Active Backup for Office 365 Admin Console
The centralized admin console allows IT admins to create backup tasks for Office 365 accounts and monitor the backup status from a single interface.
Before you start
To install Active Backup for Office 365, please make sure that your Synology NAS is running DSM 6.1.4 or version above and that your Synology NAS comes with an Intel x64 processor. If your Synology NAS is running DSM 6.2 Beta, please update it to the latest version before installing Active Backup for Office 365.
Create backup tasks
To create a backup task:
- Click Create to start the wizard from Task List.
- Select the endpoint for your Office 365 service. Read the instruction and click on Next. An Office 365 authorization window will pop up. Log in as global admin and enter the Domain administrator email address and Password to complete the authorization process. A confirmation window will then pop up to confirm the location to store your authorization token, saving you the trouble of going through the authorization process every time before data backup.
- Enter your Task name, choose a shared folder from the Destination Shared Folder drop-down menu. Under Backup List, click Edit to select sites, users and their services to be backed up. And if needed, enable Account discovery, Site discovery, and Active Backup for Office 365 Portal.
- Account discovery: newly-created accounts with their mail, archive mailbox, contacts, calendar, or drive services enabled in Office 365 will be automatically selected to be backed up.
- Site discovery: newly-created Sites and My Sites in Office 365 will be automatically selected to be backed up.
- Active Backup for Office 365 Portal: IT admins can control whether to give users access to run restore tasks by themselves.
- Configure your backup and retention policies:
- Backup policy
- Continuous backup: data will be backed up continuously in an infinite cycle.
- Manual backup: data will be backed up immediately once the backup function is manually enabled.
- Scheduled backup: data will be backed up based on the schedule you set.
- File version retention policy
- Preserve all versions: all file versions will be preserved.
- Number of days for historical file versions to be preserved: when a backed up file is updated to a new version, the previous version will be preserved for the period of time you set for file retention, which has to be between 1 and 3650 days.
- Check your task summary and click Apply to finish creating your backup task.
Manage backup tasks
In the Task list tab, you can see a list of all backup tasks that have been created. You can also manage them with the buttons at the top of the tab.
To manage a backup task:
- Select the backup task you want to edit and click Edit.
- On the General tab, you can
- View the endpoint of your Office 365 backup, the domain administrator email address, and SharePoint domain name.
- Modify the task name.
- Enable and disable Account discovery for each service, Site discovery, and Active Backup for Office 365 Portal.
- On the Version tab, you can configure backup and retention policies.
To manage users to be backed up:
- Select a backup task and click Edit > User.
- If you have enabled Account discovery for any of the five services, all new users added to the domain with that service enabled will be automatically backed up. You can include or exclude specific users' services by manually selecting or deselecting them.
- Active Backup for Office 365 updates the status of Office 365 user list from Office 365 from time to time. If you would like to see the latest user list of Office 365, please click Update Office 365 User List.
To manage sites to be backed up:
- Select a backup task and click Edit > Site.
- Select Site or My Site from the drop-down menu to back up different types of sites in Office 365.
- If you have enabled Site discovery, all new sites created in the domain will be automatically backed up. You can include or exclude specific sites by manually selecting or deselecting them.
- Active Backup for Office 365 updates the status of Office 365 site list from Office 365 from time to time. If you would like to see the latest site list of Office 365, please click Update Site List.
To delete backup user data:
- Select a backup task, click Edit, and go to the User tab.
- Select a user and click Storage management to delete his backup data for any of the five services. Your service will be deselected for backup once your backup data is deleted.
To delete backup site data:
- Select a backup task, click Edit, and go to the Site tab.
- Select a site and click Storage management to delete its backup data. This site will be deselected for backup once its backup data is deleted.
View task information
Overview
In the Overview tab, you can monitor the following information from a single interface.
- Protected service: the number of users protected in each service.
- Backup summary: the summary of all backup activities in the past 35 days, including the backup status and number of backup activities for each day. When clicking on the icon of each day, you can check the log for that day. Below are all the icons you might see and their corresponding meaning:
- No backup history
- Upcoming backup
- Success
- Warning
- Error
- Activities: current backup and restoration activities. When clicking on the arrow icon on the upper-right corner, you will be redirected to the Activities tab.
