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Google Vault Backup Vs CloudAlly Amazon AWS Backup

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Google Vault Backup Vs CloudAlly Amazon AWS Backup

Being a readily available add-on for Google Apps, Google Vault could be a potentially good data protection and backup alternative. Google Vault Backup is necessary in any constellation.

But, does it provide a complete data protection solution with backup or recovery from any point?

And, how does it measure up against CloudAlly, which is a leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery services?

In this article, we take a look at the features offered by Google Vault and CloudAlly, along with their pros and cons.

The objective is to do a direct comparison of these services to understand which one is more suitable for the protection of Google Apps data.

Things to Look for in a Google Apps Data Protection Plan

To be able to compare CloudAlly and Google Vault, we first need to understand what should be considered when selecting a suitable data protection service or tool.

First of all, the service should be able to search the data and export any data that is required on site.

It should also be possible to restore individual items and to restore complete user accounts from any point in time.

Now, let us check out the details of the two popular backup services for Google Apps.

Google Vault Backup

Google Vault is a powerful add-on provided by Google that allows your enterprise to retain, search, store and export emails or chat messages for quick discovery and compliance requirements.

It collects all email correspondence that comes into and goes out of your company. It thus empowers your administrators to locate or search for any email item, whenever required.

For messages, it is possible to place a “hold” at the company level or account level.

For this purpose, your company administrators need to specify the keyword and date for the messages to be included under the “hold”.

The advantage of this is that you can retain the data until the “hold” period expires or until it is removed by the administrators.

While the “hold” is active, the end user cannot change or even delete the data covered under the “hold”. This type of “hold” is pretty useful for lawyers for litigation purposes.

How to Access the Vault Data?

Your company administrator needs to carry out a search to spot particular data items and export them. Once they are exported, the items can be downloaded in a compressed file to use with any email program or even text editor. 

Limitations

Google Vault Backup may be able to search your data or files on Google Drive, but it cannot retain them. So, if any of the Google Drive files is deleted accidentally, it will not be able to help you recover them.

In fact, it cannot offer a point-in-time recovery for any of the popular Google Apps, such as Calendars, Contacts, and Drive.

As mentioned earlier, the Vault can hold data at the account level, but the Vault data cannot be restored directly back to the account of the end user.

If any user (account) of Google Apps is deleted, all the corresponding data will be removed along with the removal of Vault. This is because the Vault repository is maintained within the Gmail account of a user.

Summary

It is important to note that Google Vault was only designed for e-discovery and compliance. It can thus only retrieve individual emails or chat messages and does not offer full-fledged backup and recovery functionality for all Google Apps.

You can avail this service at $5 per month ($60 per year) for each Vault user.

CloudAlly Secure Amazon AWS Backup

CloudAlly is a comprehensive backup and recovery service for all Google Apps data. It is a highly reliable, cloud-based data backup service.

Along with Google Apps, it also offers automated daily backups of Office 365, SharePoint/OneDrive for Business, Salesforce, Box for Business and more to an unlimited Amazon secure storage.

Your organization’s administrator can activate the backups for all Google Apps users (falling under one domain) or individual users with a single click.

Also, in the case of any data loss, restoration and data export is possible with a single click. You are thus able to quickly recover your Google Apps data from any point in time.

Backup

With CloudAlly, there is no limitation to the storage and it offers unlimited retention of daily archives. This allows for backups on a daily basis and helps to considerably reduce the on-premises storage requirements.

If that was not enough, CloudAlly also empowers you to control all your backups from a single management console.

This clearly saves a lot of time by getting rid of the admin processes that require too much manual effort.

With regard to the backups taken using CloudAlly, they continue to be available to you, even after any Google Apps user (account) is deleted.

They only cease to exist when the administrator removes them. It is, therefore, possible for your company to archive user backups for an indefinite amount of time by using the “backup pause” feature of CloudAlly.

Restore

When the need arises to restore any data at an individual item level or at any higher level (folder, mailbox and more), you can simply search your CloudAlly backups.

The restored data is generally stored with a date and time stamp in a sub-folder named “CloudAlly Restore”.

Unlike Google Vault, it is possible to restore the data directly to the user’s account. In fact, you can even restore it back to a different user account, if there is such a requirement.

Export

CloudAlly enables you to export data (which has been backed up) in various formats, including .vcf, .eml. Data can also be exported in .pst format, which is compatible with the commonly used email platform in enterprises, namely Outlook.

