Frequently Asked Questions

What is IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup?

IDrive^® Microsoft 365 is a single backup solution that secures the entire Microsoft Office Suite of your organization including, Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams data by retaining multiple versions of the data in the cloud.

Why do you need to back up your Microsoft 365 Office Suite?

Due to the limited data recovery features of Microsoft, it is crucial for Enterprises to add another layer of security to their Microsoft 365 data. The IDrive Microsoft 365 Backup solution with cloud backup, versioning, and point-in-time recovery acts as a robust protection for your Microsoft data against disasters, human errors, and ransomware that encrypts data and claims a ransom to regain access.

Which applications are supported by IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup?

IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup supports the following online applications:

• OneDrive
• Exchange
• SharePoint
• Teams

How do I get started with IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup?

The Super Administrator of the Microsoft 365 account needs to authorize the IDrive Microsoft 365 Backup application to access all the user’s data available in the account. Once done, your Microsoft Office Suite will be automatically synced with IDrive Microsoft 365 Backup application for backup.

To get started with backup,

1. Sign in to your IDrive account.
2. Click Microsoft 365 on the LHS menu in the dashboard.
   
3. Click Enable. You will be redirected to the Microsoft 365 authorization page.
   
4. Select the email address of the Super Administrator of the Microsoft account that you want to backup. The permission screen will appear.
5. Select the desired permissions and click Accept.

Once access is allowed, all the users and their data across OneDrive, Exchange, Teams, and Sharepoint will be backed up and displayed on your IDrive Microsoft 365 Backup dashboard. You can now manage the backups and restores for all the users in your Microsoft account from the web console.

Can I access the backed up data from anywhere?

Yes, you can access your backed up data across, Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams; manage backups; add new administrators; and restore the backed up data from any location via a unified web-based console.

The web console has the following sections:

• Overview: Get an overview of the total Microsoft 365 user accounts, total backed up accounts, and the last backup time across Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.
  
• Seat Management: Add, view, and manage user accounts across the entire Microsoft Office Suite. You can backup individual app data across specific users and view backup summaries, with ease.
  
• Recovery: View, manage and restore point-in-time backups of all users across Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. Search, download, restore and monitor specific data from specific users across Workspace.
  
• Admin: Manage administrators for your Microsoft 365 backups. Access administrator settings like snapshot retention, and view activity logs, for all users across the account.
  

How does IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup secure my data?

IDrive Microsoft 365 backup secures your data with industry standard 256-bit AES encryption on transfer and storage. Data is stored across top notch data centers, and is encrypted using an encryption set while creating your IDrive account. Know more.

How does IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup work?

Once you configure your Microsoft 365 Office Suite to IDrive Microsoft 365 backup, it will run a full automated backup of your entire Microsoft Office Suite including OneDrive, Exchange, Sharepoint, and Teams for all users.

How are the IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backups scheduled?

IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup runs three automated backups everyday for all the users of your organization. These system backups run on a predefined schedule for the entire organization.

Will the subsequent changes in my already backed up files be transferred to IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup incrementally?

Yes, as IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup enables automated data synchronization, after the full initial backup, all the subsequent changes are incrementally backed up.

How do I backup the data for a specific user from my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup account?

To perform backup for any specific user,

1. Go to the Recovery tab on your IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup dashboard.
2. Select the required application from which you want to backup data for the user:
   • OneDrive - To backup the user’s drive data.
   • Exchange - To backup the user’s mail, contacts, and calendar data.
   • SharePoint - To backup the user’s files and folders in Sharepoint.
   • Teams - To backup the users Team’s data.
3. Click the user account for which you want to backup data.
4. Select the files or folder that you want to backup by clicking the checkbox against the files/folders.
5. Click Backup Now.
   

The backup progress will be displayed. You can view the backup details under Backups.

Note: Running a manual backup does not affect the auto-scheduled backups.

How does snapshot and versioning work in IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup?

IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup retains previous versions of the backed up data as point-in-time snapshots, enabling you to run point-in-time restores of your data to the exact state it was in at the time of your backup.

The snapshots are retained and consolidated in the following manner:

• IDrive runs automated backups daily 3 times, that are retained for 30 days
• After 30 days, IDrive saves one of the 3 daily backups per user
• After 90 days, IDrive saves one weekly backup per user
• After 365 days, IDrive saves one monthly backup per user

What information can I view in the Overview tab of my web console?

