This guide details how to back up a Microsoft 365 space using Acronis on Swiss Backup, the backup solution in an independent Swiss cloud.

Preamble

• What you can back up:
  • Office
  • OneDrive
  • Exchange
  • Teams
  • SharePoint
  • Emails
  • By default, OneNote notebooks are included in OneDrive file backups, Microsoft Teams, and SharePoint sites.
• It is also possible to back up other types of data.

Adding a Microsoft 365 organization

Prerequisites

• Have a Swiss Backup Infomaniak space with an available device quota (minimum 1) for an Acronis Microsoft 365 backup (1 license per Office 365 user (seat) to back up):
  
• If necessary, increase the device quota according to your needs.
• Add the device to the Infomaniak Manager to receive the login credentials.
• Your account must have the global administrator role in Microsoft 365
• Read the Acronis documentation on this subject.

An administrator can add one or more Microsoft 365 organizations to a Swiss Backup account.

To add a Microsoft 365 organization:

1. Click here to access the Acronis Console with the credentials obtained after adding the device (need help?).
2. Click the add device button to add a Microsoft 365 Business type device:
   
3. The software redirects you to the Microsoft 365 login page:
   
4. Log in using the Microsoft 365 global administrator credentials.
5. Microsoft 365 displays a list of the permissions required to back up and restore your organization's data:
   
6. Confirm that you are granting these permissions to the Cyber Protection service.
    

The Cloud Agent does not connect to Microsoft 365. The agent obtains the necessary permissions directly from Microsoft 365. You only need to confirm the granting of these permissions once while logged in as a global administrator. The agent does not store your account credentials and does not use them to perform backups and restores. Changing the password of this account or deactivating or deleting this account in Microsoft 365 does not affect the operation of the agent.

Your Microsoft 365 organization then appears under the Devices tab in the Cyber Protect console:

Backup / Synchronization Frequency

The Cloud Agent synchronizes with Microsoft 365 every 24 hours, starting from the moment the organization is added to the Cyber Protection service. If you add or delete a user, group, or site, this change will not be immediately visible in the Cyber Protect console.

Immediate Synchronization

To synchronize the change immediately, select the organization on the Microsoft 365 page and then click Refresh.

If you have applied a protection plan to the All Users, All Groups, or All Sites group, recently added items will only be included in the backup once synchronization has been performed.

In case of slowdowns

If the Microsoft 365 Cloud-to-Cloud (C2C) backup or restore tasks are running slower than expected and taking a long time to complete, refer to this other guide to temporarily disable the Exchange Web Services API throttling to improve performance when restoring Microsoft 365 items.

Deleted Items

In accordance with Microsoft's policy, when a user, group, or site is deleted from the Microsoft 365 graphical interface, it remains available for a few days via the API. During this period, the deleted item is inactive (grayed out) in the Cyber Protect console and is not backed up.

When the deleted item is no longer available via the API, it will disappear from the Cyber Protect console. Its backups (if any) are located under Backup Storage > Cloud Application Backups.

Learn More

1. Microsoft 365 Resource Discovery
2. Backup frequency configuration
3. Exchange Online data protection
4. OneDrive file protection
5. SharePoint Online site protection
6. Microsoft 365 Teams data protection
7. OneNote notebook protection