How Do I Choose What and When to Back Up?
Sign in as a Domain Administrator or System Administrator with access to the domain. Select that domain, then open Settings > Backup settings. If Settings is missing, ask your JitBackup administrator to make the change.
Choose Users and Shared Drives
On the users tab, browse the organizational units, select the required users, and save the selection. An organizational unit, or OU, is a group of accounts maintained by your company in Google Workspace.
Check the selected user count against your available license allowance. Suspended or deleted users cannot be selected for new backups from this page. Existing backups are a separate matter; see Employee departures and existing backups.
To include future employees, enable Automatically enable backups for new users and review the OUs selected for automatic backup. Save the OU choices and the user settings. After new users are discovered, confirm both their selection and their first successful backup; automatic selection still depends on the available license allowance.
On the Shared Drives tab, select the required drives and save. Automatically enable backups for new Shared drives controls future Shared Drives separately. Shared Drive backup is unavailable in trial and requires an active paid license.
Choose Apps and Review Drive Exclusions
On Backup Options, review Gmail, Drive, Contacts, Calendar, and Tasks under Enable backup for Workspace apps, then click Update App Settings.
For Drive, open Advanced settings... to review Backup files Shared with me and exclusion rules. A file shared with a user is not the same as a file in a Shared Drive. Check both settings when shared content is important.
Exclusion rules can deliberately omit files by name, extension, size, or other properties. Ask the administrator who created the rules before changing them. An excluded item will not become recoverable until a later backup successfully includes it.
Set the Backup Interval
- Stay on Backup Options and find Backup interval.
- Choose an entry from Cron Expression Examples. A Cron expression describes the times when a job should start.
- Click Update backup interval and wait for the success message.
- Return to Overview and check the next backup time.
Examples already available in the console include:
| Schedule | Expression |
|---|---|
| Every hour | 0 * * * * |
| Every two hours | 0 */2 * * * |
| Weekdays at 9:00 PM | 0 21 * * 1-5 |
If the displayed next run is unexpected, have IT check the server's clock and time zone. New backups do not begin until the previous backup finishes. Choosing an hourly schedule does not guarantee an hourly completed recovery point when each job takes longer than an hour.
Confirm the Change Took Effect
Saving users, apps, or a schedule is not a completed backup. Run a backup from Overview, or wait for the next scheduled job, then check the affected users and apps in History > Backup History. Use First backup and daily checks to verify coverage.