The ABCs of Google Workspace for Education Backup

If your school is using Google Workspace for Education, you may think that Google has your files backed up and available for you in any scenario. But consider the following:

We had an incident today where the teacher watched the kids insert data into a lab report. They closed it and then reopened it – all of the data was gone. We checked the revision history – nothing!  I have never seen, nor heard, of this happening. The teacher says he definitely saw the kids’ lab report with data (he watched over their shoulders).

-B.S.

One of our staff members had their account hijacked (the person actually had the login and PW information for this user) and the hijacker has erased all contacts from their Google Contact list. Is there a way to get the contacts back?

-P.I.

Just heard from a tech support person that she accidentally deleted the wrong account – 2 students with the same name and she didn’t notice (at the time) the grad dates.  Does anyone have a way to recover his data? He’s a senior and has some info in his Drive he wants. It happened yesterday.

-K.L.

These are issues posted to Google Workspace forums by educators and IT admins at schools. In all of these cases, Google was unable to help because while they protect your data from their mishaps – server failures in the data center, natural disasters, etc – they don’t protect your data from problems that occur on your end.

If you’re reading these cases and thinking “That could happen to me” – you’re right. And you need backup for Google Workspace in place before it does. But backup & recovery might be uncharted territory for you. How can you choose an appropriate backup solution for Google Workspace for Education?

Fortunately, the answer is as elementary as the ABCs we teach our young students. Use the ABCs of backup for Google Workspace as a guide for selecting the best backup and recovery solution for your school.

A is for Automatic

You don’t have time to implement some complicated backup and recovery solution. You need something that installs easily and runs daily backups quietly in the background so you can get on with the business of making sure students are learning. But you also need to be notified of any problems with your backups so that you can quickly address them. Choose a Google Workspace backup tool that backs up your data automatically each day and sends you regular email notifications about any problems; that way, you don’t have to spend more than 15 minutes a week on backup.

B is for Back to Work Fast

If an administrator, teacher or student loses data, everything screeches to a halt. They usually end up calling IT to try and get the lost files back. But if they could restore their own lost files the minute they realize they’re gone, that’s even better. Choose a backup tool with extreme usability so that anyone can use it without having to wait on an IT admin. You should also make sure that lost data can be rapidly restored right back where it was in Google Workspace; some options only offer the ability to export data, which then has to be re-imported and reconfigured, making the time it takes to get back to work even longer.

C is for Cost Effective

One of the reasons your school chose to implement Google Workspace for Education is probably because the price was right; “free” is tough to turn down. So your Google Workspace backup tool needs to be affordable too. After all, there aren’t a lot of news headlines lately proclaiming “Schools get unlimited budgets; cease bake sales forever” are there? Educators are always trying to do more with less, and your backup solution should do the same. Choose education backup with unlimited storage and skip the nickel-and-diming that comes standard with some solutions. Also check to see if there’s discounted pricing available for education institutions as many providers will offer this option.

You may be becoming a Google Workspace for Education expert, but there’s still a lot to learn out there about how backup works in the cloud. If you want to find out more, download our free guide “9 Essentials for a Complete Cloud-to-Cloud Backup Solution” here.

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