========================================= T A S K Z I P W I S H L I S T . T E X T ========================================= Below is a list of new features requested by users. Any features listed here will eventually be done, but are big changes and will have to wait until the next major release... and given how busy I have been over the past year with one son, having more will probably prevent me from doing much other than limited bug releases for 3-4 years. I want to thank all of you who have taken the time to install and use TaskZip, and then to go beyond and email me with these excellent suggestions. Without your excellent input, TaskZip would not have gotten this far. ----------------------------------------- WISH LIST: ----------------------------------------- 09/25/2001 ---------- - Earl Lumpkins: Runs as MMC, administerable from any computer. - Earl Lumpkins: Integrated basic encryption. - Earl Lumpkins: Able to use hidden administrator only shares for backup target folders, and source folders. - Earl Lumpkins: Able to use TAR format to bypass ZIP 4 GB limitation. - Earl Lumpkins: Ability to use NET SEND commands to send alert messages. - Earl Lumpkins: Ability to send X number of backups to one network path, and Z number of backups to a different network path. - Felix Schwarz: Incremental backups should perform a complete backup for the initial run, not just the files that are changed that date, or that happen to have the archive bit set. - Geoff Anderson: For CD-RW backups, would be nice to be able to have TaskZip automatically determine whether correct disk was in place based on volume name. - Hynek Sladecek: Add Optional final report which summarizes processing (e.g.: "Successfully archive 24 files and 10215 bytes"). - Mark Jermanski: Add a CRC check to the zip file if users so choose (verify zip output with zip.dll call). - Chris Barret: Have TaskZip recognize that a backup job is overdue if computer was turned off when scheduled time passed. Instead of scheduling automatically for next date, have TaskZip start backing up immediately. - Stan Coleman: New feature to delete any ziaNNNNNN files that started to compress, but then failed out. Leaving them in place eats up a lot of drive space. - Stan Coleman: Allow users to choose a different path for the temp file creation when zipping. Currently, the default is to use the same path as the Target (or output) file is built. - Michal Fryska/Charles Hawkes: Add ability to enter user name and password for secure directories (such as Samba shares on Linux). - Michal Fryska: Add ability to schedule backups based on size (exceeds certain pre-defined limit), or schedule based on trigger of file being added. - Keith Walton: Request to add option in File | Preferences so that users can toggle on/off errors when file spec items do not exist...just continue forward rather than kill the entire backup job and move on. Note that a current workaround is setup your directory structure so that your backup item is a parent directory... then the children directories can be empty without causing a problem. - John Reilly: Multi-machine backups for networked users. - John Reilly: Remote control reporting (logs) too. - John Reilly: Control via browser from home on holiday, etc. - John Reilly: Feature to automatically determine files that are out of date and back them up. - John Reilly/David Starr: Defer backups of locked files, checking until they are unlocked at which time the are backed up...or figure out a way to unlock them. TaskZip needs to handle locked files more gracefully. Continue backing up all other files and wait to return later when the file is not locked to back it up, or figure out a way to unlock the file. At present, TaskZip will successfully skip items in the Add File dialog (entire folders with wildcard specs), but will not successfully continue backing up individual items if a locked file error is encountered. - John Reilly: Feature needed where disk space is assessed before backup to popup error before backup rather than after backup failed. - John Reilly: File restore would be a good feature to add. - Earl Lumpkins: Ability for backup job to mirror copy files not to a single drop point, but to multiple drop points simultaneously. - Earl Lumpkins: I.S. Administrators want the ability to dynamically add and remove networked drives rather than rely on UNC paths (\\Server\Path). There are some things you cannot do with UNC paths where a mapped drive comes in very handy (esp. in conjunction with the undocumented pre-backup and post-backup command-line batch jobs). - Felix Schwarz: Show date and time column on main window for Last Run. - Felix Schwarz: Make it possible to have grandfathered backups for non-compression just like compression...use named folders with appropriate extensions just like the zip files are made. - W.Gaddis: Make a warning message that backup is about to occur and user must exit out of any applications that might lock files and prevent a successful backup from occurring. - Bob Cherochak: Make TaskZip compress to RAR, or gzip, or other format. - Mel Farmer: If there is an error that precludes TaskZip from successfully finishing a backup, the zip file will not be completed. If user selects "No Stop, Keep Running" then unless s/he checks the error and event logs, will not notice that backup failed. Fine and good, but what about when the grandfathered backups keep chugging along deleting good backups until after X number of days all existing grandfather backups have been erased, with no new ones replacing them...OOPS! User is Shit Outta Luck. - Clean code up. - Consider taking stuff off of this wish list and making a shareware version of TaskZip, all the while maintaining the freeware version too, albeit with lesser functionality. Would have license activation code. Am hesistant to do it because of limited time...even if made money, may not be worth the effort (time is more important). ...10/01/2001...Do not want to do this at all now due to time constraints. Cannot support the shareware app at this time. Leave 100% freeware with no shareware version. 