COPIES FOR THE DIOCESE ====================== A diocese that subscribes to diocesan copies keeps a safe copy of the records of each of its parishes on parishrecordkeeper.com. If a parish computer is stolen, breaks down or is wiped, the registers and the closed years of the parish accounts are not lost: the diocese has them. It is custody, not sharing. The parish sends; the diocese keeps. Once a copy has been sent, the parish can no longer see, download or delete it - only the diocese can. Nothing the parish does to its own workspace afterwards reaches the copies the diocese holds. WHAT IT COSTS ------------- A diocesan workspace costs nothing extra. What it needs is parishes that send: each parish has its own workspace, with the ordinary contribution for one, three or five years (see WorkspaceBenefits.txt) - and a parish whose workspace has run out can no longer send, which the Diocese Office shows beside every parish. A diocese may also PAY CENTRALLY for all its parishes. It then gets a group reduction on the plan price, on top of the discount a longer term already carries: at present 10 % from 10 parishes, 15 % from 20 parishes and 20 % from 40 parishes. The table with the amounts per parish is on parishrecordkeeper.com, under Frequently Asked Questions. A central payment extends every linked parish at once, each from its own current date, so a parish that still had time left keeps it. WHAT A COPY CONTAINS -------------------- - The datafile, exactly as it is on the computer at the moment of sending. - Every P-ledger archive of that datafile. These are the AccountsP_....archive files that ACCOUNTS ARCHIVE | NEW YEAR writes. They matter: starting a new year empties the P-ledger, so the closed years exist ONLY in those archive files. The I-ledger stays inside the datafile for its whole life and needs nothing extra. - The number of records in the main tables, so the diocese can notice a copy that is suddenly much smaller than the one before. Everything is packed into one zip file first, which makes it about five times smaller and much quicker to send. FOR THE PARISH: SENDING A COPY ------------------------------ Open CONTROL PANEL -> SERVER ACTIONS -> COPY FOR THE DIOCESE, and press SEND A COPY TO THE DIOCESE NOW. - Only an administrator of the parish workspace can send. - You may send at any time. A new copy simply REPLACES the previous one you sent, until the diocese closes its next collection (see below). Pressing the button twice costs nothing. - When the diocese asks for copies, Parish Record Keeper tells the workspace administrator when it starts, with the deadline. If the diocese chose to, an e-mail arrives as well. - When the upload helper is installed, the copy is sent in the background: you can carry on working, or even close the program. - The window lists the copies sent so far and what became of each. It is a receipt, not a download. WHOSE ARCHIVE FILES ARE WHOSE. Several datafiles can share one computer, and older archive files do not record which datafile they were made from. The first time you send, Parish Record Keeper may list such files and ask whether they belong to the datafile you are working with. Answer once; the answer is remembered. New archive files record their datafile by themselves. AT THE END OF THE YEAR. After ACCOUNTS ARCHIVE | NEW YEAR, a parish that belongs to a diocese is offered to send a copy straight away, because the closed year now exists only in the new archive file on this computer. FOR THE DIOCESE OFFICE ---------------------- Open CONTROL PANEL -> DIOCESE OFFICE and sign in with the account the administrator of parishrecordkeeper.com added to the diocese. No datafile of your own is needed. ASK THE PARISHES FOR COPIES opens a collection: give it a name (for example "Year-end 2026"), a deadline and a message. Every parish administrator is told the next time Parish Record Keeper starts, and by e-mail if you choose. Only one request can be open at a time; CANCEL THE OPEN REQUEST withdraws it. The PARISHES list shows each parish's newest copy and whether it has answered the open request. ENDORSE THE COLLECTION freezes what the parishes have sent: each parish's newest copy - or, for a parish that sent nothing new, its previous copy - is kept in that collection. Copies sent afterwards count for the next one. You can also endorse without having asked first; the copies sent so far then become a collection of their own. WHAT IS KEPT. The diocese keeps its newest few endorsed collections (usually 3) plus the ones it PINS (usually up to 5) - pin a year-end collection to keep it for longer. When a collection falls out of that window, its copies are removed from the server, unless another kept collection still holds them. P-ledger archives are never removed. A removed copy stays in the list, as the record that it was sent. FLAGGED COPIES. A copy with far fewer records than the parish's previous one (a register emptied by mistake, the wrong datafile open) is FLAGGED. It does not push out the previous good copy: both are kept, and an old collection that holds a parish's last good copy is kept beyond the usual number. When you know why the copy is smaller - the parish removed duplicates, say - choose it and press ACCEPT FLAGGED COPY AS CORRECT. DOWNLOADING. DOWNLOAD LATEST COPY OF SELECTED, DOWNLOAD LATEST COPY OF ALL PARISHES and DOWNLOAD SELECTED COPY put the copies into DataFiles\Diocese \\ on this computer, with each parish's P-ledger archives in an "archives" folder beside its datafile. DOWNLOAD P-LEDGER ARCHIVES OF SELECTED fetches every archive the diocese holds for that parish. OPEN A DOWNLOADED DATAFILE opens one like any other datafile; its ACCOUNTS ARCHIVE | NEW YEAR screen then lists that parish's archives only. Changes made there stay on this computer - they are never sent back to the parish. WHO MAY DO WHAT. A diocese ADMINISTRATOR runs collections, pins and accepts; a VIEWER may look and download. The administrator of parishrecordkeeper.com links the parishes to the diocese and adds the people who work for it. GOOD TO KNOW ------------ - Storage: the diocese has a storage allowance on the server, and the Diocese Office shows how much of it is used. When it is full, a parish is told so before anything is sent. - A parish that is not linked to a diocese has nobody to send to, and the button says so. - Packing before sending now applies to the whole workspace: publishing or downloading the master and sending a version also travel zipped, on computers that support it (Windows 10 from 2018 onwards, and Windows 11). Older computers send and receive unpacked files, exactly as before.