt-out of the automatic installation behavior.

When will these changes take effect?

In November 2021, Power BI auto-install of Power BI in Teams will start rolling out.

Which users will be affected?

When the Power BI tenant setting is enabled, the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams will be installed for users who meet the criteria specified. Initially, automatic installation will apply to new users and will expand to all users who visit the Power BI service in a web browser after the initial roll-out in November 2021.

When should I use a Microsoft Teams App Setup Policy?

Microsoft Teams app setup policies allow Microsoft Teams Admins to install an app for a target set of users. Since this applies to all users in the specified group, you can ensure everyone who needs Power BI has it, even when they’re not active Power BI users. Use app setup policies to pin the Power BI app in Teams to the Microsoft Teams left rail. This additional step makes data and analytics prominently available throughout your organization..

Read more about automatic installation in the Power BI documentation

Read more about the Power BI app for Microsoft Teams

Read more about collaboration in Microsoft Teams with Power BI

Manage your inventory in Business Central – ask Synergy Software Systems

September 2nd, 2021

View Top Selling Items Aged Inventory

In the Business Central dashboard, select Aged Inventory to see what inventory items have been present for over 120 days, and to see how long each item has been in inventory..

Once you’ve gained insight into the efficiency of your inventory determine what are your best selling items. From your Business Central dashboard select Items, then select Report, then Inventory, then Inventory Statistics, and finally select Inventory – Top 10 List.

You are now looking at a report of your best selling products, to aid you in taking informed decisions for future inventory needs.

Check Inventory and Vendor Lead Time

After determining what products are selling successfully for your business and what products are having a slow turnover rate, determine the vendor lead time for these items. What is the time from when a purchase order is made to when the item is assembled and ready to be distributed to buyers. This data, will help you avoid the risk of being out of stock for your most popular items, a key source of revenue. 

Use the search function in Business Central located at the top right corner of your screen and search for Purchase Advice. This generates a report that shows both the total number of orders for your company’s items and the actual number in stock for each of these items. 

When you see an item that’s out of stock, go to your dashboard again and select Vendors. From there, select Report, then Purchase, then Vendor/Item Purchases. Now youhave access to a Vendor/Item Purchases report that will show the lead time of all vendors.

Easily Restock Items

Through just a few simple clicks, you have a better understanding of what is selling for your company, what isn’t, and the general turnaround time for all of these products. Such information is what makes Business Central so beneficial for inventory management. 

Use the insight gained on all inventory, to easily enter purchase invoices for items that are out of stock or close to being out of stock. Select Vendors from the dashboard screen to find the required vendor and then select Purchase Invoice, and enter the vendor invoice number along with the items purchased.

Once posted, the invoice is complete, and you don’t have to worry about being behind on inventory restock.

Future Inventory Stock

Leverage the information on inventory movement given to you by Business Central to predict future inventory needs. Go to your dashboard and find the Forecast application. Select the Forecast menu. Look at the Sales View and Inventory Forecast. 

The Inventory Forecast gives you visibility and insight about upcoming inventory needs using data in Business Central. It provides predictions for when certain items will be out of stock by analyzing current inventory and consumer trends for your company.

Keep your warehouse data accurate and updated in a timely manner with mobile transactions and use of rfid/barcode technology and also to undertake perpetual and annual inventor counts.

Ask us about the Tasklet mobile solution and its many new features. 0097143365589

IFRS 17 – compliance accelerator system- ask Synergy Software Systems.

September 1st, 2021

IFRS 17 is the newest IFRS standard for insurance contracts and replaces IFRS 4 on January 1st 2022. It states which insurance contracts items should by on the balance and the profit and loss account of an insurance company, how to measure these items and how to present and disclose this information.

This is a big change for insurance companies and data administration, financial presentation and actuarial calculations will need to change.

 

Why are IFRS 9 and IFRS 17 implemented together?

  • The insurance liability (IFRS 17) is always closely connected to the financial instruments (IFRS 9) within insurers.
  • When a client buys an insurance, the insurance liability is created and with the paid premiums are financial instruments bought.
  • Insurers want to reduce the volatility in their earnings and there are some choices within IFRS 9 and IFRS 17 which they can make which can impact the volatility.
  • Under IFRS 17 insurers can decide whether results of changing financial risk assumption go through OCI or through the profit and loss account.
  • Under IFRS 9 insurers can decide whether changes in equity will go through profit and loss or through OCI.

Both standards will impact earning volatility and hence balance sheet management choices are connected. Consequently, the IFRS board decided it is better that insurers are granted the option to implement both standards together.

IFRS 9 explains the classification and the measurement of financial instruments. Hence IFRS 9 helps to improve the information disclosure around financial instrument. Many perceive the information disclosure around financial instruments during the financial crisis as inaccurate for example impairments on financial instruments were taken too late and the amounts were too little.

