Keeping Google Apps Data Safe

Backupify for Google Apps

This week I had two situations when customers contacted me about their Google data being deleted. The first was a real disaster as a IT provider deleted all the company accounts because they were upset because the customer terminated their IT contract. This put 30 staff and two companies out of business. Did they have a backup?  No.

The second was a case where a user telephoned me to say they had deleted some documents and now wanted them back. Did they have a backup? No.

For the first case we had some luck as I worked with Google and was able to recovery everything for the customer. They now owe me a very big dinner!  I also have a new client. In most cases Google can restore data within 5 days of it being deleted.

Backupify Snapshot - Download Google Apps data

The second case, well nothing we could do. I recommend customers implement Backupify for Google Apps. For US$3 a month how much time and effort is that going to save? Call me if you would like to try a test account.

Employees Leave
There is one other scenario users should appreciate, if a staff member leaves your employment an you wish to use their active license and not purchase a new one, simply deleting their account may not be the right approach. If you delete their account all documents that are owned by the user would be gone. So if that person had shared pricing documents or marketing information with everyone, it will be all lost.

To fix this there are a couple of tricks. First up, Backupify will allow the administrator to download and export an entire Google Apps Account with Backupify’s Snapshot tool. Backupify Snapshot— a new tool that enables people to archive Google Apps data by downloading and storing it locally, so they can delete or re-use ex-employees’ accounts. Once this is done you can use the Google tools from the Admin Console to reassign ownership rights to another users. Also consider using tools from Cloudlock.com