Self-service access to Shared drive backups

Afi Backup provides granular access management capabilities, including self-service access for the end-users to their backups. Self-service access can be enabled by Afi administrators on the Service → Settings → Access groups tab and, by default, grants users access to their own mailbox and drive backup.

When Google Workspace users actively collaborate in Shared drives, they might need access not only to their own backups, but also to their Shared drive backups. To cover such scenarios, Afi Backup provides an extended end-user self-service mode that includes Shared drive access for data export and recovery.

Extended self-service access is provisioned based on Shared drive Manager roles. If a user is a Manager for a Shared drive, then they can access the corresponding backup of this drive when the extended self-service access is enabled. Shared drive Managers are configured in the Advanced permission settings for a given drive.

For example, the screenshot below shows a case when the self-service user Brian Johnson has access to several Shared drives through self-service and can export or recover the data from these drives through the Afi portal:

Self-service access permissions to Shared drive backups are configured on the Service → Settings → Access groups tab as a part of the Self Service access group configuration. The same permissions are applied both to a user's own backup and to their Shared drive backups.

A list of Shared drives available to each self-service user is updated once per 24 hours during periodic Afi resource synchronizations with Google Workspace. So if a user becomes a Manager for a Shared drive or is stripped from a Manager role, then these changes will be reflected in the Afi portal during the next 24 hours. An out-of-schedule synchronization can be triggered by an Afi administrator by clicking on the refresh icon in the top-right corner of the Service → Protection screen.

When a Shared drive is deleted on the Google Workspace side, it is still available through self-service for users who were Managers of the corresponding Shared drive right before its deletion.