SHAREPOINT ONLINE ARCHIVING

Yes, absolutely. The whole process can be made transparent to end users, allow them to double-click to restore items either in place, or to an alternative location (if you allow that option). No need to make restores an IT Admin/helpdesk function if you don’t want to. 

The key to user experience is a combination of using shortcuts or stubs, which effectively act as a placeholder for the item in question, so it appears to be where the user expects it.  If the document or file has been archived, then when the user double clicks to open, they are directed to recenter to allow for the item to be restored in place back to SharePoint (or a different location if they wish). 

The on-screen status bar shows the user that the restore is now happening- and confirms once complete.  The HTML shortcut then changes to become the original document icon. No need to involve IT at all. 

AvePoint Opus allows for incredible flexibility when it comes to archiving rules (policies). 

The granularity of Opus allows for policies to be set to suit your needs; policies can be based on age, size, location, document type, number of versions. Rules can be applied to an entire SharePoint site, a single folder, or document level.   

Multiple rules can be applied – as many as you like, allowing you to customise to suit specific scenarios. 

Yes, with Opus you can take control of your document versioning and put in place an archiving rule to only keep for e.g. the current and ‘x’ number of versions before and remove the rest, reducing your storage footprint through version control. 

You have the flexibility to define the number of versions you would like to retain when creating the archive rule and this can be applied at a document level: 

The amount of management required for AvePoint Opus after it is up and running depends on your organisation’s specific use cases, the level of automation configured during implementation, and your ongoing business needs.  

Once set up, periodic adjustments might be needed to ensure the system aligns with evolving organisational policies and compliance standards: 

• Data Classification and Retention Policies: Adjust these as regulations or business needs change.
• Access Controls: Review user permissions periodically to ensure least-privilege access. 
• Automation Workflows: Fine-tune workflows based on user feedback or operational changes. 

Essential can lead this on a quarterly basis as part of our supporting service. 

No, you’re not limited.  Opus can be configured to work with different storage containers, Microsoft Azure BLOB storage is the most common, but you can use alternatives, Amazon S3 AWS is a popular one. Others include: Dropbox, FTP and SFTP.  

It depends on your needs. AvePoint offer a fully hosted solution (you choose the datacentre location), or you can Bring Your Own Storage, which keeps everything in your tenant for management.  

We have customers using both approaches, and it usually comes down to weighing up what is important to your organisation. 

If Data Sovereignty and keeping all data in your tenant is the key the priority, the only consideration is that alongside the platform cost, you would be paying the Azure/Amazon transaction fees. 

Alternatively, if the priority is to have a single cost that you can budget and assign to SPO archiving, then the vendor hosted option might be more suitable.  

It is up to you to decide, but Essential can help guide and give advice on what might work best for you.   

Yes, you can. We recommend and deploy AvePoint Opus for our customers, precisely because of the high level of control and authority that they can retain, setting the Opus solution apart from pretty much all the alternatives available.

When using the Bring Your Own Storage (BYOS) with AvePoint Opus, customer data generally remains within the customer’s own Microsoft 365 tenant, leveraging the storage you provide and control.

However, there are some nuances to be aware of:

1. Metadata and API Call Data: AvePoint Opus will interact with the customer’s tenant via Microsoft Graph API and other necessary endpoints to access, manage, and organise the data stored in the BYOS location. While AvePoint handles these interactions, only the metadata relevant to organising and managing the content (such as file properties, permissions, and folder structures) is typically involved in these API calls.
2. Data Storage in BYOS: The core files and documents remain in the customer’s tenant, adhering to the BYOS model’s intent. The interaction with AvePoint Opus ensures that Opus performs content management and organisation functions directly within your own environment.
3. Temporary Data Processing: Depending on the specific functions or operations being performed (such as indexing or specific processing activities), small amounts of metadata may be temporarily cached by AvePoint’s systems to enable efficient access and processing. However, this does not generally involve transferring content or sensitive data outside the tenant.
4. Compliance with Data Residency: AvePoint designs its solutions to comply with data residency requirements, meaning that customers can configure Opus to operate in a way that respects these boundaries by ensuring primary data remains in their Microsoft 365 environment.

When configuring Opus for our customers, the Essential team will work with your team to determine the right tenant location for the application configuration settings, metadata, file properties and permissions. With 14 global datacentre locations, there’s always an option that will work.

There are also additional security measures that can be put in place, such as Azure BYOK (Bring your own key) for additional encryption if required.

Yes, both admins and end users can perform a search of archived data and choose to restore or export the data.

The restore and export options are configurable for end users, end users can perform a search and will only see documents that they have permission to access through Microsoft Identity integration.

Admins have additional restoration capabilities, but by providing end users an end user restore portal (ReCenter) this takes the load off admins restoring content and adds to the user experience of combining stubbing with portal restores.

AvePoint Opus will maintain user permissions on documents and SharePoint site collections and only allow users to restore or access content that they have permissions to access (RBAC).

End users who utilise ReCenter end user portal, will only view files they have access to and can restore.

If you would like to view permissions on documents, SP sites and more, AvePoint have a module called Insights that scans and displays detailed information on permissions at all levels including document level, it also uncovers inactive SP sites, orphaned users, guest users and much more, with the ability to manage and remove permissions, remove orphaned and guest user access.. let us know if you would like to learn more.

Our specialist team can take you through some real life examples- we have helped customers reduce Microsoft overage bills from 1TB of storage saving, up to 100’s of terabytes and beyond. We can help configure a trial in your environment, which will allow a full scan and analysis to provide a ‘what if’ scenario based on the policies you’re considering.

This will provide some hard facts around potential cost savings versus where you are now.

There are no strings attached- aside from a small amount of effort, and a willingness to have Opus installed initially. 

f it’s not for you, we’ll uninstall and be on our way. 

Want to know more? Get in touch with a specialist for a chat, demo or to organise a trial to see for yourself.