Backup for Files - How do I manage accounts using the web portal?

Written By Tami Sutcliffe (Super Administrator)

Updated at March 31st, 2021

Overview

Account management centers around the web portal Account List. You can search and sort on almost any field.

Most management actions are performed by using the hyperlinks on the row representing the account.

Searching:

  • Allows you to find one or more accounts quickly based on conditions on fields that you choose (such as username, company name, etc.).
  • You will typically use the "Contains" operator. You can use wildcards (* and ?).
  • Predefined searches for the account list are accessible using the Reports -> Accounts menu item.

Sorting:

Click the column headers to sort. The default sort is the PID column, which groups sub-accounts with parent accounts and then sorts by account number. Click a column that is the current sort column to reverse the sort order.

Tool Tips:

  • Tool tips will appear when you hover your mouse over a hyperlink.
  • They will give you a hint as to what the hyperlink will do.
  • Tool tips are disabled on the account list if there are more than 16 rows (so the page is not too slow).

Account Impersonation:

You can impersonate other accounts to change their contact information, change their notification settings, and view their disk usage history.

  • Click the [I] next to the account no to impersonate the user. You will then see the web portal exactly as they would see it (except in a few cases you have more permissions to do things, like change their password without specifying the old password).

Changing Service Plans:

  1. Click the [S] next to the account's service plan in the SPlan column. Doing so will fill in the appropriate form below (under Account Operations).
  2. Choose the service plan and remove or adjust the expiration date as desired.
    The expiration date must be in the format: YYYY-MM-DD
  3. You can set the expiration date without changing the service plan by clicking the [S] link within the Expires column. However, typically you would change this when you change the service plan.

Resetting Passwords:

  • The [Reset] link in the Password column will allow you to reset an account's password. When clicked, the account password will automatically be set to a temporary password, and they will be emailed the new password. They will be required to change their password when they next log in.
  • When the word Temp appears in the Password column, it indicates that the account's password is temporary (must be changed at next login).
  • The "# X Logins" column displays how many consecutive times the user has failed to login due to invalid credentials. After 15 such logins within a 24-hour period their account will be locked. If their account is locked they will be unable to login for 24 hours. You can reset a locked account by clicking on the [U] link (only shown when an account is actually locked) in the # X Logins column.

Setting Maintenance Mode:

  • The [M] link in the "# X Logins" column is to put an account into maintenance mode, and should only be used by us when moving account data between servers (because their account is getting to large for a specific server).

Setting Account Quotas:

Each account has two quotas: a system quota and a user quota. The user can change their quota. The system quota is filled in by default by the service plan (upon account creation), and can only be changed by a reseller. The actual quota used by the storage server is the minimum of the two.

Changing No Backup Notifications:

  • This can easily be changed for a user with the [S] command in the NoBk Days column.
  • Note that users can configure these settings themselves with the My Account -> Notifications menu item (in the web portal).

Viewing Backup History:

Click the [V] next to the last backup date in the Lst Bck column. Doing so will take you to the session list page (see below) and automatically filter for that account.

Disabling/Enabling Accounts:

You can disable accounts and give a reason (for example, if they haven't paid their bills).

Deleting Accounts:

Click the [X] on the very left side of the account's row. It will mark the account as deleted. The server will not actually archive the data for another 2 weeks. After archival, data is destroyed after 30 days. You can "undelete" accounts. If it's been longer than a week, Create a new support ticket to move the data from archive back to the live server.

Provisioning Email Archiving:

In addition to online backup services, accounts can be used to provision and monitor email archiving services. First, for an account you choose how many mailboxes you want to archive information from (if you plan to use the journaling feature for compliance, then this must be the number of mailboxes contained in the Exchange database). You set the number of mailboxes that are licensed for an account by using the [S] link in the Mailboxes column in the account list. You then install the backup manager onto the computer that will perform the archiving, and configure the username and password on the My Account page (a pass phrase only needs to be configured if you plan to remotely backup your archive). Either way, a Schedule should be configured on the schedule page so that status information can be updated. Once set, use the Tools menu, Email Archiving, Install... command to finish the install process. Follow the wizard and then the software documentation to complete the setup and configuration of email archiving.

Changing Security Roles:

Typically you would never change the role for an account. The exception is when you would want to add more customer service representatives and give them different permissions. You would add a sub-account (perhaps giving them a quota of 0MB if you didn't want them to be able to backup anything) and then change their role to something appropriate.

Exporting Account Information:

Exporting account information is useful when you need to bill your customers or to create custom reports.

  • Adjust the search filter so that the query includes only the accounts you are interested in (for example, non-trial accounts whose role name is blank, indicating
    a normal user).
    • You can use the Reports -> Accounts menu to access predefined reports, such as all billable accounts.
    • Note that it will export the entire list, even if the web page is only displaying results one page at a time.
  • Use the Export Data section at the bottom of the page to export the data to a file. (CSV format can be imported into Microsoft Excel.)