12/06/2000 ---------- - Update Help file with command line parms and other info that is contained in the Readme.txt file. - Add in John's new UI for handling command-line runs before and after backup job (see below). 11/25/2000 ---------- - Figure out how to get wildcard characters [, ], and ? to work as exclude filenames...not parameters for exclude. Some users use these wildcard characters in their filename conventions. - Have auto-scheduled backups occur without the tray icon. Currently to have auto-scheduled backups run, you *must* have the tray icon, or select manual mode where the scheduled backups do not run. Gerald Donker suggests that a third solution in between would be beneficial to prevent users from accessing what the I.S. staff setup. 10/29/2000 ---------- - Make settings for command-lines to be run both before and after the backup is run. Users have requested this for ftp functionality (send .zip file to web), and to run other utilities before/after zipping. Note: you can get something like X-Drive (look this name up on search engine to find url) to seamlessly work with TaskZip for ftp's (the drive looks like any other to TaskZip). John almost has this done. It is getting close...BUT I will defer for now due to time constraints. - If change saving format from _1, _2, etc. to dated save, the old format save is left forever. User must know to go in and delete old zip files left over after changed save format...Maybe should go in if change format and delete, or prompt to delete? - Make option to map drive dynamically prior to backup, execute backup, then unmap the drive. This will help with old Novell networks, etc. that do not fully support UNC (universal named connections). Could even check if UNC paths work, then if not map a path. - Schedule jobs to run at windows startup. - Add date range critiera option to backup wildcard file selection. [From John's List] - Make non-compression backup jobs also keep history with multiple named copies (Dir20001010, Dir20001011, etc.). Size is an issue though...if keep too many grandfather copies around, have to check source size first before backup occurs. [From John's List] - Make a wizard that takes a zip file and creates a .tzp package from the zip file. Henceforth, zipping would be automated...but user would have to answer TaskZip specific questions. Zip file not store drives is one issue, and if zip file not store paths, have to trap for and notify user. [From John's List] - Ability to highlight several backup jobs and relocate their target directory. [From John's List] - Ability to make backup job templates that can run against other drives or directories. Need relative path handling of some sort. However, could just copy a job and modify the drive or directory. [From John's List] - Multi-threading while executing a backup would make the whole thing appear far more responsive, and leave room for running multiple concurrent backups. [From John's List] - Log edit, delete, and create of backup jobs. [From John's List] - Create method to categorize backup jobs (like with a tree control and groupings) so make more sense rather than just listed all on same equivalency. [From John's List] - Cannot edit files in listbox, can only delete them, or add more by clicking add button. Would be nice to just edit them in the listbox...I have to ponder this request though because adds more to the code, but for what? For power users to save having to click a button at expense of simpler users who need to be led along. - Backup Jobs have schedule that includes both full and incremental for same job. Do not know how to make this appear in GUI, need to give some thought. - Have TaskZip shutdown other running programs like Outlook so does not impact the backup. - Add support for multiple languages throughout the GUI dialogs. 10/18/2000 ---------- - Number of days/weeks/months to keep grandfathered backups around is a drop down. That drop down contains the same count as user set in preferences (1-99). Would be better if it knew 12 for months, 31 for days, and 4 for weeks, or something like that (rather than 99 if that is what user set for Keep N copies around in preferences window). - Copying a backup job two times yields "Copy of Job", and "Copy of Copy of Job". Do like Windows Explorer (Copy 2). - Running multiple backups would be nice if window title bar indicated which backup job was currently running (leave status bar text listing of file archived as is). 