IFRS 9 makes the classification of each financial instrument more logical and principle based. There are two questions which need to be answered for the classification:

  • Why is the company holding the asset; just for collecting the cash flows from the underlying asset, or is the asset also held for trading?
  • What kind of asset is the financial asset? Is it a derivative, an equity or a debt instrument? With the SPPI (solely payment of principal and interest) model it can be tested whether an instrument is really a debt instrument.

 The classification determines:

  • which accounting principle is used;
  • should the instrument be measured at fair value or at amortized cost
  • and whether earnings and losses should go through the profit and loss account or through the OCI (other comprehensive income) account.

IFRS 9 also includes a more dynamic credit loss model instructing when an insurer should take an impairment on financial assets. The model is forward looking thereby also expected future losses should be taken into account with the impairment.

 IFRS 9 also makes hedge accounting possibilities more rule based, thereby being in line with how risks are  managed within insurers.

Why does this matter?

There is a huge impact on insurers and a big change in the disclosure.

  • Almost all of the asset and liability side is hit by the combination of IFRS 9 and IFRS 17.
  • New concepts and terms are introduced.
  • The standards will impact the presented numbers. Under IFRS 17 the insurance liability needs to be based on updated assumptions which is not currently a requirement. .
  • More data with more granularity and more history will challenge internal data storage, reporting and IT performance.
  • Reporting timelines are shortened, which will challenge the systems, and the cooperation between different departments.
  • New components like the unbiased Cash Flows, Risk Adjustment, Discount Rate and CSM are introduced. This means the insurer needs to understand the IFRS 17 principles and decide how to implement IFRS 17. For example which measurement model to choose for an insurance product, which transition measure to user. Read here more about the IFRS 17 model, and here about the transition period.
  • In the balance and income statement, insurance liability will n be specified in a different way, the importance of gross written premiums will disappear, while equity will be impacted.
  • The presentation of the balance and P&L are also significantly affected.
  • Risk engines are needed to calculate the CSM and cope with all the different groups
  • Insurers need to disclose information bases on group of contracts.
  • A group is a managed group (often a product) of contracts which were all profitable, onerous, or may become onerous (decided at inception) with a certain inception year. Insurance companies can have hundreds of groups and IFRS 17 insists on this grouping to have more transparency as insurance companies cannot offset the result of one group to another

Synergy Software Systems has been implementing and supporting financial solutions in the insurance vertical for 25 years. If you need to rapidly implement a solution for IFRS 17 compliance that will sit alongside your existing erp and finance systems then call us on 0097143365589.

August 24th, 2021

A bungled data migration of a network drive caused the deletion of 22 terabytes of information from Dallas Police Department police force’s systems – included case files in a murder trial,during a data migration exercise carried out at the end of the 2020-21 financial year

“On August 6, 2021, the Dallas Police Department (DPD) and City of Dallas Information and Technology Services Department (ITS) informed the administration of this Office that in April 2021, the City discovered that multiple terabytes of DPD data had been deleted during a data migration of a DPD network drive,” said a statement [PDF] from the Dallas County prosecutor’s office.

14TB were recovered, presumably from backups, but “approximately 8 Terabytes remain missing and are believed to be unrecoverable.”

The Home Office initially issued a statement saying the data loss was down to a “technical issue”, which had been resolved, There must have been some technical resolution because the Home Office later said it was not a technical issue after all, and in fact a “housekeeping error” with Home Secretary Priti Patel saying: “Home Office engineers continue to work to restore data lost as a result of human error during a routine housekeeping process earlier this week.”

In a letter published by The Guardian, National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) deputy chief constable Naveed Malik, lead for the organisation on the Police National Computer (PNC), said approximately 213,000 offence records, 175,000 arrest records and 15,000 person records had potentially been deleted in error. The DNA database connected to the PNC saw 26,000 records corresponding to 21,710 subjects potentially deleted in error, “including records previously marked for indefinite retention following conviction of serious offences”. The letter also said 30,000 fingerprint records and 600 subject records may have been deleted in error.

The PNC dates back to the 1970s. The current iteration is a Fujitsu BS2000/OSD SE700-30 mainframe based in a Hendon data centre, running Software AG’s natural programming language-using ADABAS database. The UK’s territorial and regional police forces, Serious Fraud Office, Security and Secret Intelligence Services (MI5, MI6), HM Revenue & Customs, and the National Crime Agency all make use of it. They have controlled and 24-hour access from remote terminals and through local police force systems.

These incidents highlight the importance of backups and backup and recovery processes. How often do you test whether you can restore your back ups? Does this still work for restoring older back ups when you upgrade? Has a move to the cloud changed the retention of your back ups, the frequency of upgrades, or the ease or time for restore?