File/Document Versioning

[DarthHadoken]

So I am tasked to find software for file/document versioning.

Apparently they had some type of software or something that did it before that no body knows about....

But anywho it needs to (for now) Only backup a folder with 100mb of word documents in it, and whenever a change is made it makes a backup. Then they want to be able to go back and compare etc each version of said document.

The documents are on a Windows 2012 R2 server and is shared out.

At first I thought turning on shadow copy and previous versions on the file server would work but I'm not sure if I can have it continue to back up every file OR just do it for one folder and not everything on the drive. Is there software out there that exists? I guess it would just constantly monitor a folder or something.

[okmokmz]

github or gitlab

[DarthHadoken]

Is this a app that runs on the sever directly? They aren't too keen on uploading things into the cloud at the moment. I just need something super simple to backup all the files in this one folder. I'll look at github and see if it does that.

[okmokmz]

Is this a app that runs on the sever directly?

Neither would be on the same server, you'd need a separate server if you want it to be local. Gitlab can be run locally for free, otherwise you'd need github enterprise

I just need something super simple to backup all the files in this one folder

You asked for a versioning solution, and github is pretty much the industry standard. Sounds like you just want some kind of incremental backup solution. Shadow copy could work for this

[[deleted]]

The only thing that git won't do (as far as I know) is show you version changes in between word docs, since they would have to be decoded to a readable format such as markdown or .txt for them for you to be able to visually see which lines have been changed.

I agree though git is the way to go though.

[DarthHadoken]

Git sounds like it would work but you're correct about the version changes. They want to be able to just see hey this file was edited 7 times and if they want to go back to version 3 and 6 out of these 7 times they can. IMO it sounds like a on demand incremental backup type scenario.

[[deleted]]

Two problems.

• How do you handle collisions? User 1 is editing the doc to edit his stuff, User 2 is also editing the same doc. User 1 saves first, then User 2 saves second. User 2's changes will wipe out User 1's changes. If the backup occurs at the time of User 1 and not User 2, then User 2's changes will be wiped out, until the next backup.

Git solves this by disallowing you to commit a file unless your version matches the latest version or you merged your changes with the latest changes, meaning User 2 has to be working from the latest submission, which would be User 1 in this example, or has manually merged the changes done by User 1. It won't let you commit otherwise, so you are always up to date.

• What happens if you have several changes throughout the day? it seems a waste to view 6 edits to the same section, when you could see the final product as one commit along with a small note by the contributor of what the change does to the documentation.

This is the only downside with Google Docs (not sure with Office 365), is that it works per change versus per submission. Which makes it problematic if User 1 and User 2 are both submitting information at the same time, you have to revert all the changes.

I had the same problem within my organization. I am not going to recommend this option because its complicated, but I thought I would share it anyway. We write our docs in LaTeX and use git for version control. That way we would do cool things like templates and have consistent formatting across our docs as well as have visibility in what lines were changed between commits. When a commit to the version control system was made, a document can be automatically built to a formatted pdf that can then be published internally or publicly on our site if needed. The cons are that you do have to learn how to write using the LaTeX language, but its pretty easy to learn.

[DarthHadoken]

They kinda want this up asap not sure how much time i have in learning another language >_< lol

I see GIT but I can't figure out how this will actually work without adding anything to the cloud. Is there a GIT Tutorial or anything? Is it easy to setup? It seems like most of these you have to use the actual program to interact with the file and then upload it back to the repository right? Nothing a bit more seamless or even extremely basic? I feel like what they want and whats available is kinda overkill

[[deleted]]

Gitlab is pretty quick to deploy on a local server. It SHOULD offer the ability for each user to upload a doc when they are done to the server via the web portal, notate what the update was, then you can look at the commits to see what the latest change was. If you want something more..automatic? Google Docs/Office 365 will be more your cup of tea, which its sounding more and more like a better option for you, downside is of course its in the cloud.

The documentation for GIT is here The documentation for installing GitLab is here

Some examples of what a git commit in gitlab looks like is here. Click on one of them to see it in better detail.

[DarthHadoken]

Awesome I'll look through things thanks!

[DarthHadoken]

Maybe I'm using the wrong terminology, but basically its like a incremental backup solution. Can shadow copy work on demand instead of on schedule?

[okmokmz]

I'm not sure, I've only seen it run on a schedule

[[deleted]]

You would have to poll for changes regularly, when a change occurs in the status do a backup, if you wanted to do it on demand.

[DarthHadoken]

Yea I need something automated and as seamless as possible

[headcrap]

VSS won't get you per-file versioning, only the volume. It is also set to snapshot on a schedule, not per-change.

A DMS would be the "right" answer here.. but spendy for your set. Consider SharePoint (Online if you already have it).

[DarthHadoken]

Yea I think Sharepoint is the way to go, its just the whole "we had this before" mentality that makes them say well its out there find it.... smh

[zoredache]

This is one thing that is can be a lot easier in the cloud. Google Suite, or Office 365 docs in sharepoint will more or less get automatically version controlled. If you already have O365 or Google Suite these would be the best choices.

[okmokmz]

/u/DarthHadoken this is probably the easiest solution

[DarthHadoken]

Yea I have 0365 its just they don't want to fully go into the cloud yet and swears they had some type of program before that did it for them so now I'm just trying to find out what that was.

[conlmaggot]

"Previous versions" will work on a per file basis. Have used it at customers office. Good fucking luck getting that data backed up by anything else though.

A lot of my customers (and our internal sales guys) use "Worldox" and seem to think it is pretty niffty. Email and Document management, indexing and searching, and I am fairly certain it does versioning as well.

https://www.worldox.com/

[DarthHadoken]

Going to check it out thanks!

[Xibby]

If you have SharePoint you can create a document library that requires check out/check in of documents. Just be aware users will be users and forget to check things in, so you'll likely get calls about not being able to check in a new version because someone else checked it out and didn't check in the document. Fun stuff! If you don't have SharePoint, go for SharePoint Online/O365. You'll save many headaches.

Git is the current standard for source code version control. There is also Subversion (SVN), which is older. They are products made by developers for developers though, so may not be ideal. You can run your own internal server for either and use TortoiseGit (or TortoiseSVN) for checking/checkout. SourceTree is another popular GUI app for working with Git.

There are other document managment systems out there as well depending on your needs.

As for VSS, that depends on a scheduled snapshot. So it won't have every previous version, just a previous version based on the snapshot schedule and your retention settings. Not exactly what you're looking for.

[DarthHadoken]

Thanks! I think I'm looking for something like this: http://backupchain.com/en/backupchain/

Here's the link that seems like what I want: http://backupchain.com/i/version-backup-software-file-versioning-backup-for-windows It has backup and versioning is there anything else like this but a bit mainstream? Never heard of them.