MSP360 Backup has been offering backup plan reporting to its users for a long time. Yet what many users are not aware of is the fact that reporting can be further expanded to include plenty of extra information. In this post we illustratively explain the feature and its benefits.
Introduction
The default backup plan reporting can be set up in a dedicated step of the Backup Wizard by selecting the required checkbox. Having enabled the feature, users expect to get a basic email report that displays the essential backup information: computer prefix, bucket, backup duration, number of files backed up, backup volume, etc.
Detailed reporting
Now let's talk about detailed reporting. In essence, the feature can be enabled by selecting the Generate detailed report checkbox in the Backup Wizard.
If the feature is enabled, the email report will be amended by a Detailed report table row that links you to the detailed report stored on the cloud storage utilized in the backup plan. In our sample backup plan we selected Amazon S3 as our backup destination of choice, and the detailed report will thus be stored there as well.
Note that detailed reporting is limited to select storage services for the time being: Amazon S3, S3-compatible storage providers, Google Cloud with Service Account authentication, OpenStack, Azure, and starting with version 5.6 — BackBlaze B2 and local File System. If you opt for the local storage, the detailed report will be stored there; and the email report will indicate the path to the report.
Worth mentioning is the expiry date for the detailed report links. Different storage providers have different expiry dates — so you should probably found out yours beforehand.
Now let's see how the detailed report looks:
Evidently, you get appreciably more information. It's especially useful if you're backing up thousands of files — the benefits are quite clear.
