Migration guide · RowingBeacon 2.1

Migrate from efa2 to RowingBeacon

Published on 27 October 2026 by Mathis Barré, creator of RowingBeacon · updated on 29 October 2026 · Tested with efa 2.5.3

Other languages:Version française · Deutsche Fassung · Versione italiana · Nederlandse versie

RowingBeacon takes over an efa2 project as it is: boats, persons, destinations, every logbook and, since version 2.1, boat reservations and damage reports. All it needs is a ZIP backup made by efa, with nothing to retype. The way back exists too: RowingBeacon exports a backup that efa2 can restore, so you can return to efa or keep it alongside.

What RowingBeacon brings over from efa2

• Boats, with their type and variants (for example 4x / 4-), which become riggings chosen when an outing starts.
• Persons, who become rowers, with their status and, when recorded in efa, gender, date of birth, membership number, email and address.
• Destinations, which become routes, with their distance.
• Every logbook in the project, merged into one history: each outing keeps its original logbook, crew, cox, captain, times, kilometres and comment.
• Outings in progress, which appear under “Boats in use” and are finished in RowingBeacon as usual.
• Names typed freely, which become guests (rowers) or archived external boats, so the history stays complete.
• Boat reservations, one-time and weekly ones, past ones included, with who reserved, the reason and the contact. They appear on the Reservations page, with a “reserved” label on the boat in the boathouse. See Boat reservations.
• Damage reports, open and repaired ones, with severity (efa’s three levels, fully usable, limited and not usable, become “Usable”, “Caution” and “Out of service”), description, who reported it, and the date, repairer, note and cost of the repair. They appear in the Damages tab of the Logbook. See Damages.
• Boats shown as “not available”, which are put out of service with the reason efa gave (winter storage, loan…).

RowingBeacon also keeps, without a screen for now, the rest of an efa2 project’s data: messages, standard crews, waters, outing groups, club work, DRV badges, saved statistics. It is kept as is and written back when you export to efa2, so nothing is lost in a round trip.

The modules your project has data for (Distances, Outing types, Full member profile, Guests, Captain, and now Reservations and Damages) are turned on by the import. You can turn them off in Management › Modules without erasing any data.

Before you start

• A Windows or Linux computer for RowingBeacon. efa can stay installed elsewhere: only the backup file travels.
• Administrator access to efa, to create the backup.
• If RowingBeacon already holds data, it will be replaced. A backup is made automatically just before the import, and can be restored in Management › Data.

Step 1: create a backup in efa

Open the efa admin panel (when efaBase starts, or with the “Admin Mode” button in the efa Boathouse), then click “Backups” in the File column. In the “Create Backup” tab, leave “Save Configuration Data” and “Save Project” ticked, then click “Create Backup”. efa tells you where it saved the file, named for example efaBackup_20261027_124231.zip. The labels quoted here are those of efa’s English interface.

Instead of the ZIP, you can also point directly to efa’s data folder: the one holding the .efa2project file.

Step 2: import the project into RowingBeacon

Download RowingBeacon and launch it. On first launch, choose the “I'm coming from efa” profile, then your ZIP backup (“efa ZIP backup…”) or your data folder (“Data folder…”). If RowingBeacon is already set up, go through Management › Data, in the efa2 section, then “Import an efa2 project”.

Step 3: check before importing

Before writing anything, RowingBeacon shows what it found: the number of boats, rowers, routes and outings, the logbooks involved, outings in progress, guests created for names typed freely, and, when the project has them, reservations, open and repaired damages and unavailable boats. Compare with efa, then click “Import and start” (“Replace and import” on a computer already in use).

The screenshot shows a fictional club. In our test with efa 2.5.3, on a demo club with anonymised names, the preview announced 39 boats, 101 rowers, 4 routes and 8,692 outings across the 2025 and 2026 logbooks. After the import, a coxed pair outing left in progress in efa appeared among the boats in use, with its cox, its captain and a guest typed freely; a finished outing kept its times, its route, its 8 km and its comment.

Going back to efa2, or keeping both

In RowingBeacon, Management › Data › “Export to efa2” creates a ZIP backup in efa2 format, with everything that was imported and everything recorded since: outings, but also reservations and damage reports, which efa reads as its own. A boat taken out of service in RowingBeacon (winter storage, loan…) appears in efa as “not available”, with its reason. In efa, open Backups › “Restore from Backup”, choose that file, then restore. efa shows the backup’s contents before restoring it.

We checked this round trip with efa 2.5.3: a club exported from RowingBeacon was restored into efa, two outings were recorded there, then the project came back into RowingBeacon with the same numbers of boats, rowers and routes, plus those two outings.

What version 2.1 changes for a club coming from efa

With version 2.0, reservations and damage reports were only kept, without a screen. Version 2.1 reads them: they appear in the Reservations page and the Damages tab, can be edited there, and go back to efa on export. Open damages used to turn into incidents on import; they now stay damages, with their severity.

If you imported your project with 2.0: damage reports kept by that import are moved to the Damages module the first time 2.1 starts. Reservations are not moved on their own. To get them, import your efa project again with 2.1. As an import replaces the club data, first use Management › Data › “Export to efa2” if you have recorded outings in RowingBeacon since, and import that file: it contains them.

Version 2.1 also adds automatic updates: RowingBeacon looks for a new version at start-up and every 6 hours, shows what is new, and backs up the club data right before installing. A club on 2.0.1 installs 2.1 by hand once; after that, updates are offered by the app itself.

Limits to know

• The import replaces all current RowingBeacon data (a backup is made just before). It does not merge two clubs.
• Only efa2 projects (efa 2.x) are read. efa 1.x data is not.
• RowingBeacon and efa2 do not sync: each move from one to the other goes through a backup and replaces the data entirely.
• An outing left open in efa before the day of the import is finished by the import, with a note in its comment.
• A reservation efa wrote in a way RowingBeacon cannot display (no date, a weekly slot running past midnight, a boat that no longer exists) is not shown, but is kept and goes back to efa unchanged. The same goes for damage reports of a boat that is not in the project.
• When exporting to efa2, incidents are not carried over (efa2 has no equivalent) unless they were reported as damage, and a crew of more than 24 rowers or with several coxes is cut. RowingBeacon tells you when you export.
• Your club’s own outing types turn into “normal Session” if you restore the export into a fresh efa without your configuration.
• Messages, standard crews, waters, outing groups, club work, DRV badges and saved statistics are kept and written back, but have no screen in RowingBeacon.
• RowingBeacon Desktop is available for Windows and Linux.

Frequently asked questions