While August is a vacation month for many, the Alcion team has been busy and productive. Below is a summary of the great new capabilities and improvements introduced in August 2024.

Features​

Custom backup policies​

Alcion Security tier subscribers have unlimited retention for their backups. This is desirable in many cases, but Alcion customers have often requested the ability to align backup retention with a definite time period that matches company or industry specific compliance requirements. Alcion now makes this possible by allowing users to create custom policies and control the maximum age for retained backups.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Group-based policy management - new user default policy precedence​

When applying default new user policies to groups, it's possible that the same user belongs to more than one group with an active policy configuration. To disambiguate which policy to apply, Alcion uses the precedence associated with each group.

The latest configured policy has the highest precedence (number 1), but the precedence can be adjusted by dragging and rearranging the groups in the Alcion UI.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Consolidated partner activity reports​

Based on consistent feedback from our MSP customers, Alcion now supports sending a daily consolidated partner-level report that summarizes the activity across the tenants managed by a given partner and includes additional details for each managed tenant.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Improved restore options to allow restoring user mailbox items to a share mailbox and vice versa.
• Enhanced the group policy management UI to list groups with a default new resource policy first.
• Allowed multi-select operations on SharePoint lists and pages.
• Improved the onboarding experience for new partners.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed an issue where the backup browse dialog reported incorrect backup sizes.
• Fixed cases where the Quick Start was incorrectly dismissed for new tenants if a partner user had already dismissed it for a different tenant.
• Fixed an issue where the Alcion logo wasn't shown on some partner portal pages.
• Fixed URL escaping when performing Activity filtering.
• Fixed duplicated filter values in Export activity actions.
• Fixed incorrect links for the Sharepoint site resource in restore action details.

Below is a summary of the great capabilities and improvements that the Alcion team has introduced in July 2024.

Features​

Activity Export​

The Alcion Activity page is a great resource to understand and audit the performance of the system. In addition to the flexible filtering introduced in the last few months, Alcion now allows exporting up to 30 days of Activity as a CSV file. This enables more flexible and in depth analysis in external tools as well as using the export for evidence in compliance audits.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Indicated what data types are available on each resource card on the Alcion dashboard page.
• Improved messaging regarding how to remove a tenant from an MSP account with an active subscription.
• Improved validation handling when inviting a new user to an Alcion account.
• Enhanced the user experience when managing Alcion users with the addition of a name and date added columns.
• Clarified timing of chat backups when browsing a resource.
• Included a hint when searching that a user may have been converted to a shared mailbox and vice versa.
• Improved readability of the resources pages on smaller width mobile devices.
• Improved accuracy and freshness of activity data.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed Activity Details for Backup Policy Update to present teams and groups names.
• Fixed an issue where SharePoint lists exports were incorrectly classified as message exports.
• Fixed the ability to select other groups without having to explicitly deselect the All Users group.
• Fixed a login page rendering issue after certain logout scenarios.
• Fixed an email address validation issue on the page where access to Alcion is managed.
• Fixed a case where incident creation request could yield multiple separate incidents rather than a single, consolidated incident.
• Fixed an issue where excluded protection policy was unintentionally applied to archived resources.

Below is a summary of the great capabilities and improvements that the Alcion team has introduced in June.

Features​

Role-based access control​

Addressing a common customer request, Alcion now supports role-based access control(RBAC). When managing users, Alcion administrators can control the level of access using a set of predefined roles. The effective permissions for each user are determined by the union of all permissions granted by the assigned roles.

For more details, including the definition of each predefined role, see the relevant documentation.

Partner role tenant scoping​

A common use case for Alcion's MSP clients is to restrict the delegated access of their staff only to the tenants for which staff members are responsible. Alcion now supports this workflow by making it possible to assign partner portal users the Tenant Operator role and further scoping it to one or more of the tenants under management.

For more details, including full list of the partner portal level roles and scoping options, see the relevant documentation.

