Email Backup and Recovery in Zoho Mail

Email Backup

Email backup processes and stores emails in a safe, centralized location that can be retrieved at any point in time. It helps prevent data loss by enabling users to restore email content that has been accidentally deleted or lost.

Backups keep your email messages available for longer and make tracking down lost emails much quicker.

Does your organization require an email backup?

Email often contains highly valuable business information and so it is important to make sure your business has the right secure email solutions to recover its critical data.

Having proactive data backup in place can add additional security for your business and allow you to handle any unforeseen data loss situations, keeping your users productive and your organization's data and reputation safe. And as backup emails are stored in a central location, it mitigates the risk of email loss and saves time, money, and manpower that can be required when your IT team is forced to search for an important email.

Enabling email backup

Zoho Mail provides Email Backup solution to secure important email communication from accidental deletion by the employees. Email Backup retains the deleted emails of the employees in the Backup portal. The administrator can recover them from the backup portal back to the employee's accounts.

Steps to enabling backup:

Defining default backup policy

The default backup policy defines the period for which the organization's data should be retained in the Backup portal. The default value is 365 days but the organization can either define a specific period in terms of number of days, as per requirement, or click on Retain forever. You can define your default backup policy from the eDiscovery portal.

Steps to define a default backup policy:

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Once you define the retention period, you can go ahead and define the backup rules.

Note:

Enabling Retain forever will not delete backup emails and so, can cause the storage to run out over time.

Defining backup rule

Backup rules provide you with an option to keep a backup of spam emails along with the deleted emails, if required.

Steps to define a default backup rule:

As the next step, you need to select the users for whom the backup retention should be enabled.

Selecting user accounts​

Once you define the backup period and backup rules, you will now select the users for whom the backup should begin. Click Enable Backup to start the retaining the deleted emails for the selected set of users.

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You can click Select all users to enable retention for all the user accounts.

Once you enable the retention and define the backup policy, the emails that are deleted from the user accounts will be retained in the backup portal, based on the backup period. The spam emails that are auto deleted from the accounts will also be saved or skipped based on the backup rule set in the organization.

Using email backup

Once you are done onboarding email backup, you will be able to access all the features that the portal provides to manage your organization's data. Additionally, you can now also customize the portal settings apart from enabling/disabling users and creating new backup policies.

Recovery

When an email is accidentally deleted from the user mailbox, an administrator can help restore that email back to the user account by using the Recovery option from the backup storage.

Steps to recover an email from backup:

Note:

When an email is restored back to the mailbox, the email will get deleted from the backup while a copy will be maintained in Archive, if eDiscovery is enabled.

Recovery History

All the recovery actions along with the details are listed chronologically under the Recovery History list. The Recovery History that is 90 days and older will be cleaned up automatically. However, the cleanup duration can be set by the admin under Settings tab.

Exports

Sometimes, instead of recovering the emails back to the accounts, the administrator can also export the data required. These exports will be scheduled and the administrators can download the exported files from the backup portal.

Steps to recover an email from backup:

Note:

Choose Export & Delete option in order to create and maintain a copy of the old or unwanted backup files externally. This will create a ZIP or PST file of the emails that fall under the search criteria and remove the emails from the back up storage. Doing so, will not only keep your backup storage clean by retaining only those emails that you have segregated as per your requirement but also ease up the storage capacity.

Export and Delete is an irrevocable action which will delete the email from backup, so use it carefully. 

Export History

All the export actions along with its current status, are listed chronologically under the Export History tab. Please note, it may take some time depending on the file size. Once the status shows completed, you can download the exported file by clicking on the given link. The Export History that is 90 days and older will be cleaned up automatically. 

Export & Delete History

This tab lists the Export & Delete operations performed by the administrator along with the current status of the action. It may take some time to complete this action depending on the file size. Once the exported file is ready for download, the status will be shown as completed. Click on the file to view the details and the download link. The exported file will be cleaned up after 90 days and so, it is recommended to download the file within the said period.

Audit logs

All the actions of the administrators in this portal will be recorded in the Audit logs section. All you need to do is specify the Start and the End dates and the User accounts for whom you wish to Preview or Download Audits. Select the actions as required. 

Customizing backup settings

Enable / Disable backup

As an administrator, you can customize your Backup setting by clicking on the Settings tab under Backup in eDiscovery portal. This section allows you to enable or disable Backup for your organization. In case, you have already enabled Backup and later, due to some unforeseen reason, wish to disable the service, then older emails will be retained as per the existing retention policy. However, once the Backup is disabled, emails deleted from the user mailboxes will no longer be saved in the backup portal.

Auto-enable for new users

When Auto-enable for a new user is enabled under backup settings, this means, deleted emails from a new user account will be stored automatically in the backup storage. In case 'Auto-enable for new users' is disabled, the administrator can manually enable backup for the new users under the Users tab, whenever required.

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Backup spam emails

As an administrator, you can also enable or disable (if enabled during onboarding phrase) backup spam emails along with the deleted emails under the Settings tab.

Recovery Cleanup

Administrators can set up duration in order to clear the recovery stats in the Backup.

User accounts

The Users tab gives you an overall view of the organization's users and their Backup status (enabled / disabled) with the storage utilization by each user. As an administrator, you can also manually enable or disable the Backup service for users joined newly or for whom the service was already enabled. This view also provides details about the quantum of storage used by each user for their email backup.

Note:

The backup storage is included in the user's total storage allocation.

Manage Backup Storage

The user's mailbox, eDiscovery and Backup share the storage allocated to a user. If you no longer require certain emails in your Backup, you can remove those in order to free-up the user's storage. Follow these steps to remove emails from backup:

Based on your selection, the emails are now removed from Backup, thereby increasing the user's storage. To view the current storage space status refer to the User accounts section. Refer to the Export & Delete History section for more details.