Backing up collaboration content with Metalogix Essentials

Creating a backup of your Microsoft 365 collaboration content using Quest Essentials for Office 365 is simple, intuitive, and fun. First, within the Backup Module, click the button to create a new backup. You have the choice to back up to local or cloud storage locations. We'll choose local storage for this demonstration. Next, give your new backup project a name. Let's call ours "Quest Backup." Next, we'll need to select which content we'll be backing up. For this example, we're going to be backing up some OneDrives. So I'll select that from the dropdown options. Once you've selected your workload, provide an account with global administrator privileges and authenticate to the tenant. Our next step will be to select which specific objects-- in this case OneDrives, we plan to back up. In our case, we've created a separate CSV file that lists the specific OneDrives we want to back up. So let's load that up. As you can see, the dialogue now tells us that 10 users have been selected for backup. Perfect. The last few steps will allow us to define exactly what content to include in the back up set, such as versions or unique permissions. We can also apply filters to exclude particular data if we need to. Furthermore, we can set specific criteria for how long we plan to retain these particular backups. In our case, we want to keep them for a full year, so we'll select 365 days. Finally, we just need to tell Essentials where we want the backup set to be stored once completed. We'll just save ours to the local file system of the server we're working on. Note that I can also specify a cloud storage location, such as Azure or Amazon S3 storage. Cool. If I want, I can schedule this operation to occur later, or even generate a script of the choices I've made. But for now, I'll just click Finish to complete the operation immediately. Once my operation completes, I can review the logging as necessary. The back up content will then be available within the Backup Navigator, where I can peruse the content to the backup set, and perform granular restores of specific objects as needed. And that's it. Join us next time for more tips and tricks on how to take advantage of the various features of Essentials for Office 365. What content will you back up in your tenants?