Handing EDGEBIC Over to a New IT Owner

A handover pack for EDGEBIC is eight items: the database and its authentication, the backup arrangement, administrator access, the role map, mask ownership, the scheduling policy decisions with their reasoning, the upgrade routine, and the recovery steps. In EDGEBIC by User Solutions the software will tell a new owner every current setting and none of the reasoning, which is exactly the half that gets lost when somebody leaves. This post is the pack to write before that happens.

If you are the person inheriting rather than leaving, read this as a discovery list. Both directions use the same eight items.

1. The Database and How It Is Reached

Open the DataSource tab in Settings. The card at the top shows the active connection: a connected indicator, the provider, and the target. That is the single most important fact about the installation, because it decides who owns the data.

Record three things. Which provider (a single-file local database on one workstation, or a shared SQL Server database that every installation points at). Which server and database name, if it is the shared one. And which authentication mode, since Windows authentication stores no password at all and ties access to the network identity IT already manages, while SQL authentication stores an encrypted password tied to the Windows account that entered it. That last detail matters at handover: a configuration copied to another Windows user cannot decrypt the saved password, and that user simply re-enters it. Choosing between the two is covered in choosing a database as an IT decision.

2. The Backup Arrangement

Not "is there a backup" but four specifics: what is copied, where it goes, how often, and who confirms it worked.

For the local single-file database, the Export button on the DataSource tab makes a timestamped copy in one click, safe to use while the application is running. For SQL Server, the scheduling database belongs in IT's standard rotation, and the handover should name the person who can confirm it is genuinely in there rather than assumed to be.

Add the standing rule while you are at it: take an export before any data clear, any mass routing re-import, and any provider switch. It costs one click. The routine around it lives in keeping the database healthy over time.

3. Administrator Access

The new owner needs working administrator access before the old one leaves, tested rather than assumed.

Two facts shape this. The founding administrator account created on first launch cannot be deleted, and neither can the built-in Administrator role, which always holds every permission including new ones added by product updates. Those are safety nets, not a succession plan.

The plan is: the departing administrator creates the new person's account with an administrator role, the new person signs in and confirms they can reach Security, DataSource, and Data Management, and only then is the leaver deactivated rather than deleted. Deactivating bars sign-in and keeps their history attributable. The wider practice is in protecting administrator access and deactivating users and offboarding.

4. The Role Map

List the roles that exist, what each is for, and who holds it. Then hand over the one duty attached to them: after every upgrade, review the custom roles, because new permissions are granted automatically to the built-in Administrator role only and custom roles must be granted them explicitly. Without that note, the new owner will eventually field a report that a feature works for them and for nobody else, and will spend an afternoon on it.

5. Who Owns the Import Masks

An import mask maps columns in a file to fields in the database, and each one has a human owner somewhere: the person who knows which report produces the file and what happens when its layout changes. Name them. Note which entity each mask loads and roughly when it runs. The governance discipline around this is in the data import governance workflow, and if the plant runs scheduled or file-watched imports, add their schedule from administering scheduled syncs.

6. The Scheduling Policy Decisions, With Reasons

The Schedule tab in Settings holds the site policy: the default direction stamped on new jobs and quotes, what happens when a backward job does not fit, which optimizer engine runs, how a short confirm is replanned, how far ahead the engine may search for capacity, whether parallel hours roll into job totals, and whether sub-assemblies are scheduled with their parent.

Your successor can read all seven values in thirty seconds. What they cannot read is why. Write one line per setting: what was chosen, when, and what problem it solved. This is the single highest-value page in the pack, and it belongs in the broader conventions document described in documenting your plant's conventions.

7. The Upgrade Routine

Short and specific: back up first, upgrade, let the database update itself on first launch, verify before the team signs in, then review the custom roles. If the plant keeps a training database, note that upgrades are rehearsed there first, per setting up a training copy. The full routine is in upgrading safely.

8. What to Do When It Will Not Start

If the application cannot reach its database, a recovery window appears instead of the main window. It shows the error, embeds the data source editor so the connection can be fixed on the spot, and offers four actions: retry the same connection, reset to the default local database, repair the database, or exit.

The one to explain is repair, because the name oversells it. It rebuilds internal version bookkeeping for a database whose structure is already current and does not change your data. Use it when support says so or when the error mentions migration history. See database recovery and repair explained and troubleshooting database connections.

The Pack at a Glance

Write those eight and a handover takes an hour instead of a quarter. Systems at the US Navy, GE, and Cummins have outlived the people who commissioned them because the decisions were written down, not because the software remembered them. For the full administrator reference, read the EDGEBIC admin guide, and for the review rhythm the new owner should adopt immediately, the quarterly admin health check.