Data Security and Compliance

You can be sure about the adherence to data security and customer confidentiality best practices, as CloudAlly is Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) compliant and ISO 27001 certified.

CloudAlly takes care of data security laws to such an extent that you are given the choice to opt for servers based in the U.S. (by default), EU or Australia.

Summary

With the most comprehensive backup and recovery features on offer, CloudAlly proves itself to be a leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery services.

It is ideal for the protection of your Google Apps data with Gmail, Calendars, Tasks, Contacts, Chat and Google Drive!

You can avail the CloudAlly services at $3 per month ($30 per year) for every Google Apps user. What is more, you can even explore their services on a free trial basis for around 15 days.

If you have a non-profit or academic organization, you will even get special discounts from CloudAlly.

We hope that the above comparison of Google Vault Backup and CloudAlly enables you to make an informed decision when selecting your ideal Google Apps data protection tool.

7 Things You Might Not Know You Can Do in Google Apps for Work

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Google Apps for Work Backup

How productive has your business been since you started using Google Apps for Work? Or setup a Google Apps for work backup? Backup google apps for business – its the right business decision.

Although it takes time to see the difference, some benefits related to improved collaboration, knowledge sharing via mobile devices and so on is seen almost instantly. A few notable reasons for which your company uses Google Apps for Work would perhaps be the anytime and anywhere access to file storage, documents, online calendar, business emails and so on.

Before opting for Google Apps Backup for Work and its suite of products, it is likely that your company considered alternate options, such as Microsoft Office 365. But, the low pricing, more flexibility with mobile devices and better familiarity may have pushed the decision in favor of Google Apps.

The general notion is that Office 365 offers many such features that go unused and so many companies may not wish to spend more on it. However, even Google Apps for Work has several features that not many of us are aware of. The tendency is to leverage the basic features offered by its products and services, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Google Slides, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Hangouts, Google Sites, Google+, Google Apps, Vault, Google Forms and Google Sheets.

In this article, we look at some key benefits or features of Google Apps for Work that you may not yet be using.

The objective is to help you make the maximum use of the available productivity tools at hand and increase your business efficiency as well as profitability in different ways.

List of Possibly Unknown Features of Google Apps for Work

1. Finding an Appropriate Time for a Group Meeting with Google Calendar

You may be using Google Calendar to maintain your own schedule of meetings and to invite otheremployees to a group meeting or event. When you are scheduling a group meeting and before you send the invite, you sometimes have to spend a considerable amount of time determining a free time slot when the most people are available.

You can avoid comparing the time schedules of others personally and simply make Google Calendar do this for you with its “Find a Time” feature. While creating your event schedule, you can add all the event-related details for guests, rooms, resources, purpose, and so on. Later, you can use the “Find a Time” tab which can be found on the “Event details” page. This tab displays the schedules of up to 10 people whom you are planning to invite side by side.

It thus recommends a time that is most suitable for all the guests and resources. So, without asking your guests for their availability, you can get an idea about their free time slots and send meeting invites accordingly that are more likely to be accepted.

2. Making Navigation Easier in Google Docs

What do you do when you need to go to a particular section of your long Google Doc? You would likely use “Ctrl + F” to search for the relevant keywords that you assume will be discussed in that section. However, in a very long document, this search option can sometimes become very tedious, especially if the keywords are used across multiple sections.

In such a scenario, you simply have to go through them one by one till you find your preferred section. You can avoid such a long process of arriving at your desired section or paragraph by simply adding more structure to your Google Doc using a table of contents.

It is extremely easy to create the table of contents: You can simply generate links that take you directly to a particular section when clicked. How efficient is that!

3. Maintaining Better Business Travel Plans

You will be glad to learn that information about important events or business travel plans can now easily be transferred from your Gmail to your Google Calendar.

You will get the notification along with an explanation of the relevant settings in your Google Calendar when the first mail related to an event or travel plans arrives in your Gmail inbox.

So, the next time you receive an email about some business travel plans or an event, the related travel or event information automatically gets added to your calendar. Any changes to the plan are also automatically updated in Google Calendar.

As the owner, only you can view these details, modify the visibility settings and disable this feature.

4. Obtaining Real-Time Insights from Form Results

You may often have spent additional time to get more insights from the results of your Google Form or you may be an expert at using the requisite formulas to get more real-time analytics from the form responses with charts or similar stuff.