- Log: the most recent logs. When clicking on the arrow icon on the upper-right corner, you will be redirected to the Log tab to view more logs.
- Service usage: total storage space consumed by each service.
- User/Site usage: the amount of storage space consumed by users and sites which have used the most capacity.
- Transferred size: the transferred size of each task displayed by Day/Hour.
Note:
- Regarding the category, Backup summary, there are three types of status, Error, Warning, and Successful. The status for a day will be displayed as Error/Warning as long as any last backup of tasks shows error/warning, while the status will only be shown as Successful if all the last results of tasks on that day are successful.
Task List
In the Task List tab, you can see a list of all backup tasks that have been created. In the menu of each backup task, you will find the following information for the task, whether it is being executed or has been fully executed.
- Tasks that are being executed: the current number of protected users in each service, sites, and the their backup status.
- Tasks that have been fully executed: the backup result, last backup time, and the number of protected users in each service, sites, and backup status.
Below are all the icons you might see in the menu of each backup task and their corresponding meaning:
- Success
- Warning
- Error
- No user or site selected for backup
- Preparing for backup
- Ready for backup
Note:
Regarding the definition of each task status, below you can find detailed information:
- Error: If the data of a task fails to be backed up or restored, the task status will be shown as Error.
- Warning: If the data of a task is successfully backed up or restored, but the corresponding metadata fails to go through the execution, the task status will be shown as Warning (only applicable to Drive tasks).
- Successful: If both the data and metadata of a task are successfully backed up or restored, the task status will be shown as Successful.
Activities
- Admins can easily monitor current backup and restoration activities on the Activities tab.
- Backup: the backup policy, elapsed time, and backup progress of each running backup task.
- Restoration: the elapsed time and restoration progress of each running restoration task as well as the users who executed them.
- Admins can also click on Cancel to stop a running activity. Please note that a task where the continuous backup policy is applied comes with an infinite backup cycle. Therefore, users cannot cancel such tasks directly using the Cancel button.
Log
The Log allows you to keep track of the backup tasks that have been performed. You can view the log in its entirety or use filters to search for certain tasks.
To search through log records with a specific filter:
- Go to the Log tab.
- Click the arrow next to the magnifying glass icon in the search bar on the upper-right corner.
- In the drop-down menu, you can filter events by:
- Keyword: enter the keyword you wish to search for.
- Log type: select the type of log you want to view in the drop-down menu.
- Date: enter a start and end date to find logs created within a specific period of time.
- To reset your filter, click the Reset button and start searching again.
To view log details:
- Select a log and click the arrow icon on the right end of the entry to view detailed logs for an event.
- For backup activities, you can view the following information in the pop-up window:
- Status: the duration, used space, and status of backup users and sites. You can select Users, Site, or My Site from the drop-down menu to view their status.
- Drive: the backup account, item, size, time, and status of each task.
- Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Site: the type, backup time, and detailed log of each backup activity.
- For restoration activities, you can view the following information in the pop-up window:
- Drive: the source and destination account, item, size, time, and status of each restoration task.
- Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Site: the type, restoration time, and detailed log of each restoration activity.
Detailed task information
To view the status and logs of a task:
- Select the backup task on the Task List tab and click on Details.
- In the Details window you can view the following information:
- Status: the last backup time, used space, and status of backup users and sites. You can select Users, Site, or My Site from the drop-down menu to view their status. (Users/sites with a blue dot on the left side of their names are the ones who have been through the latest backup run.)
- Drive: the backup account, item, size, time, and status of each backup task.
- Mail, Contacts, Calendar, and Site: the type, backup time, and detailed log of each backup activity.
Manage notification services
To enable notification services:
To receive task-related notifications, go to DSM > Control Panel > Notification, and configure settings for your desired notification channel, i.e. SMS, email, or push service.
To manage events for notification:
To manage events for notification, go to DSM > Control Panel > Notification > Advanced, and configure settings for the events that you would like to be notified of.
Note:
- The Active Backup for Office 365 Portal needs to be enabled in the Active Backup for Office 365 package for users to restore data by themselves. To allow specific users the access to Active Backup for Office 365 Portal, go to Control Panel > Privileges, select Active Backup for Office 365 Portal, and click on Edit to give permissions.