SharePoint lists​

Alcion continues to expand its SharePoint data services capabilities and now supports backup and restore for SharePoint Lists.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Introduced a progress indicator to show the number of outstanding initial backups for each resource type.
• Aligned the daily activity report statistics along the boundaries of the timezone set during account setup.
• Improved the backup pruning algorithm to always retain the latest backup for archived resources.
• Hardened security by alerting the old notification email on record when the preferred notification email changes.
• Made the OneDrive files tab more recognizable when browsing user resource backups.
• Improved navigation to identify resources that need user attention based on the last status backup summaries.
• Clarified when filtering is applied on resource pages by adding a more visible tool tip.
• Enhanced the robustness of long running resource discovery tasks.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed the background color of the daily backup charts on the main dashboard.
• Fixed token validation of OneDrive and SharePoint item download URLs to significantly improve performance.
• Fixed an issue where shared mailbox resources weren't filtered out during group-based policy management bulk updates.
• Fixed a number of issues related to backup of teams channel messages.
• Fixed the handling of intermittent Graph API failures when users are converted to shared mailboxes and mailboxes are deleted.

In May, the Alcion team continued to improve our platform in response to customer feedback. Below is a summary of the new capabilities and improvements that are now available to current and future Alcion customers.

Features​

Group-based policy management - new user policies​

Following the initial group-based policy management capabilities introduced in April, Alcion now allows applying default new user policies on Microsoft 365 groups/teams or Entra ID security groups. After a default policy is in place for a group, any users that are discovered as direct or transitive members of the group will automatically get the specified default new user policy. This capability allows Alcion administrators to fully automate applying protection without the need for explicit configuration changes when they provision new users or modify their organizational roles as indicated by membership in groups.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

SharePoint pages​

Alcion continues to expand its SharePoint data services capabilities and now supports backup and restore for SharePoint Pages.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Enabled editing of billing information independently of adding a payment method.
• Changed billing notifications to be sent to the billing contact email, if specified, and not the overall Alcion notifications contact.
• Improved the user experience around initial configuration and ongoing management on default policies for new resources.
• Added a summary of the last attempted backup status for each resource type which improves the ability to quickly identify resources that may need attention from an Alcion operator.
• Introduced a summary of the last attempted backup status for all protected resources in the Daily backup activity emails.
• Added resource filtering based on the status of the last attempted backup.
• Improved the user experience responsiveness when setting a backup policy for a single resource.
• Enhanced handling of throttling errors when Microsoft Graph returns retry-after 0 headers.
• Hardened retries and error handling if attachment restore operations are interrupted improving the overall resilience for large attachment restores.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed resource activity warning for resources with protection policy of None or Excluded.
• Fixed an issue where the old ID wasn't removed when updating the billing tax ID.
• Fixed some layout issue with the payment confirmation page on mobile devices.
• Fixed an issue where resources were archived prematurely as a result of intermittent resource discovery failures.
• Fixed exposing internal backup validation to end-users.
• Fixed the ransomware threats detected statistics to include threat data from all sources.
• Fixed an error where backups could fail if a SharePoint site contains document libraries with the same name.
• Fixed an issue with intermittent auth token expiration for OneDrive backups.
• Fixed failures when attempting to export emails with inline attachments without properly set content ID.

April was another productive month for the Alcion team. Below is a summary of the new capabilities and improvements that are now available to current and future Alcion customers.

Features​

Group-based policy management - apply policy​

One of the most frequent requests for Alcion has been the ability to use Microsoft 365 groups (including Teams enabled groups) and Entra ID security groups as a selection mechanism to efficiently apply policies to users that are either direct or transitive members of a group.

The capability allows Alcion administrators to prioritize protection based on already existing business structures that are often captured by groups. For example, protecting the data of all finance department employees can be done by applying a backup policy to the Finance Teams or security group.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Configurable e-mail notification preferences​

Alcion now offers additional control over the categories of notifications that will be sent for an Alcion account. Additionally, administrators can also configure the email address where the notifications should be directed.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Included an indicator for the status of the latest attempted backup for each protected resource.
• Enabled identifying resources in suspended status through resource filtering.
• Simplified navigation from the Home page to relevant actions on the Activity page with direct links from elements of the Recent Activity chart.
• Added display of more accurate recent net resource discovery and status changes.
• Enhanced the Daily Activity notification emails to include resource net status changes.
• Improved the indication that the activity score on newly created may not yet be properly initialized.
• Made it possible to select all resources on a page or in search results to perform bulk actions.
• Improved reliability of initial resource discovery when permissions granted to Alcion are slow to propagate.
• Enabled navigation to failed actions directly from the resource pages.
• Introduced the ability to remove managed tenants from the Alcion Partner Portal without support assistance when an active subscription hasn't been established yet.
• Improved the user experience when an admin attempts to add to the Partner Portal a tenant that's already managed by a partner.
• Added mechanism for announcing system or maintenance outages.
• Improved backup performance for Exchange resources.
• Improved export performance by 6x.
• Improved backup resiliency when Exchange reports attachments as corrupt.
• Improved PST export resiliency for events with timezone values other than the ones documented by Microsoft here