But, with the “Form Result summaries” feature, the form itself generates a breakdown of your form results into various charts and graphs. All you need to do is click on “Form”, followed by a click on “Show summary of responses” from your Google sheet.

You will then be directed to detailed pie charts and graphs for your form responses. A key benefit is that these analytics get updated in real-time.

So, if any changes are made to the form responses, you will immediately get updated analytics.

5. Muting Group Email Threads with Gmail

Imagine this situation: You have been part of a very important group email discussion where all your project team members discussed some key points to note before your annual meeting.

But, when there are too many people involved, the official group email discussion often turns into casual discussions once the objective is met. So, you may see people still replying in the same group email while discussing dinner plans or long drive plans after the annual meeting.

Now, this can get annoying as you keep getting regular notifications about this email thread, even when someone sends an irrelevant reply. You need not worry about getting disturbed at work with such group email thread conversations. With Gmail, you can simply mute these email threads and continue doing your work.

6. Maintaining Consistency of Cell Formats in Google Sheets

You would by now be used to working in Google Sheets for maintaining information related to projects, doing quality reports or even for planning some team events at your office. But, you would agree, sometimes while you are copying and pasting information from one cell to another, you have to do separate formatting as consistency is not

Now, you can ensure that the fonts, colors and related formatting are maintained in the same format for the information that you have copied into a destination cell. This can be achieved by making use of the paint brush tool for copying and pasting data available in Sheets.

7. Including Forms in the Body of Emails for Quick Responses

At work, it would be a common occurrence for you to receive mails with links to forms where the business wants you to share feedback on particular initiatives. Similarly, a link to a form may be sent to all project members or employees of a company while deciding the menu options for a celebration party.

It is further likely that when you receive such emails, you might mark them important to read and submit your response later. This is probably because you do not know how long the form is and think that once you are free from work, you will open the form link and fill it in as needed.

With Google Forms, it is now possible to include the form right in the body of the email which means that people can quickly fill it in and send their responses.

This increases the likelihood of getting quick responses to your form, as everyone is able to see the number of fields to be filled and can thus spare one to two minutes to do what is needed. The process to include forms in your email is very easy.

Once the form is created, you can click on the “Send form” option at the top right-hand side corner. You can then simply add the email addresses and tick the box option “Include form in email”. That is it!

The recipients of your mail will be able to submit their answers as soon as they open the mail. The form responses will be received in real-time, which allow you to analyze them almost instantly.

We hope that the above list of features adds to the benefits that you are already gaining from your current use of Google Apps for Work. The more you explore the more chances you will have to get the maximum productivity for your business from these tools. After all, efficient and maximum use of the available resources is the best way to keep your business profitable.

 

How to recover your G Suite?

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Lost and found part 2: How to recover your Gmail/Google Apps drive, contacts and calendar.

This is our 2nd article on how to recover lost online data on Gmail/Google Apps. On the 1st part of “Lost and found” we discussed recovering lost Gmail/Google app emails. In this second and last part we will explain how to recover lost online data in your Drive, lost contacts and deleted calendar events.

Let’s get to it!

As before – first ask your self: When did you delete it? If it hasn’t been that long (no more than 30 days) follow the next instructions.

How To Recover Gmail Contacts

Google has a built-in system that saves older versions of contacts for some time to help recover any contact data that is lost accidentally. Here is how you can use this feature to recover your Google contacts.

Step 1: Click on “Gmail” in the top left corner of the window, then select “Contacts” in the drop down menu that appears.

Step 2: On the Google Contacts page, click on the “More” button on the top left part of the screen, and select “Restore Contacts” from the dropdown menu.

 

Your recently deleted contact data should be restored under a new group with the current date as the title. However, Google deletes Contacts’ data as well after 30 days, so make sure you recover contacts sooner, rather than later.

How To Recover a Deleted Calendar Event

If you accidentally delete an event, you may not be able to recover all your details, but can retrieve some information through an XML feed.

Step 1: Click on the Undo option right on top that appears as soon as you delete an event. It stays there for a few moments so you need to be quick about it, otherwise, you’ll have to recreate the calendar event.

Step 2: If you missed undo link, look for any invitations you might have sent for that event in your Gmail’s Sent folder.

If you can’t find any invitations, you’ll have to recover the data the hard way. If you’re not well versed with Google Apps or aren’t an apps administrator, it would be better to simply recreate the event.

