Archiving / Purging Power Broker Data

SUMMARY: Expect to spend an entire day doing these steps if you have an office of 20 staff members or more. These steps can take a considerable amount of time.
Consider running these procedures from the server if you have 40 staff or more.

The Power Broker Archiving Procedure reduces the amount of data that Power Broker has to work through on a daily basis. By reducing the amount of data that you have in your active databases speeds up general processing time, as well as monthly or daily maintenance of the program.

Ensure you follow all steps and create a valid/tested backup before you proceed.

NOTE: If you are a larger brokerage, please review some further notes at the end of this document.

Preparation: Backup – Step 1
We strongly suggest an alternative method of backing up your Power Broker data other than your regular tape/CD/DVD or whatever you use before you run the archive procedure. You do NOT want to solely rely on one form of backup.

Preparation: Server Shut Down – PowerTools – Step 2
You would begin by shutting down your server and leaving it off for 10 seconds with ‘no’ electricity. This will unlock any files that were left open. Your local technicians opinion will differ and potentially NOT shut down for ten seconds which could create problems with locked files. The local tech will say that they can unlock the files without shutting down, but from years of experience, it’s just better to simply shut down and turn your server off for the 10 seconds. Once the server has been restarted, reboot the workstation that you will be working on and then run the PowerTools utility ( In PowerTools, choose Select ALL, and then Run Selected Items).
https://support-power-broker.com/pb4powertools.htm

Archive or Retrieve Notes/Memos – Utilities Menu – Step 3
Go to Utilities, Archive or Retrieve Notes/Memos and use two years as the preferred date and click on ‘Archive’.

Archive Customer and Policies – Customer Menu – Step 4
Go to Customers, Archive Customers and Policies, and use two years as the preferred date

Extra Archiving Options – Step 5
Go to Utilities, Archive Claims older than 5 to 7 years depending on preference

Purge Procedure – Step 6 – Optional – Ensure you have a backup!
Go to Utilities, Purge Archived Policies:
Ensure that you have a few copies of the \bro directory in a few different locations. A local backup, and an off-site backup would be a wise idea should you ever need to gain access to this historical data, you have a few options to get at the data.

You would choose Base Purge on 2) Expiry Policy Date and either use the default date of 3 years ago, or change the expiry date to whatever you want.
It WILL purge archived policies of active OR in-active customers.

Run Powertools once again or run your Fix Corrupted Database, and your two Pack and Re-Indexes found in the Utilities Menu.

If you have any questions, please contact our office at 778-433-2477 or email: techsupport@power-broker.com

 

NOTE for LARGER Offices: The Power Broker Archive Procedure generally takes your older data from an active database, and appends it to an archived database. Should however you were to archive year after year, your archive database files would fill up and slow down all levels of performance. Larger offices should review these next few steps…

Here is a simple method of establishing if you need to change the order in which you archive:

  1. Ensure that everyone has exit Power Broker
  2. Opens Windows Explorer (Right click on Start, Left click on Explore)
  3. Right click over the \BRO folder on your server
  4. Choose ‘Search’
  5. Type in the name of the which in this case it’s *.*
  6. Click Search
  7. At the top of the screen, click on View, and change it to Details

Once the search is complete, you should see a row at the top right called ‘Size’. Click on Size two times to place the larger files at the top of the list. ( You may even want to take a ‘before’ screen capture to compare to an ‘after’ screen capture to see what difference in file size everything has changed too ).

Should you find any files larger than 1 Gig, you may want to first do STEP 6 which is the Purge procedure, and then the Archive procedure second, and then repeat the Purge procedure a second time.

In most offices, Power Broker is setup to Archive on Download. These files have a tendency to build rather large. It would be in your best interest to PURGE first, ensuring that you have the most amount of space available to trap your archived data, and then once you archive, you would purge a second time, reducing the amount of data you have to backup, as well as sift though when you summon an archived file for review.