Notable fixes​

• Fixed an error occurring in some cases when customers with direct subscriptions visit the partner portal.
• Fixed an issue with the View Related Activity action for site resources.
• Fixed accidental double submission for backup deletion requests.
• Fixed accidental double submission for backup policy changes.
• Fixed cases when export from backups might fail because of insufficient CPU allocation.
• Fixed an issue with incorrect pagination for filtering/searching for resource names containing reserved characters.
• Fixed an issue where the reason for suspending a resource wasn't properly shown in the UI.
• Fixed a problem where the recent number of completed backups on the Alcion Partner Portal may have been incorrect.
• Fixed improper discovery of distribution lists as group resources.
• Fixed errors when performing in-place restores which require replacing folders created for Teams channels.
• Fixed a problem where site group unique permissions on SharePoint document library folders weren't restored.
• Fixed cases where intermittent network failures could result in empty OneDrive or SharePoint restores.

Below is a summary of the great new capabilities and improvements that the Alcion team has introduced in March.

Features​

Backups completing with exceptions​

Alcion excels when it comes to the reliability and completeness of customer data backups, but on rare occasions backup of items may fail for reason external to Alcion. Some typical examples include, but aren't limited to, transient Microsoft API availability issues, corrupted or inaccessible items in the customer Microsoft 365 tenant, specific access restrictions, etc. The Alcion operations team actively investigates and remediates such failures but until now any error resulted in a failed backup, even if the vast majority of the data was successfully protected.

Alcion now allows backups with a small number of failures to complete with status Completed (with exceptions) and makes the data available for restores. The action details on the Activity page indicate which items were not backed up, and will be retried on subsequent attempts. The Alcion operations team continues to actively investigate and remediate such issues.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Partner delegated permissions management​

Alcion now offers additional control over the permissions granted when a managed tenant is added to the Alcion portal by a partner that manages the tenant. Additionally, the admins of the managed tenant will have visibility into the permissions that the partner has for delegated management.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Audit of backup policy updates​

In addition to providing visibility into data protection operations, the Activity page now also reflects policy configuration changes. This mechanism allows for effective auditing of who changed the protection settings and when the change was made.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Improved efficiency when updating backup policies on a large number of resources
• Reduced the retry interval for intermittent errors when initial resource discovery runs to improve the the overall user experience in such cases
• Introduced selecting a default backup data region based on the timezone of the user performing onboarding
• Added an indicator to show excluded and archived resources for a given resource type on the Alcion home page
• Marked initial backups with labels to indicate that they may take longer than subsequent backups
• Introduced indicators showing that there is a current backup in progress on the pages for a specific resource
• Added a Backup Now option on the pages for a specific resource
• Removed archived resources from the list of options when restoring to a different resource
• Allowed filtering Activity actions only to a single resource
• Disallowed duplicate sign-ups when a partner portal registration already exists. Additional users need to be invited.
• Adjusted visibility of tenant actions on the Alcion Partner portal based on the permissions granted by each managed tenant
• Added excluded resource counts to the Alcion Partner portal
• Upgraded to the latest version of Corso which brings a number of functional, performance, and robustness improvements

Notable fixes​

• Fixed an issue with the layout of the managed tenant breakdown on partner invoices
• Fixed an issue where backups couldn't complete for resources with multiple folders containing forward slashes
• Fixed incorrect status notification text when changing policies
• Fixed cases where successful re-drives initiated by the Alcion operations team weren't reflected on the original action
• Fixed an issue where a tenant with an existing subscription was incorrectly allowed to register for the Alcion Partner portal
• Fixed dark mode colors for the Alcion Partner portal
• Fixed cases where the subscription tier wasn't always properly reflected on partner managed accounts

February was an exciting month for us at Alcion. For the last few months, we've been working closely with a select group of Managed Service Provider (MSP) partners who were part of our Private Preview program to build an amazing experience for the rapidly increasing number of MSPs who are using Alcion to protect their customers. On February 13th, we unveiled Alcion for Partners to the world. I will cover some of the key capabilities below, but you can read more about the complete program details here.