How To Find Calendar’s Public XML Feed

Step 1: Change your domain’s calendar sharing settings in the Google Admin console to Share all information, and outsiders cannot modify calendars.

Step 2: In the list on the left, click on the drop down option of your calendar, and select calendar settings.

Step 3: Scroll down until you see Private Address column with two sections, XML, and ICAL. Click on XML.

Step 4: You should see a popup with a URL on it. Click it.

Step 5: Once clicked, add the string “?showdeleted=true&showhidden=true” to the end of URL in your browser’s address bar. You should see an XML feed with all the event details in your calendar, including the ones you just deleted.

You can see limited information about your events such as a brief description and the event title, but the invited guests’ information isn’t recoverable though.

How To Recover Deleted Files from Google Drive

Step 1: Go to your Google Drive and click on the  Trash option on the left.

Step 2:  Once there, select the file you want to recover and click the “Restore” button.

Step 3: In case you can’t find the files there, go to the Google Admin console and navigate to the users section.

Step 4: Find the user in the list, and then go to their account page. Once there, click on the three vertical dots on the top left corner, then select “Restore Data” in the drop down menu.

Step 5: Select the date range for when you deleted the files, and check the box for Google Drive files, then click Restore. That should do it.

If you are a Google apps user, ask your admin to recover your data. Google Apps admins can recover data from the prior 25 days.

If you took all the actions above and still can’t find that lost Google App data (Drive, Contacts, Calendar)  you were looking for, then you must have deleted it over a month ago, and them you can’t recover it, since Google automatically erases it after 30 days.

If you are using CloudAlly, then you can easily recover your deleted data, even though it was permanently erased by Google:

 Recover your deleted email with CloudAlly

a. Log in to your account in CloudAlly dashboard

b. Go to the Google account you would like to restore and click on it

c. Search for the data type (email/drive/calendar/contacts)  and date you want to recover

d. Click on restore/export

c. Get your recovered data to your account or desktop

It’s really simple and easy to restore lost online with CloudAlly automated backups for Google Apps. Next time, if you are using CloudAlly, you can skip all those steps, log in to CloudAlly and recover your lost data. As simple as a click.

Read more on “How to backup Google Apps” Here.

 

Why Backup Online Data - FREE overview

Download our FREE overview on data loss in the cloud: what causes it and what you MUST do to prevent it.

How to recover Gmail/Google Apps?

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Lost and found part 1: How to recover your Gmail/Google Apps email?

You have thousands of emails in your Gmail inbox, which you deleted because you didn’t want to bother sorting through them all. Sounds familiar? I’m sure it does. We get so many emails each day, sometimes it’s hard to keep up with it, so we simply erase what we think we don’t need. So lets discuss: how to recover your Gmail/Google Apps email?

One day, you are looking for an important email and you just can’t find it. Suddenly, you realize that you probably deleted it, and end up scratching your head with panic, wondering how you can recover that data!

So – don’t panic we’re here to explain how you can recover your lost emails.

First is first: Ask your self, when did you delete it? if it hasn’t been that long (no more than 30 days) follow the next steps:

Step 1: Type in the keyword, preferably a long-tail one, related to your email in the search box.

In order to find and recover lost emails, you need to know some relevant keywords related to those emails, as with the dates they were sent or received. This will help narrow down the search.

Step 2: If you don’t find the email you’re looking for, scroll down to the bottom and look for the deleted message link.

Step 3: Click on “View It” and it will show you all the messages related to your keyword in the trash

Step 4: If you’ve found the email you were looking for, make sure you move it to the inbox as Google automatically empties the trash folder, after 30 days.

All you need to do is click on the check box for the email, and then click the “Move to Inbox” button. You can also go directly to the Trash folder to search for and move emails to the inbox.

Step 5: If you still didn’t find what you’re looking for, click on the spam folder on the left-hand side of Gmail and search with the same keyword in that folder.

Step 6: If you find the email you were searching for, make sure you click on the corresponding checkbox and mark it “Not Spam” to move it back to the inbox.

Step 7: If you still can’t find the email, try looking through your custom labels, if you’ve created any. If you still can’t find it, chances are, your email was deleted by Google permanently.

If you are a Google apps user, ask your admin to recover your data. Google Apps admins can recover data from the prior 25 days.

If you took all the actions above and still can’t find that email you were looking for, then you must have deleted your email over a month ago, and them you can’t recover it, since Google automatically erases it after 30 days.

