Frequently Asked Questions

No. Facebook, Instagram, Threads and TikTok connect through the platform's own authorisation screen — you sign in there with your own admin login and grant Brolly read access. Brolly never sees, needs or stores the account's password. X, LinkedIn and YouTube connect from the account's public URL or handle, with no sign-in at all.

This also means you can archive many pages without collecting credentials from the people who run them: each page's admin connects it with their own sign-in. See Connecting Your First Account.

Yes, for the platforms that connect through an authorisation screen. When you connect a Facebook, Instagram, TikTok or Threads account, the dialog's Historic capture choice offers All time (backfill as far back as the platform makes the account's history available) or Custom, where you pick the earliest day to capture from. The choice shows afterwards as the account's Time range in its drawer under Settings → Accounts. X, LinkedIn and YouTube are set up by the Brolly team, who can apply a start date on request. To change an existing account's start date, email support@brolly.com.au. Recordkeeping obligations usually apply to everything your organisation has published, so All time is what most organisations want.

A start date is different from a search range: filters and export dates only choose what you look at or produce, not what Brolly captures or keeps. You can still work with any period you like. In the Archive, open Filters and set a Timeframe (or Custom for exact dates), then search, review or export that view; the export wizard also takes a Start date and End date. See Using the Archive and Exports. If your organisation has a formal requirement to limit what is retained, email support@brolly.com.au to talk through the options.

Brolly captures Facebook pages, not personal profiles. Profiles are for people; pages are for organisations and public roles, and Brolly is designed to help organisations meet recordkeeping, privacy and FOI obligations.

For an elected official — a councillor or a minister — this means comments made from a personal profile in a group or on someone else's page are not captured in your organisation's archive (unless that page is itself connected to Brolly). To stay compliant, use a Facebook page for work-related conversations, post as the page wherever a group allows it, and connect that page to Brolly so its posts, comments and messages are archived. Some groups only let profiles post; the group's admin can change its membership settings to allow pages as well.

Paid "dark" posts target audiences you define in a campaign and never appear on your page's public feed.

• Facebook — yes, once they attract comments. When somebody comments on a paid post it becomes a conversation, and Brolly archives both the comments and the post. The comments can appear in your archive slightly before the post they belong to, because the post itself is not captured in real time. A paid post that attracts no comments at all is not archived, as the platform does not expose it the way it does published content.
• LinkedIn — no. Brolly does not archive dark posts on LinkedIn.

If your organisation runs significant paid campaigns and needs the creative itself on file, keep a copy of the ad content in your own records as well.

The National Archives of Australia and state and territory recordkeeping regulations define social media records as public records. If your organisation converses with its community on social platforms, you are creating digital records that may be subject to recordkeeping legislation, Freedom of Information requests and legal action. See Does Brolly Meet the Requirements of the Public Records Act?

Not everything. As a general rule, legislation requires a compliant record of any communication relating to service delivery, public consultation or formal advice, or that starts an internal process such as a complaint. Check with your state or territory recordkeeping agency for the specifics that apply to you.

Creating a secure, accessible record of your organisation's social media activity that complies with recordkeeping legislation — capturing each record's context, metadata, links and media, not just a screenshot. See What Brolly Captures.

In Australia and New Zealand it is a legal requirement for government organisations and many regulated sectors. It also protects you: posts and comments can be edited, deleted or lost on the platform, but the archive keeps the versions Brolly captured, with their metadata, for reporting, FOI requests and evidence preparation. Archiving supports your compliance obligations; whether a record meets a particular legal requirement depends on your organisation's own procedures.

Brolly makes a secure copy of supported records, with their context, as it captures them. Social media changes minute to minute — edits, new comments, deletions — and the archive preserves each version Brolly captured rather than only the latest one.

Brolly is hosted in Australian data centres operated by a major cloud provider. Ask support for the current hosting and certification statement if your procurement process needs it.

Infrastructure, databases and application data are backed up automatically and stored across more than one availability zone in the Australian region. Backup coverage and retention periods are described in the service agreement; ask support for the current figures rather than relying on this summary.

Sometimes, from a backup, but it is not guaranteed and it is not quick: a restore is assessed case by case, depends on whether the data is still within the backup retention window, and can take 10–20 business days. Email support@brolly.com.au as soon as possible with what was removed and when. Treat Delete in the app as permanent. Note that deleting an account from Settings → Accounts removes all of its records, so prefer Hold when you only need to stop capturing — see Retention, Disposal and Legal Hold.

Routine releases are designed to deploy without interrupting the service, and there is no regular maintenance window. Planned maintenance that would affect availability is announced in advance; urgent maintenance may occasionally have to happen without notice, as the service level agreement allows. The SLA that applies to your organisation sets out the notice arrangements and the availability target, which is a target for the service, not a guarantee of capture or resolution times.