- Only users with admin privilege can cancel other users' restoration tasks from Active Backup for Office 365 Console.
- Block-level deduplication is supported only on shared folders in Btrfs volumes, with the exception of encrypted shared folders; single instancing for mail, archive mailbox, and calendar attachments are only supported on shared folders in Btrfs volumes. For detailed information regarding support for the two features, please refer to the below table:
|
Single instancing |
Block-level deduplication |
Drive |
O |
O |
Mail/Archive mailbox |
Attachment only |
X |
Contacts |
X |
X |
Calendar |
Attachment only |
X |
Site |
Document library and attachment only |
Document library and attachment only |
- Data will not be backed up or skipped by Active Backup for Office 365 under the following circumstances:
- Drive
- The file/folder name or path contains "#SynoVersionRepo", "#SynoRepo", or "#SynoVersions".
- The file/folder path on DSM is longer than 4016 characters.
- The name of any file or folder in the destination shared folder exceeds 255 characters.
- The name of any file or folder in the encrypted destination shared folder exceeds 143 characters.
- Files and folders stored in Shared with me.
- Mail/Archive mailbox
- Reference attachment (A link to a folder or file on a OneDrive for Business cloud drive, or other supported storage locations, attached to an event, message, Outlook task, or post).
- Contacts
- All the contacts other than Your contacts (for example, folder structures, Groups, and Directory).
- Contacts in the Deleted folder.
- Calendar
- Calendar events earlier than 1970/01/01 or after 2070/01/01.
- Calendar folder structures (all calendars will be shown under the /All Calendar folder).
- Calendars in the Deleted folder.
- The following endpoints are supported: Office 365, Office 365 Germany, Office 365 operated by 21 Vianet
- The following plans are supported: Business, Enterprise, and Education, and Exchange Online
- The following file type are supported for content search:
- page/.key/.numbers
- .rtf
- Microsoft Office format (e.g. .docx/ .doc,.pptx/ .ppt), except Microsoft Excel file format (.xlsx/.xls)
- Text files (e.g. .cpp, .c, .txt)
- .epub
- .lit
- .mobi/.azw3/.pdb/.prc
- .pdf
- .rar
- .chm
- .slk/.gnumeric
- .eml/.msg
- .7z/.bz2/.gz/.zip/.tgz/.tbz/.tar
- The following variables are not support for content search:
- Stop words, regardless of case: "a", "an", "and", "are", "as", "at", "be", "but", "by", "for", "if", "in", "into", "is", "it", "no", "not", "of", "on", "or", "such", "that", "the", "their", "then", "there", "these", "they", "this", "to", "was", "will", and "with".
- Symbols: for example, "@", "#", "*", "/", and "\".
- Punctuation marks: for example, "!", "?", and ":".
- Emoji
- Dates such as Birthday and Anniversary in Contacts
- Synology Universal Search operators:
[X] and [Y]: Variables that may represent numbers, alphabetical letters, word segments, words, or phrases. |
Operator |
Example |
Description |
* |
[X]* |
- List matches that contain [X], and [X] is followed by zero to more random characters (represented as "*")
|
? |
?[X] [X]? |
- List matches that contain [X], and [X] is preceded or followed by one random character (represented as "?")
|
"" |
"[X][Y]" |
- List matches that contain exact, case-insensitive [X][Y]
|
&& |
[X] && [Y] |
- List matches that contain both [X] and [Y]
|
|| |
[X] || [Y] |
- List matches that contain [X], [Y], or both
- Matches that contain both [X] and [Y] will be listed on the top
|
+ |
+[X] |
- List matches that contain [X]
- Applicable to folders indexed at Preferences > File Indexing
|
- |
-[X] |
- List matches that do not contain [X]
- Applicable to folders indexed at Preferences > File Indexing
|
! |
![X] |
- List matches that do not contain [X]
- Applicable to folders indexed at Preferences > File Indexing
|
\ |
\[SpecialCharacter] |
- Special characters: + - && || ! ( ) { } [ ] ^ " ~ * ? : \
- List matches that contain a targeted special character above
|