If you are using CloudAlly, then you can easily recover your deleted email, even though it was permanently erased by Google:

step 8: Recover your deleted email with CloudAlly

a. Log in to your account in CloudAlly dashboard

b. Go to the Google account you would like to restore and click on it

c. Search for the email/date you want to recover

d. Click on restore/export

c. Get your recovered email to your inbox or desktop

It’s really simple and easy to restore lost emails with CloudAlly automated backups for Google Apps. Next time, if you are using CloudAlly, you can skip all those steps, log in to CloudAlly and recover your lost data. As simple as a click.

Read more on “How to backup Google Apps” Here.

Read the second part of  how to recover Google Apps: Deleted Contacts, Calendar and Google Drive!

3 Reasons You Should Add Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Service To Your Portfolio

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Backup Services for Office 365

Every business wants to satisfy its clients and win more customers. But the question is how? For most, quality service is necessary. But is that everything that can be offered? The competition is tough and you have to stay ahead. So, the key to success is to know your competition, use the findings to your competitive advantage, and offer rich value.  Backup services for office 365 are essential for your success.

You may be a reseller of Google Apps, Office 365, or Salesforce like your competitors, but have you ever thought of offering added -value services like cloud-to-cloud backup to your customers? If you hadn’t, you must be wondering now how it fits in. If you have, but didn’t add it yet, then you should have another thought about it. Let’s see how it can help you stay ahead of your competition:

Stand out from the crowd

The success lies not in what type of cloud services your company offers, but how the offering is unique as compared to others. It is very important that you have a Unique Selling Proposition that gives your customers enough reasons to come to you rather than look at the competition.  Any service becomes unique when it is bundled with unique products or services that prove to be valuable in the market and there is a need for it.

Cloud-to-cloud backup service is a good example of a unique offer that can work as a key differentiator between you and your competitors and make you stand out from the crowd. With a cloud-to-cloud backup service added to your list of services, you can be an “all in one place” service for your customers – for example, Google App/Salesforce/ Office 365 implementation/migration to management, support and 100% backup.

Whether it’s Google Apps, Office 365, or Salesforce,every product comes with a time-bound backup feature. You have the opportunity of adding a competitive edge to your company with offering automated secured daily backups like CloudAlly.  knowing the importance of backup to the business continuity of your customers will prove you are on top of your game, and will win you new customers.

Win Customer Trust

Winning customers’ trust is very important. If you offer a solution that appears to be a compelling one, but in fact it really isn’t, your credibility gets hurt and that leads to customer attrition. It’s not just losing one customer, but also losing the opportunity of referrals as well.

Let’s take the example of Google Apps. Google keeps any deleted data for only 30 days. Now, what if a customer deletes data accidentally and never realizes that it needs to be backed up within 30 days—what happens next? The data can never be recovered and Google can’t even help with that. Won’t your customer get frustrated in that case? However, if there is an active backup of that account, data can be recovered pretty quickly. This will not only help you win customer trust, but also establish your credibility in the market.

 Increase Revenue

Increase in revenue also depends on your higher transaction value strategy and understanding what related products or services your customers might be interested in. That means the more diversified your services are, the greater opportunity there is for sales. You can also offer cloud-to-cloud backup solution as a standalone service just by partnering with us, and you can offer value by strengthening customer data protection strategy, and increase your sales.

Another way out is the number of repeat transactions generated from the same customer. If you offer a backup solution additionally as a value-added service, your customers will be satisfied and that would help you to retain a customer for a longer period of time which of course also means increase of revenue.

If you are interested in making your business distinct from your competition by adding cloud-to-cloud backup service to your portfolio, read more about CloudAlly’s Partner Program .

You can also further read more about “Why Backup Online Data” and on “Why do we need to backup Office 365” or “Google Apps misconceptions”

How to Free Up Gmail Storage

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We’ve received quite a few inquiries lately regarding using CloudAlly to free up Gmail storage as users approach their Google Apps for Business or Google Apps for Education Gmail limit of 25GB. In order to free up Gmail storage, your users will need to do some Gmail housekeeping to remove old emails, attachments, trash and spam.

Of course before anyone starts the clean-up process you should first take a complete backup of all users within your Google Apps domain to either local or cloud-based storage to ensure that users can recover any important messages that might be inadvertently deleted during the clean-up process. And that’s where CloudAlly comes in… Read more →