Topic
This article explains auto-discover and auto licensing features in NinjaOne SaaS Backup.
Environment
NinjaOne SaaS Backup
Description
Many customers want to set up their organizations so that as little manual intervention as possible is required. To accommodate this, NinjaOne SaaS Backup offers several tools.
- Autodiscover: When this feature is activated, NinjaOne SaaS Backup will scan the environment once a day checking for new users and will automatically add them to backups.
- AD Group Filtering: Works in conjunction with Autodiscover to limit what NinjaOne SaaS Backup looks at to a specific group within the environment
- Auto-licensing: When this option is activated, the number of licenses for an organization automatically adjusts to ensure all users are backed up.
The use of auto-discover in conjunction with auto-licensing will allow NinjaOne SaaS Backup to detect, add, and license to backups with no manual intervention required. If needed, you can also enable AD Group filtering to limit this feature to just users that you add to the group.
Auto-Discover
Auto-Discover monitors whether any new mailboxes or SharePoint sites are available to back up. When NinjaOne SaaS Backup detects a new mailbox or site, it automatically adds it to the backup. Partners can enable email notifications to be alerted when there aren’t enough seats available within the organization. For more information about enabling notifications in the Partner Portal, refer to Partner Email Notifications.
How Auto-Discover determines which users to add
NinjaOne SaaS Backup autodiscover selection is not random, and does not use first-in, first-out (FIFO) by hire date or creation date to determine which users to add. When NinjaOne SaaS Backup discovers licensed mailboxes exceeding the available seats, it sorts all eligible mailboxes and selects users to add based on the sort criteria. The order of the sort priority is as follows:
- Account status
- Drive status
- License type
- Email address in ascending alphabetical order (A→Z) as a tie-breaker
For newly discovered mailboxes with the same status and license type, the selection could potentially be determined by alphabetical email order. NinjaOne SaaS Backup reruns the sort-priority calculation each time Auto Discover runs.
How to enable Auto-Discover:
- On the End-User Portal, click the menu on the top right of the page
- Click Account Settings
- Select the Auto-Discover tab. This is where you can enable for all or pick specific domains.
How to enable Auto-Discover for SharePoint
- On the End-User Portal, Click the “add backup” button
- Click the option under add from existing and then click the “Sites” button at the top of the page
- On the Right-hand side of the page, you can enable the AutoDiscover feature.
- Learn more about Auto-Discover for SharePoint here
Exclusion List:
If Auto-Discover is enabled, you would need to temporarily disable it in order to add additional users to the exclusion list. Once those users have been added, you can re-enable auto-discover.
AD Group Backup
AD Group Backup allows you to add backups more efficiently. Once the AD Group is registered, our system monitors if any new users are added or if any existing users are removed on the M365 side. The corresponding account’s backup is activated or deactivated based on the status.
How to Add Users from an AD Group to Backup
- Click the Organizations tab
- Choose an organization, click the kebab menu (three vertical dots), and click View Details.
- Select the Features tab
- Enable the M365 Backup by AD Group toggle, input the AD Group name, and click the Yes, continue button. The name of the AD Group used must match exactly what exists within the tenant (including capitalization and spacing) or it could result in an error. Please note that if the organization still needs to add an M365 backup, it will show the instructions.
- You can click Checking Now to verify the registered AD Group. If you get an error on this step, please double check that the name matches exactly the group within your tenant
*Dynamic groups are not supported due to limitations with Microsoft Graph API.
Auto-Licensing
This feature can only be enabled by direct partners. If you are a subreseller, this feature will need to be enabled by your distributor.
Auto-Licensing will allow NinjaOne SaaS Backup to automatically adjust the seat count for an organization. For Example, consider a client with 10 active mailboxes backed up with the current purchased seats being 10. If 5 new mailboxes are added to Backup under the End-User Portal, Auto License would automatically add 5 seats to the organization. Similarly, when mailboxes are deleted from Backup, seats would be automatically reduced based on the current usage.
To enable auto-licensing for an organization, please use the following steps:
- Sign into the partner portal and navigate to the "Organizations" tab
- Locate the organization in question, click on it, and go to the "Subscriptions" tab
- You should see a blue box that shows the plan assigned to the organization and the number of current seats. You should also see the switch for auto-licensing
- Switch on auto-licensing