MSP360 Products
Setting Up Backup and Recovery Plan Notifications in MSP360 Managed Backup
When you create a backup or a restore plan, you need to know whether everything goes well. If not, you might want to learn about this immediately, so as to make the necessary corrections. That’s where notifications matter.
MSP360 Managed Backup allows you not only to create various notifications and reports but also to customize them, adding data that you might need in case of emergency. So, if something goes wrong, you’ll be able to react to it without delay, having the maximum information about what has happened.
Read this article to discover how to set up backup and restore notification parameters for all the companies and users you support, create custom options for some of them if needed, send alerts to particular users, and adjust the emails to make them even more useful. Log into your MSP360 Managed Backup solution and follow the instructions below.
Configuring Global Options for Backup and Restore Notifications
In the MSP360 Managed Backup web console, find the Settings tab and click Notifications. Here, you can set up parameters for all the companies and users you support at once. There are options to choose from:
- Success. This is the type of message you receive if everything was backed up or restored properly.
- Warning. This means that your plans went well in general, but there were some issues that might require your attention.
- Failure. Everything went wrong and you couldn’t back up or restore your data. Something needs to be fixed as soon as possible.
By default, the solution notifies the provider (you) when any plan finishes successfully or fails. Change the options if you want to know, for instance, about possible mistakes that don’t have a serious effect on the plan or, alternatively, you want to send success notifications. You can also add additional emails besides the existing one (like your admin’s email), so that notifications will be sent there as well.
Bear in mind that, if you haven’t enabled the Allow users to receive notification emails option, but have enabled notifications at the Company or User level, the users won’t receive notifications.
When you have specified all your preferences, click Save Changes.
Setting up Custom Options for Companies
Aside from Global Options, MSP360 Managed Backup allows you to set up granular backup and recovery plan notifications at a Company level. This might be useful for new clients when you’re still not sure that the processes are running smoothly, or for those who have tended to fail a lot and now you want to keep an eye on them. To set up individual notifications for these companies, go to the Organization tab and click Companies.
In this section, you can see a list of all the companies you work within your software. Click Edit next to the company you want to set up custom options for.
A new window will appear.
There are two notification options (below the company name): backup and restore. They are equally customizable, so we’ll show how to deal with one of them, since the other works in the same way.
Click Backup Notifications. You can’t modify the global options from here, so switch to Custom Options. Set up the notifications you need in a similar way to how you did it before in the global preferences: click checkboxes and add emails. Options for single users are not available here; we’ll write about them below.
After you finish the customization, click Save.
Adding Notifications for Users Individually
Even when the companies you work with are fully outsourcing their IT tasks, there are still people who might want to know how things are going. They might be responsible for this or just curious. MSP360 Managed Backup offers a solution for this: you can set up notifications for these people, so as to keep them informed. This can be done in the Organization / Users section.
As before, click Edit on the right side of the screen – for the user who wants to be notified.
In the user’s personal info, fill in the field Notification emails. Hit Save.
Customizing the Emails: Adding More Data
By default, the notification emails contain only the necessary data – the name of your product and the type of plan that has been completed. You can add information according to your requirements. Sometimes, not only do you need to know that the plan has been completed, but you might also want to see the name of the plan, whose computer it is, and what company it belongs to. MSP360 Managed Backup allows you to modify the emails, making them more informative. Additionally, there’s an opportunity to change the appearance and content of the emails that users get from you as a provider.
Plan Report Settings
To modify the emails, choose the Plan Report Settings option from the Reporting tab.
By default, the plan report email contains only the name of your company and the type of plan. You can modify the email subject and signature, adding text with variables that are listed to the right.
- %USER_NAME%. The name of a user.
- %COMPANY%. The name of the user’s company.
- %USER_EMAIL%. The email address of the user.
- %COMPUTER_NAME%. The name of the computer where the plan has completed.
- %RESULT%. The result of the plan – success, warning, failure.
- %PRODUCT_NAME%. The name of the product that your customers can see. You can set it in the Branding tab. To learn more about why you would need this, consider reading our guide to MSP branding.
- %PLAN_NAME%. The name of your plan. This is useful if you have several.
- %PLAN_TYPE%. What type of plan it is: backup or restore.
Click Save Changes when you’re done.
Email Customization
To further customize your emails, proceed to the Email Customization of the Reporting tab.
Here, you can modify the code of your emails to control their appearance and contents.
- User Creation Email. The very first email your user receives, containing their login and password.
- Administrator Creation Email. This email is sent to a person you have set up as an administrator (Organization / Administrators).
- Backup Notification Files Email. The information that is sent when a file-level backup completes.
- Backup Notification System Email. Information about the completion of a system-level backup.
- Backup Notification MSSQL Email. Information about an MS SQL database backup.
- Backup Notification VM Email. Information about backing up a virtual machine.
- Backup Notification Exchange Email. Information about an Exchange backup.
- Group Report Notification. Information about all your backups in a single report.
For every email, there is a list of variables located on the right side of your screen. Each variable has a short explanation. Once you’ve changed an email’s code, click Show Preview to make sure the letter will look right, and send a test email to yourself. If you don’t like the result, continue modifying the code or hit the Back To Default button. If all is good, click Save.
Conclusion
When you support more than one computer, managing notifications is a must. They allow you to keep everything under control. With MSP360 Managed Backup’s advanced customization features, you can be sure you won’t miss anything important.
