❗IMPORTANT

The Smart Backup feature is enabled by default for all customers on June 29, 2024. If you have any questions or do not want this setting enabled by default, contact Support.

Overview

The Smart Backup feature for SharePoint Online sites leverages an intelligent site change detection algorithm to selectively backup sites whose content has been modified, thereby skipping redundant backups of sites without content changes and optimizing resource utilization.

Smart Backup Workflow

This section explains how Smart Backup works.

Step 1 - Identify Backup Type

Manual or Full Scan Requested?
- Yes: Launch a normal or full scan backup.
- No: Proceed to check for site modification time (mtime) changes.

Step 2 - Check if mtime is updated

Changes Detected?
- Yes: Initiate a normal Backup for the containers that have been modified.
- No: The last restore point is committed as the current restore point and backup process is completed.

📝Note

Smart Backups rely on site modification time (mtime) to determine whether a backup is necessary.

Any changes to file permissions, settings, change in views or UI language, user alerts alone won't trigger a backup, since these changes typically don't alter the mtime. However, Smart Backups still capture these changes during mandatory backups, which are scheduled at user-defined intervals (2-90 days, default: 7 days)

To learn more about the parameters that influence mtime, refer to the Factors Triggering SharePoint Site Backups below.

Benefits of enabling Smart Backup

Implementing Smart Backup can help;

Accelerated backups by skipping scans for unchanged sites.
Reduces API consumption for such sites.
Saves up time and API bandwidth to process incremental scans for other sites with changes.

📝Note

Smart Backup exclusively supports Graph API backups. If Smart Backup is enabled for sites utilizing REST API backup, regular backups will be performed for them.

Enable or Disable Smart Backup

Smart settings can be enabled or disabled through Default Backup Settings for SharePoint Online site collections, as well as for SharePoint sites associated with Teams and groups.

📝Note

Druva has a Single App implementation for SharePoint sites, in which schedules, retentions, and Smart Backup settings are governed by parent objects, i.e., Groups and Teams. Hence, the SharePoint sites associated with Teams and Groups will adhere to the Smart Settings available in the respective Groups and Teams, and these settings cannot be overridden. Classic sites that are not associated with Groups and Teams will be controlled by the SharePoint page for Smart Backup Settings.

Procedure

To enable or disable Smart Backup at workload, follow these steps:

Navigate to Groups/SharePoint/Teams on your Druva console.
Go to Settings.
Click on Edit (Default Backup settings).
Check or uncheck "Enable Smart Backup"
Choose the Mandatory Backup interval between 2 to 90 days.
Click Save.

Enable or Disable at Site Level

Smart settings can be enabled or disabled for a specific SharePoint Online site collection. However, for Teams and Groups, they can only be enabled or disabled at the parent site level; it is not possible to modify them directly from SharePoint Online.

Procedure

To enable or disable Smart Backup at workload, follow these steps:

Navigate to Groups/SharePoint/Teams on your Druva console.
Go to All Groups/All Sites/All Teams.
Select the Group/Site/Team and then select Configure for Backup.
Click on Custom under backup settings.
Check or uncheck Enable Smart Backup.
Choose the Mandatory Backup interval between 2 to 90 days.
Click Save.

Factors Triggering SharePoint Site Backups

The backup process is initiated when the following actions are performed on a SharePoint site:

Content Management

Creating attachments, content types, distribution lists, folders, lists, list items, subsites, and views
Uploading documents
Adding columns, site columns, and quick launch items
Updating columns, distribution lists settings, and views
Deleting content and columns
Restoring from the recycle bin
Changing file metadata