Before you begin uploading data

We recommend that you create a full backup of the Sage CRM database before uploading new records. A full backup enables you to roll back any changes made by Data Upload, if necessary. If you don't have a full database backup and something goes wrong while you're uploading new records, you might have to delete them from the Sage CRM database manually.

If you don't have sufficient permissions to create full backups of the Sage CRM database, ask your database administrator to back up the database for you.

To create a full backup of the Sage CRM database, you can use Microsoft SQL Server Management Studio. In this example, we'll use Management Studio supplied with SQL Server 2014 to back up the Sage CRM database.

1. Open SQL Server Management Studio:
   at a command prompt, enter ssms.exe
2. Specify parameters to connect to the Microsoft SQL Server computer that hosts the Sage CRM database.
3. In the left pane (Object Explorer), expand the Databases node to locate the Sage CRM database.
   By default, the name of the database is CRM.
4. Right-click the Sage CRM database, point to Tasks, and then click Back Up.
   
5. In the dialog box that opens, do the following:
   1. From Backup type, select Full.
   2. Under Backup component, select Database.
   3. From Back up to, select Disk.
   4. Click OK and wait until Management Studio backs up the database.

Now you can add new records to the database using the Data Upload feature. You can always revert to the previous version of the database using the full backup you have created.

For more information about backing up an Azure SQL database, see Automated backups - Azure SQL Database & Azure SQL Managed Instance on docs.microsoft.com.