How to enable/disable Atlas taxonomy backup service

Atlas comes with a taxonomy backup service that runs in the background once a day, that saves a file with a copy of the Atlas' taxonomy in SharePoint (in the Atlas configuration workspace under Site contents -> Atlas Configuration Files -> Term store backups).

This background process is run on Azure and it is enabled by default in every implementation of Atlas. However, in case you require to disable the service (or enable it again) because of any reason at any time, these are the steps to take in Azure to modify the status of the service:

Modify the Taxonomy backup configuration settings of your Atlas' Azure implementation

The next steps must be performed with an account that has at least "Contributor" permissions over the resource group where Atlas is sitting under you Azure subscription:

• Open your browser in the Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com).  You will need to connect to the tenant where your Atlas Resource Group is Deployed.
• Open the Resource Group and locate the Function App named func-atlas-tf-xxxx-xxxx (the last part of the name will depend on your company name acronym and environment name).

• In the opened Function App, select Configuration in the Settings section and locate the Application Setting Named DisableTaxonomyBackupFunctions.  This will show the value set in your actual Atlas Deployment.

• You may find the value false. This value means that the service is running and the backup will be taken on next execution (once a day).
• If at any time you want to disable the taxonomy backup service, set this value to true.
• Scroll to the top of the page and click on "Save" and "Continue" to apply the changes

 

Restore Process

As a restore process we expect your IT team to follow standard Patterns and Practices (PnP). 

The method required to do the Restore of the backup in xml format is this one (not to be confused with the import of a csv for an initial workload) 

Import-PnPTermGroupFromXml | PnP PowerShell

It's a single line of code plus the connexion details (if this is run as a user, no requirement of any other permissions than the user being a term store admin)

It is NOT our intention to create any scripts and document them for this type of activities and we insist on our clients' IT Teams to use the PnP as we ourselves follow Best Patterns and Practices exactly for that reason, to remain standard and compatible with existing IT processes around SharePoint and Microsoft 365.