VIQ Backup Features and Benefits
The following are some of the known issues or limitations of the app that arise from restrictions or behaviors specific to the BigCommerce platform.
For the following data entities, a one-time full backup is performed during app installation. After that, real-time backups are triggered automatically whenever changes are detected via BigCommerce Webhooks:
Customers
Orders
Channels
Categories
Products
Pages
Email Templates
By default, real-time backup is enabled for all of the above entities after installation. This can be enabled or disabled anytime from the Settings page.
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Important: Users are advised to initiate manual backup compulsorily, before making changes as well as immediately after making any changes, from the settings tab before making modifications or deletions to the data for the following mentioned entities.
Click on “Backup” button corresponding to each of the data entities given below.
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The following entities also receive a one-time full backup during app installation. However, realtime backups are not supported, as BigCommerce does not provide webhooks for these data types.
Brands
Coupons
Promotions
Blog Posts
301 Redirects
Gift Certificates
Users can initiate a manual full backup using the "Backup" button.
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Note: Please note that this is a backup tool, and data is not actively synced. As a result, the entities mentioned above may still appear as 'live' even if they have been deleted. We are currently exploring a backup-and-compare mechanism for a future release.
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Currently, BigCommerce does not provide APIs to back up banner or homepage carousel images. Since there is no API to transfer images from WebDAV, VIQ Backup does not back up any images stored in WebDAV.
Additionally, image url associations do not restore, because the BigCommerce API only returns the relative CDN url path, but 'not' the actual WebDAV url path. Hence, due to the BC API limitation of not returning the actual WebDAV path, deleted image links of products, variants, brands, and categories cannot be restored. If an image isn’t available, it will simply be skipped, and the products, variants, brands, and categories will still be created without the images.
a) When a deleted product is being restored, the system assigns it a new product ID. This is because BigCommerce generates product IDs incrementally, and as a result, VIQ Backup cannot retain the original product ID.
b) Updates to a product’s variant data (add, update, or delete) do not trigger BigCommerce webhooks. However, changes to other product fields do trigger webhook events.
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Therefore, to ensure that variant data is properly backed up, it is advisable to make a minor update to a standard product field (such as the description or name) whenever variant data is modified. This will trigger the webhook and allow the backup process to capture the changes to the variants.
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c) When a product is restored to a previous version in which the associated brand or category no longer exists, the following message is displayed:
In the initial release, inventory restoration will be limited to the default location only. Functionality for multiple locations, safety stock and low stock level thresholds will be considered for a subsequent release.
When a deleted brand is being restored, it is created with a new ID. As a result, previous associations are not retained and products must be manually re-associated. However, when a brand is restored to a previous version, the existing ID is preserved and associations remain intact.
When a deleted category is being restored, it is created with a new ID. As a result, previous associations are not retained, products must be manually re-associated, and the Template layout file resets to Default. However, when a category is restored to a previous version, the Template layout file remains unchanged and continues to reflect the value from the current version prior to restore.
When a deleted customer is being restored, it is created with a new ID, as a result, previous associations are not retained. Any changes to customer addresses — whether adding, deleting, or updating — do not trigger webhooks. To trigger a webhook and create a version, you must save the customer record. The BigCommerce API do exist for restoring the custom fields.
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Note: The Summary tab always displays the complete dataset. Difference comparison is not supported here. To view differences between versions, use the Source Code view.
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Important:
The deleted version cannot be indicated in the version dropdown list, for non-webhook entities such as:
because the webhook events are not available for these entities.
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Products, categories and promotions are associated with specific channels and are successfully restored to their respective channels. Customers are also linked to a channel and restored accordingly. Pages, 301 redirects, and email templates each have a direct association with a single channel and are restored to the same.
Brands, blog posts, coupon codes, and gift certificates are not channel-specific, while orders cannot be restored and moreover they have no channel dependency.
We do not restore orders in BigCommerce because they cannot be deleted, and restoring them could trigger actions like customer notification emails. Instead, historical versions are displayed in the Restore Center, allowing users to view and compare different versions.
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Currently, archived orders are not included in backups and therefore cannot be restored.
Occasionally, we receive multiple webhook notifications from BigCommerce for the same data change. While we typically identify and remove these duplicates, if there is a significant delay between the webhook events, the later-arriving data may be retained. This does not impact the accuracy or functionality of data restoration.
The Enable/Disable toggle controls the subscription to BigCommerce webhooks. When realtime backup of a data entity is disabled, VIQ Backup sends an immediate API request to unsubscribe; however, it may take up to 10 minutes for this change to take effect. In some cases, changes made just before disabling may still appear in the backup. This behavior is not due to accidental data capture but results from the timing and nature of data sent by BigCommerce during the transition.
We do not restore data that was deleted prior to App installation.
The page count shown in the dashboard may differ from the actual list of pages in the BigCommerce store, as there are no webhooks available to track deleted pages. As a result, the dashboard may display a higher count than the current number of pages in the store.
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Only the gift certificates (Orders > Gift Certificates) purchased by the customers are backed up and can be restored. The gift certificate settings (Marketing > Gift Certificates) are not backed up and cannot be restored.
When a deleted gift certificate is restored, it is created with a new ID. As a result, previous associations are not retained, orders must be manually re-associated.
At present, B2B data entities are not included in backups and therefore cannot be restored. Support for these entities may be considered in future releases.
To view our Onboarding steps, please access the following article → VIQ Backup Onboarding