Features​

Alcion for Partners​

The Alcion for Partners program combines MSP-friendly engagement processes and terms as well as new partner-specific functionality (see below) delivered through the Alcion partner portal.

Multi-tenant management​

The Alcion partner portal provides MSPs with a single dashboard for a consolidated operational view across all their managed customer accounts.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Delegated administration​

Alcion dramatically improves management efficiency and allows MPS admins, with the proper permissions, to switch between the multi-tenant context of the portal and the specific context of a customer tenant without the need to re-authenticate.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Self-service customer tenant onboarding​

MSPs can grow their business at their own pace and start managing new Alcion tenants for their customers without any involvement from Alcion’s sales, support, or operations teams.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Consolidated billing​

Finally, the Alcion partner portal allows MSP partners to manage a single subscription that automatically tracks license usage across all customer managed tenants.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Resource and Action Filtering​

We also haven't forgotten our non-partner users. One of the most common feature requests in recent weeks has been around additional controls when working with a large number of resources and actions. In response, Alcion now offers the ability to filter resources and actions on key fields such as backup policy, last backup date, activity level, etc.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Introduced a new login page for the Alcion partner portal.
• Added an option to enable automatic upgrades for annual plans when starting a subscription.
• Improved the performance of Alcion UI operations such as policy changes or initiating on-demand backups.
• Added an entry for Settings to the side navigation bar and made some visual style improvements.
• Enabled MSP admins to get a breakdown of their billable users by customer account on consolidated invoices.
• Force users to always chose an account when logging into Alcion, even if they're only logged into a single Microsoft 365 account.
• Enhanced the Alcion UI will indicate as Suspended resources which are temporarily excluded from backups.
• Upgraded to the latest version of Corso which brings a number of functional, performance, and robustness improvements. For more information on Corso specific changes please see the Corso changelog.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed a problem where resource discovery was reported as complete even when indexing was still incomplete.
• Fixed a visual issue where the dialog for ongoing resource discovery was preventing access to the user profile and settings controls.
• Fixed an issue when not all action menu entries were visible for entries close to the bottom of the screen on resource pages.
• Fixed the title of the Incidents column in the partner portal.
• Fixed scalability issues when using Set All Backups on a several thousand resources.
• Fixed an issue allowing an MSPs to incorrectly add the same tenant to multiple portal instances.

The Alcion team is off to a great start in 2024, and I'm happy to introduce the following new capabilities.

Features​

Manage Administrators​

It's not uncommon that more than one user needs access and permissions to administer Alcion. It's now possible for an Alcion user to invite additional administrators or, if needed, revoke access that has been previously granted.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Additional Email Notifications​

Alcion now offers additional notifications for events that may require your attention. The following new notifications are now available:

• First successful backup
• Export failures
• Export successful completions
• Backup deletion requests

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Contacts and Events PST Export​

Following the introduction of PST export for email last month, it's now also possible to export contacts and events as a PST file.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Improved performance when loading a large number of actions.
• Clarified error messages when attempting to start a backup and one is already in progress.
• Daily activity emails now include the number of days remaining in trial.
• Improved efficiency of ransomware detection by avoiding repeat analysis of items that haven't changed.
• Ensured that the full backup following a preview backup isn't subject to scheduling restrictions.
• Further optimized UI load times and responsiveness of actions.
• Upgraded to the latest version of Corso which brings a number of functional, performance, and robustness improvements. For more information on Corso specific changes please see the Corso changelog.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed improper handling of unlicensed teams.
• Fixed license discovery for users who have been removed in Microsoft 365.
• Fixed automatic inactive session logout on inactive browser tabs.
• Fixed an issue where excess licenses for annual subscriptions could be negative.
• Fixed the backup calendar selector which incorrectly allowed range selection.
• Fixed an issue where the full backup that follows preview backup might be subject to scheduling restrictions.
• Fixed incorrect reporting of malware and ransomware incidents in historical stats.

As 2023 draws to a close, the Alcion team is sending off the year in style with a great set of new capabilities and improvements.

