How to back up SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business sites using RecoveryManager Plus

To back up your SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business environment using RecoveryManager Plus, you'll have to add your Office 365 tenant to the product. Once the tenant has been added, the product will start identifying the different SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business sites in your tenant.

This article will explain how you can add an Office 365 tenant to RecoveryManager Plus and then create a backup schedule for your sites.

Prerequisites

1. Get the SharePoint Online admin center URL of your Office 365 tenant.
   • To find the admin center URL, open Office 365 Home and choose Admin from the app launcher icon. This will open the Admin center preview page.

     

   • Navigate to Admin centers → SharePoint.

     

   • From the SharePoint admin center page, get the URL from the address bar of the browser. Delete everything after '.com ' in the URL to get your admin center URL. The admin center URL for the above example is https://zohoidentitymgmtqa-admin.sharepoint.com.

     

2. Generate Client ID and Client Secret if Modern Authentication is enabled in your Office 365 tenant.
   • To get your client ID and client secret, navigate to <admin center URL>/_layouts/15/appregnew.aspx.
   • Click the two Generate buttons to generate a client ID and a client secret. Enter the Title, App Domain, and Redirect URL and click Create.

     Note: App Domain & Redirect URL can be any values as they'll never be used by RecoveryManager Plus.

     

   • If the client ID and client Secret have been created successfully, you will see the following screenshot. Save the Client Id and Client Secret for future use.

     

   • Navigate to <admin center URL>/_layouts/15/appinv.aspx. Enter the client ID in the App Id field and click Lookup.

     

   • In the App's Permission Request XML field, enter the below code to grant appropriate access.

   <AppPermissionRequests AllowAppOnlyPolicy="true">
   <AppPermissionRequest Scope="http://sharepoint/content/tenant" Right="FullControl" />
   </AppPermissionRequests>

   • Click Create and you will be presented with a consent pop-up box.
   • Click Trust It to grant RecoveryManager Plus with the required permissions.

     

Step 1: Adding a new Office 365 tenant to RecoveryManager Plus

• Log in to RecoveryManager Plus as an administrator.
• Navigate to the SharePoint & OneDrive tab → Configuration.
• Provide the SharePoint Admin Center URL.
• Provide the username and password of a SharePoint Administrator.
• If legacy authentication is disabled in your Office 365 account, select Modern Authentication and provide the Client ID and Client Secret. For instructions on how to retrieve the Client ID and Client Secret, refer prerequiste 2.
• Click Configure.

  

Your Office 365 tenant has now been configured, and the product will begin identifying the different sites in your SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business environment.

Step 2: Creating a backup schedule for your SharePoint Online and OneDrive for Business sites

• Navigate to the SharePoint & OneDrive tab → Backup Settings.
• Click on the Create Backup button located in the top-right corner of the screen.

  

• Select the Tenant that contains the SharePoint or OneDrive sites to backup.
• Provide a name for the backup schedule.
• Select the sites you want to back up by clicking the  icon in the Select Sites field.
• In the pop-up that appears, RecoveryManager Plus provides two views to see the list of sites in your Office 365 tenant: Tree View and List View.
  1. Tree View is the default view, and it provides a hierarchical view of your site and subsites. Select the sites that you want to back up by marking the checkbox beside the site name. You can also choose to exclude child sites from being backed up by selecting Exclude child site(s).
  2. List View lists all the sites and subsites alphabetically. You can search for the sites you want to back up by clicking the  icon. You can select all the sites by selecting the checkbox beside the Title text. You can also use the Site View drop-down menu located in the top-left corner to limit the sites that are shown. The different views available are:
     • All – This view shows all sites in the selected Office 365 tenant.
     • Managed – This view shows the sites that are licensed for RecoveryManager Plus.
     • Unmanaged – This view shows the sites that are not licensed for RecoveryManager Plus.

     Note: You can configure a site for backup regardless of whether the site is licensed or not, but attempting to backup unlicensed sites will fail. Make sure that all sites selected for backup are licensed.

• Click OK when you’ve selected all the sites you want to back up.

  

• Select the desired frequency at which the schedule must run from the options available:
  1. Daily - Schedule will run once every day at the scheduled time.
  2. Weekly - Schedule will run once every week on the specified day and time.
  3. Monthly – Schedule will run once a month on the specified date and time.
• Select the repository in which you wish to store the backups from the drop-down menu.
• In the Retention Period field, enter the number of days/months/years for which SharePoint/OneDrive backups should be stored. Items older than the specified age will be discarded. To learn more about how RecoveryManager Plus processes the retention period, click here.
• You can also configure RecoveryManager Plus to store your SharePoint/OneDrive backups forever, in which case backups will not be discarded.

Note: The minimum retention period for SharePoint/OneDrive backups is 30 days.

• To secure your backups with AES-265 bit encryption, select the Encrypt backup data check-box and provide an Encryption key.

  

• Click Save to save the schedule, and the backup will run at the specified time.
• Click Save & Run to save the schedule and trigger the first backup process immediately.

Your backup schedule has been created.