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Introduction
Backup and recovery of Teams forms part of our Microsoft 365 service offering. Watch our video below to learn more.
Note:
- To add a backup set and do a first recovery, you need to be both a RedApp company administrator, and a Microsoft 365 global administrator for your tenant organisation. To do subsequent recoveries, you only need to be a RedApp company administrator and a Microsoft 365 Teams admin. Read more about Microsoft's admin roles in this article on their knowledge base.
- If you are backing up private channels and/or shared channels, see Article 1345 for more information.
- Recommendations for protecting Teams for Education can be found in Article 1321.
What is supported?
Redstor currently supports backup and recovery of:
- Teams (member and owner metadata)
- Public channels (member and owner metadata)
- Private and shared channels (messages and metadata, but NOT files - see Article 1345)
- Posts (messages, replies, and images)
- Recordings are not backed up, but links to them are.
- When Teams is recovered, posts and replies are currently not restored to the post thread (due to Microsoft API restrictions), but to a purposely created OneNote tab.
- Files
- Tabs (metadata, not contents)
It is not possible to exclude specific file types from backups.
The following options are supported for recovery:
- Recovery to original location (overwrite)
- Recovery back to Teams (new folder)
- Single item recovery
- Recovery using InstantData
- Teams can also be recovered to a physical machine by sending a recovery link to the email address associated with each channel. Administrators can then use these links to recover.
What is not supported?
Backup and recovery of archived teams are not supported. If a team has been archived, our backup system is unable to access the data to perform a backup.
- Should an archived team be included in your backup selection, the backup scan will fail with the error "Archived teams not supported".
- To backup an archived team, you will need to un-archive it and run a backup, then re-archive the team. This backup will now be available for recovery, and you can ignore future "Archived teams not supported" errors.
- Read more about archived teams in this article from Microsoft's knowledge base.
Please note that due to Microsoft API restrictions, the following is not currently backed up:
- Private chats
- Certain features particular to Teams for Education:
- Assignments
- Students
While attachments within the Files and Assignments tabs are backed up as SharePoint files, we cannot currently backup related features like Grades, Student Submissions, Rubric Grading, and Outcomes. See Article 1321 for more information.
Guides
Use the guides below to manage your Teams backups.
How to add a backup set
Watch our video or follow the steps below.
1. On the RedApp home page, go to My Company or to the relevant customer company.
2. To add a new backup set, go to Microsoft 365 in the sidebar on the left.
3. Click Add at the top right.
4. Select Teams and click Sign in.
5. You will now need to sign into Microsoft 365 and provide Redstor with permission to access your data. Click Accept.
Note: If you encounter an "Access denied" error, click here.
6. You can now make your backup selection. By default, all teams will be selected for backup. To retain this selection and proceed, click Add. You can also enable Include new accounts added to ensure that future additions to this tenant are automatically added to the backup selection.
You can deselect the teams you do not wish to backup, or deselect all and select only the teams you want to backup. Note that it may take a few moments for all teams to load. Once you are satisfied with your selection, click Add to proceed.
7. You will now see the home page for your new backup set, and its name will appear in the sidebar. To queue a backup immediately, click on the menu icon and select Backup.
Note: Version history will not be backed up.
You can view an audit trail of key actions and which users performed them by clicking on the inspect icon at the top right of the page.
You can customise which columns you see on the backup set home page by going to Customise display.
8. To make changes to this backup set, go to Backup selection > Edit.
9. Make your changes and click Save, or click Backup to backup your new selection immediately.
How to modify a backup set
1. On the home page for the relevant team, click on Backup selection > Edit.
2. Select/deselect the site(s) you want to add to/remove from this backup set. (You can also use the Search field to find a specific site.) Click Save to save your changes or Backup to backup the new selection immediately. To discard your changes, click Cancel.
3. The number of teams selected will be shown under Backup selection on the backup set's home page.
Note: Accounts that have been removed from the backup selection are still retained on the Storage Platform until you request that they be permanently deleted. Read more here.
How to configure the backup schedule for a backup set
1. On the home page for the relevant backup set, click on Backup schedule > Edit.
2. Select the days on which you would like backups to run, as well as a backup time. You can choose between daily and custom backups.
- For daily backups, select the number of backups per day (1 or 3). In the case of 3 backups per day, the backups will run at the specified backup time, as well as 8 hours after and 16 hours after the specified time. For example, if the specified time is 08:00, backups will run at 08:00, 16:00, and 00:00. Running multiple daily backups instead of a single daily backup will not incur additional costs.
Note: Multiple daily backups is only available as part of our M365 Premium edition. If you do not see the option to schedule multiple daily backups, you are on a legacy pricing plan. If you would like to enable multiple daily backups, please speak to your account manager about upgrading. - For custom backups, select the days and time that you want your backups to run.
3. Click the check mark at the top right to save your settings.
How to recover a backup set
Watch our video for an overview, or read more below.
1. On the home page for the relevant Teams backup set, locate the team you wish to recover. Click on the menu icon and select Recover.
You can also select multiple teams to recover.
Note: If you need to recover multiple teams, it is advised to recover them in bulk and not in sequence. It is not possible to queue a recovery while another recovery for the same backup set is in progress.
2. When recovering, you can choose between the following options:
- Overwrite recovers the team's data to its original location, overwriting whatever is present there.
- New folder recovers the team's data to a new team site containing all of the original channels. The new site's name will contain the letter R and the backup date's timestamp. Each channel's restored messages will appear in a OneNote folder with the backup timestamp as its name. Each channel's Files tab will contain its restored files.
- Recover using InstantData generates a shareable link that can be used to recover the site's data. Watch our video or follow the steps below to proceed.
To recover with InstantData, go to the home page for the relevant Teams backup set and locate the team you wish to recover. Click on the menu icon and go to Recover > Recover using InstantData.
On the screen that follows, use the Copy option on the right to share a link to the InstantData application, or Download the application immediately. Each link can only be used to initiate one restore.
Run the application on the machine where you wish to recover the data. Select between Permanent and Temporary recovery, then simply drag and drop files from the application into your File Explorer to recover them.
Note: You will need to authenticate before any recovery. Metadata and permissions are not restored.
To recover an individual item, first click on the menu icon and select Open to expand the relevant team.
Then drill down and make your selection. Click Recover when you are ready.
You can also select a specific backup date to recover, and then select All to recover everything from that backup.
Use the Search field to find a specific item to recover.
How to delete a backup set
1. On the home page for the relevant Teams backup set, click on the menu icon to expand more options, then click Remove.
2. Confirm the deletion by clicking Remove.
How to change a backup set's name
1. On the home page for the relevant Teams backup set, click on the menu icon to expand more options, then click Rename.
2. Enter the new name for the backup set and click Update.
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