Features​

Email PST Export​

One of our most requested features is finally here! It's now possible to export one or more emails and email folders as a PST file which can then be accessed through Outlook or another PST-compatible mail client.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Preview Backup​

Alcion is optimized for high-throughput when performing backups, but the first backup for a resource with a significant amount of data can take upwards of 30 minutes. This is normal and usually fine for a steady state deployment but can be really inconvenient when looking to quickly evaluate the full range of functional capabilities of any backup solution. To speed up their testing, we've seen users setup test environments or test resources with a limited amount of data. Such approaches work well, but do require a level of preliminary planning and extra work.

At Alcion, we greatly value the time of our users, which is why we introduced Preview Backups. During the first 5 days of a new trial, when the first backup for each resource type is requested, Alcion will create a partial, yet representative, backup of the resource. A Preview Backup typically completes in under 2 minutes, and a subsequent full backup automatically follows. Users don't have to wait and can use the Preview Backup like any other backup to evaluate the browse, search, restore, and export workflows.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Backup Calendar Selector​

For any resource enabled for backups, Alcion allows you to select and browse all previously created backups. As the number of backups for a resource grows, it becomes more challenging to navigate to the desired backup. To address this issue, we introduced a calendar-based backup browsing control.

Improvements​

• Improved the ability to trace when a previously failed backup has been followed by a subsequent successful operator initiated retry.
• Sped up loading of all key user interface pages.
• Introduced statistics in export action details.
• Added activity score for teams and groups resources.
• Enabled the ability to restore OneDrive files from shared mailbox backups that were created before the resource was converted to a shared mailbox.
• Disabled in-place and different location restore options which aren't applicable for archived resources.
• Upgraded to the latest version of Corso which brings a number of functional, performance, and robustness improvements. For more information on Corso specific changes please see the Corso changelog.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed incorrect protected user count when the number is below the minimum licenses required for a tenant.
• Fixed cases of incorrect negative compliance score.
• Fixed inconsistencies with how In Progress backup actions are counted in the recent and full activity panels.
• Fixed cases where paging controls were shown even when no additional pages are available.
• Fixed missing sign out button on mobile devices.
• Fixed an issue where the trial expiration notification wasn't always visible.

The Alcion team continues to make improvements to our platform, and November was another productive month. Below is a summary of some of the new capabilities and improvements that our team introduced.

Features​

Partner Portal Private Preview​

At Alcion, we're already working closely with Manager Service Providers and Partners who use Alcion to protect the Microsoft 365 data for their own clients. While Alcion makes managing each account a breeze, we've started adding capabilities that allow partners to monitor and manage multiple accounts at scale through the Alcion Partner Portal.

This offering is still in Private Preview and is only available to a handful of partners who are already providing great feedback to our team. If you are interested in joining the Private Preview program, please send us a request at info@alcion.ai.

Resource classification alignment​

Based on feedback, we've adjusted some of the classification rules that Alcion uses to determine the types of different resources. The changes are favorable when it comes to Alcion licensing and will generally result in fewer resources classified as billable users. Some of the key changes are:

• Resources designated in Exchange as Shared Mailbox are no longer classified as Users if they have an active OneDrive.
• Users without any assigned licenses will no longer be discovered by Alcion or if already discovered will be converted to Archived resources.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Automatic annual plan upgrade​

Given the popularity of our annual plans, Alcion administrators now have the option to automatically upgrade their subscriptions when the number of billable users exceeds the number of annual protected users they have purchased. This allows administrators to always take advantage of our lower annual rates.

If the option is enabled, each month, Alcion will add the required annual users to your subscription and will charge you a pro-rated amount for the remainder of the annual billing period.

For more details, see the relevant documentation.

Improvements​

• Added the ability to upgrade the type plan for annual subscriptions.
• Implemented blocking of multiple sign-ups from the same M365 domain to prevent accidental account duplication.
• Added a link to navigate to the restore destination for OneDrive and SharePoint restore actions.
• Enhanced the Quickstart option to start up to 4 of the scheduled backups it enables immediately.
• Upgraded to the latest version of Corso which brings a number of functional, performance, and robustness improvements. For more information on Corso specific changes please see the Corso changelog.

Notable fixes​

• Fixed an issue where backups couldn't be found when navigating to a specific backup from the activity page.
• Fixed an issue allowing an unsupported restore of multiple document libraries.
• Fixed cases where notification emails are accidentally sent multiple times.