The 'Overview' tab gives you a quick glance of the backups of your users. You can view the summary of the following information across all the Microsoft 365 Office Suite applications:

• Total users: The total number of active users in your Microsoft Office account.
• Users in backup set: The number of active users currently added to the backup list, and who have completed backup in the last 24 hours.
• Users excluded from backup set: Number of active users that are not included in the backup list.
• Last backup activity: This displays the last date when every service in the application took a successful backup over a 24 hour period.
• Backup history: This displays the status of the last 10 days, represented by the following icons,
  • - backup failure
  • - backups were 100% successful
  • - backup has not yet commenced
• Backup in progress: Total number of ongoing backup operations.
• Exports in progress: Total number of ongoing export operations.
• Restore in progress: Total number of ongoing restore operations.
  

Which user management tools can I access under seat management?

You can access the records of all the users under the Seat Management tab in your IDrive Microsoft 365 Backup web console regardless of their backup status.

Navigate to the Users tab under Seat Management to access the following management tools:

• Auto-add: Discover and auto-add all users added to your Microsoft Office account.
• Activate all users: Activate backup of all unprotected and paused users
• Filter all users: Filter records of users according to their backup status- active, paused, unprotected
• Search: Lookup specific users among the records shown
• Download CSV: Download list of all users in CSV format
• Restore/ Export backed up data: Restore/ export backed up data for users by clicking
• Backup status: Hover over View Details to view summary of backup status, or click View Details to view detailed backup status summary
• Backup actions: Pause, add or remove users from backup set. For details, refer to this How do I change seat status for users?
  

How do I change seat status for users?

You can add and remove the users from the backup set, or pause user backups by changing their seat status.

To change the seat status for users,

1. Go to the Seat Management tab on your IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup dashboard.
2. Go to Users tab
3. Under the Backup actions column corresponding to the user, set the seat status as required.
   
4. Active: Add the user to the active backup set
5. Pause: Pause the backup for the user.
6. Unprotect: Remove the user from the IDrive Microsoft 365 backup set
7. Protect: Resume backup for unprotected/paused users

Note: On changing the seat status to Unprotect for a user, all backups associated with the user will be deleted, and the user will be archived.

How do I add users to the IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup set?

Users in your Microsoft Office Suite are automatically discovered and added to the backup set during the first automatic backup. Enable Auto-add to discover new users added to your Microsoft Office Suite.

To enable auto-add,

1. Go to the Seat Management tab.
2. Navigate to the Users tab.
3. Enable the toggle switch next to Auto-add.
   

How do I re-add users to the IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup set?

You can re-add paused and unprotected users to the active backup set by changing their seat status to active.

To activate backup for users who are not included in the backup set,

1. Go to the Seat Management tab on your IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup dashboard.
2. Navigate to the Users tab.
3. Under the Backup actions column next to the paused/archived/unprotected user, select Protect in the dropdown menu.
   
4. To activate all paused/archived/unprotected users, click Activate All Users on the top right.
   

How do I view the backup status of the users?

The Backup Status next to each user gives you an overview of the user’s backup results for each service past 24 hours. Click View Details to view the following backup status parameters for each backup module:

• Backup status: Success/failure status of the backup in the past 24 hours, denoted by Completed / Failed
• Storage used: Total space occupied by the backup
• Last backup: Timestamp of the last backup
  

To view the summarized backup status for each module, hover on View Details.

How do I restore the backed up Microsoft Office data from my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup account ?

To restore the backed up data,

1. Go to the Recovery tab on your IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup dashboard.
2. Select the required application from which you want to restore data.
3. Click the user account from which you want to restore data.
4. Select the appropriate snapshot under Snapshots if you want to perform a point-in-time restore. To restore a specific file or folder, select the item from the list of backed up items. You can also search for a specific file or folder.
5. Click Restore. A popup window will appear.
6. Select Snapshot or Selected Item as required.
7. Select the user account from the Restore to drop-down menu to which you want to restore the snapshot or the selected item. You can restore the data to the same user account, or a different user account.
8. Click Restore.
   