03/14/2000 ---------- - Allow users to specify where the transaction log gets written to. Gilberto G. in Portugal wants to be able to redirect all users transaction logs to a central Linux server so that all the information regarding user's backups would be in one place on the network. Until I fix this, just make a backup job using no compression that just copies that taskzip.log file to the central server -- temporary work-around. 03/12/2000 ---------- - For non-compression backups (not applicable to zip backups), backup to a temp directory. When entire backup is complete with no failures, then delete existing directory, and rename temp to that name. Right now, the design is risky because if you have a failure while backing up to the one-shot, no-older-copies- kept-around, non-compression backup...then all is lost that is not in the current backup. This is an important design bug to fix...but note that if a failure occurs during backup, user is notified immediately and original source still exists. This is why I prefer backing up to zip files for the history, and then weekly backing up my entire zip file history directory to another computer. - Make option to use as NT Service for NT installs (thanks Sean and Earl). Pre- 03/01/2000 --------------- - Make backups prompt users to immediately execute a backup job if the previous run was skipped. This one narrowly missed going into the current release, but would have taken quite a bit of testing and was risky so I skipped it. - Make option for Auto-Notification via email for both successful backup run, or failed backup run. - Add logic so users can select "Last Thursday of Month", "Second Monday of Month", etc. - Make a new backup type similar to Incremental, but that just updates a single zip file with changes. This way, the single backup would always contain one backup with the most recent copy of everything in it. One draw back is that there would be no grandfather backups (_1, _2, etc.). - Add ability to specify higher or lower compression rates. Pretty easy to do since zip.exe supports it...but would require addition to .tzp file structure so omit until later when change the .tzp file structure all at once. - Postpone backups until the network activity is below a specified threshold. This will prevent excessive network traffic and is important for huge, multi-gigabyte backups. - Make option for selecting files (wildcard-like) whose date/time stamp meets specified criteria (between date range, after specified date, etc.). - Do not rename incremental backup files with the _1, _2, etc. if there was nothing to backup...just leave the files as is. - Instead of recurse subfolders checkbox applying to entire backup job (all folders selected either on or off), make /s switch apply to individual folder selections. - Add Version Stamp to .tzp files. Upgrades would then know what fields to expect when loading / savving .tzp files. - Add ability to span diskettes for removable media. - Add -A option to backup job definitions. This would allow users to make self-extracting zip files instead of just zip files. I really liked this option for people who do not have a zip utility...but most people have a zip utility. Add it in later when revise the saving of .tzp files. - Allow option to pause after each backup job is executed, and before next one is executed so that can put in new diskettes. This item will go away when I eventually re-write the TaskZip compression, removing the zip.exe engine and replacing with a zip.dll with more features...one of them being the ability to span diskettes. Spanning will eliminate this feature request. - Add ability to multi-select file types from the Pick File dialog's wildcard selection tab. This would be faster for user than having to repeatedly hit the Add File... button and click all the buttons and drop-downs to fill out their selections. ----------------------------------------- REQUESTS WILL NOT DO: ----------------------------------------- - One user had a good request that TaskZip list files like WinZip rather than Backup Jobs in the scheduler window. Although this would make TaskZip more like the other zipping tools, it would defeat the purpose of the scheduling window where you schedule backup jobs. - If multi-select several backup jobs and click edit, will just open the last job in list for edit. Should open all jobs, just the shared properties for altering. Would take too much work to implement though, so nix it. - Add restore feature for recovery instead of popping up Winzip or other zip utility. Decide no because those apps work fine and not need to duplicate the functionality. - Make scheduler run as separate executable. Decide no because one of TaskZip's strengths is that is all in one package and simple to use. Splitting off the scheduler would allow more sophisticated users to choose their own scheduler (i.e.: Windows scheduler, or At command for NT); but would cause less advanced users to opt out of using TaskZip. - Ability to make hierarchical backup jobs (one that calls many sub-jobs). Could use scripting too. Will not do however, because few people use it and take a lot of time to build it well. [From John's List] - Mel Farmer: Could make TaskZip icon change as jobs are active (backup is running) at task tray. - User noticed bug where once upgrade to version 2.xx; you can never downgrade back to 1.xx. The fix will be for you to manually change the .tzp files so that all the INI-like text is removed at the bottom half of the file, and leave the top half, plain-text, older .tzp format data intact.