The restore progress will be displayed on the screen.

How do I restore file permissions during a restore operation?

IDrive Microsoft 365 Backup saves source file permissions, which are reinstated to the restored files during a restore operation.

Can I search and restore a specific file or folder in IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup?

Yes. IDrive Microsoft 365 Backup allows you to search and recover specific files, entire folders, images, videos, emails, and even contacts and calendars at a granular level.

How do I search for a specific item from my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup account during restore?

You can perform both point-in-time and file-level searches across multiple search parameters to perform granular restore.

To perform a point-in-time search for restoring a specific version of the backed-up data from a user account,

1. Go to the Recovery tab on your IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup dashboard.
2. Select the required application from which you want to restore data.
3. Click the user account for which you want to perform the search.
4. To search for all the snapshots for a specific data, select the date on the calendar. A list of all the recent snapshots will be displayed on screen. Select the required snapshot. Click Latest Snapshot to find the last snapshot taken.
   

A file-level search enables you to locate specific backed-up files and folders from a user account.

To perform file-level restore,

1. Go to the Recovery tab on your IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup dashboard.
2. Select the required application for which you want to restore data.
3. Click the user account for which you want to perform the search.
4. Go to the Search tab.
5. Enter a valid search term, set the required date and time for snapshots, select single or multiple users from the dropdown menu.

   Note: The closed snapshot to the selected timestamp will be displayed.

6. Click Search.
   

To restore the file(s)/folder(s), refer to this FAQ.

How do I export the backed up Microsoft Office Suite data from my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup account ?

To export the backed up data,

1. Go to the Recovery tab on your IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup dashboard.
2. Select the required application for which you want to restore data.
3. Click the user account for which you want to perform the search.
4. Click the user account from which you want to restore data.
5. Select the appropriate snapshot under Snapshots if you want to perform a point-in-time restore. To restore a specific file or folder, select the item from the list of backed up items. You can also search for a specific file or folder.
6. Click Export. A popup window will appear.
7. Select Snapshot or Selected Item as required.
8. Click Export.
   

You can download the generated export files in the Exports tab by clicking next to successful exports. Alternatively, click to delete the exported data.

Note: Exported data will be downloaded as zip files.

Can I restore corrupted files and folders from my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup account?

Yes, you can restore deleted or corrupted files and folders directly to the user account or download them on a device while retaining their exact folder structure.

Can I view the activity logs for my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup account?

Yes, you can view the logs of the scheduled System Events and initiate User Actions like backup, restore, search, and web operations across IDrive^® Microsoft 365 backup under the Activity Logs tab.

How do I view system activity logs for my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup?

To view activity logs for system-generated automatic backups,

1. Go to the Admin tab.
2. Navigate to the Activity Logs tab.
3. Click System Events.
4. Select Date range. To set a custom start and end date, select Custom range.
5. Next, specify the following parameters:
   • Event Type: By default, it will be set as Scheduled.
   • Status: Generate log for all events, successes, or failures.
   • Module: Choose the backed up service (One Drive, Exchange, SharePoint and Teams).
   • User: Generate log for specific user(s), or all users.
6. Click View Event Logs.
   

A list of all the scheduled backup activities including timestamp, user name, backed up module, and backup status will be displayed on the screen.

To generate a detailed summary report of the activities, click Generate Summary.

You can also download the activity log reports on your system in CSV format by clicking Download CSV.

How do I view admin activity logs for my IDrive^® Microsoft 365 Backup account?

To view activity logs for admin-initiated actions,

1. Go to the Admin tab.
2. Navigate to the Activity Logs tab.
3. Click User Actions.
4. Select Date range. To set a custom start and end date, select Custom range.
5. Next, specify the following parameters:
   • Event Type: Select the type of operation (All, backup, export, restore, other events)
   • Status: Generate log for all events, successes, or failures.
   • Module: Choose the backed up service (One Drive, Exchange, SharePoint and Teams).
   • User: Generate log for specific user(s), or all users.
6. Click View Event Logs.
   

A list of all the user operations including details such as the event type, timestamp, user name, module, and status will be displayed on the screen.

To generate a detailed summary report of the activities, click Generate Summary.

You can also download the activity log reports on your system in CSV format by clicking Download CSV.