NOTE

This documentation has been deprecated! While we will no longer update this documentation set, it will remain available for a short time while users transition to the new documentation site.

To see SmartBackup’s current documentation, go to and bookmark https://docs.acuworkflow.com

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Deprecated Documentation below

SmartBackup

SmartBackup is a cloud-enabled backup utility for Smartsheet. Backup all your Smartsheet data. (c) 2021 AcuWorkflow.

• Multi-Tenant solution - can take backups of all, groups-of or any Smartsheet User
• Preserve all Sheet formatting, a feature not available from standard Smartsheet backups
• Perform snapshot copy of all your sheets to a Smartsheet Workspace of your choice
• Incremental or full back-ups with archiving; you have the option to only backup sheets that have changed in last x days
• Export in addition you can export sheets preserving as much of the smartsheet environmentals as possible

Business Edition ideal for individuals or teams wanting to snapshot data after certain events milestones Enterprise Edition ideal for larger groups and organizations

Typically SmartBackup is used to provide rolling window of active sheets one can re-instate, ideal for when inadvertent changes are made and one needs to roll-back invalid copy

SmartBackup Information Portal

click on image to go to information portal

Easy to Use

• You can designate any Smartsheet Workspace as Backup Vault
• On the next backup run, all or a subset of your sheets will be backed-up into the Backup Vault group by backup set Folder
• Restore is a doddle, you simply copy the Sheet or rows from the Backup Vault area
• USER GUIDES

How it works

• SmartBackup can run instantly on demand, on schedule, or at automated intervals
• Optionally you can override the backup set scope (e.g. only backup sheets that have been modified last x days
• SmartBackup will create a new folder with a timestamp in the user defined SmartSheet Vault designating a backup set
• For each configured Smartsheet User (Tenant) it backs up all/subset of the sheets owned by that user into the designated Vault and Backup set folder
• Extensive logging and status are provided
• SmartBackup can be run: -- headless(no user interface, available as cmdline routine) and possibly be integrated with your other supporting services or -- headfull in which case you access it via a web user interface.

Getting Started

These instructions will get you up and running with SmartBackup.

Steps involved:

1. Installation Install SmartBackup for yourself, team, division, or Organization
2. Setup and Configuration Configure SmartBackup for your needs
3. Using SmartBackup Schedule or run SmartBackup on demand

Installation

INSTALLATION GUIDE

Install SmartBackup on Backup Machine of your choice.

The free version is restricted to backing up only 3 sheets. Contact AcuWorkflow for licensed version with no restrictions.

1. Download from AcuWorkflow, run SETUP and follow instructions
2. Choose Full Installation when first time User
3. Choose Custom Installation and unselect Data Files if you are re-installing and want to preserve your previous settings

Setup and Configuration

SETUP GUIDE

Smartbackup requires you to configure:

1. Smartsheet Users that will make use of SmartBackup, called Tenants
2. Smartsheet Vault, designate a Workspace within Smartsheet tha will be use as the Backup Vault

Tenants

The Tenant file containing details of Smartbackup users is mandatory and must be supplied. It is installed automatically and you can edit this file via Notepad, or update via the console user interface.

Edit the SmartBackup.csv file to contain entries for every Smartsheet User(Tenant) you want to backup. Note column names must be spelled exactly as shown and are case-sensitive.

Name	Description	Example
Status	Must be set to 'Enabled' for processing tenant entry. To disable an entry on backup run change to the Status value to ‘Disabled’	Enabled
Tenant	Name of Tenant	Joe Blocks
TenantID	Email address of Tenant	joe.blocks@acme.com
TenantOrg	Organization Name of Tenant	Acme Corp
TenantToken	Smartsheet API Token of Tenant (Backup Source)	ute0kvn9ol6lq10jwjylky9kdp
VaultID	Smartsheet Workspace ID of Workspace where designated Vault resides. Be carefull when editing this with Excel, since it will by default transform to exponential number, rather use Notepad or the built-in UI for editing	3458625596352300
VaultLink	Smartsheet Workspace Link of Workspace where designated Vault resides	https://app.smartsheet.com/workspaces...

• You can have multiple Tenant Files each containing differing configurations based on your setup
• At run time associate the Tenant file you want to use for that particular run
• To get TenantToken
  • Login to Smartsheet, click on Account top right
  • Select Apps & Integrations, then API, Generate Token
  • Token becomes your TenantToken in tenantfile, that way the backup knows who you are and therefore what files to backup

Backup Vault

Once-off configure a Smartsheet Workspace that will act as the backup container. To do this:

1. Login to Smartsheet, select Workspaces, right-click and then select Create new Workspace
2. Name the Workspace aptly, such as Vault or Backup Vault or SmartBackup Vault
3. Right-click on Vault Workspace and select Properties
4. Copy the Workspace ID to tenantfile VaultID, in so doing it becomes the designated Target Backup area
5. Copy the Workspace Link to tenantfile VaultLink

Note, Smartsheet restricts the number of sheets allowed for non-Enterprise licenses. Usually it is 100 per User or aggregate thereof e.g. 10 Users = 1000 Sheets. In the event that you are running into these restrictions decrease the backup scope.

Using SmartBackup

USER GUIDE Any of the Smartbackup components (e.g. Backup, Archive, export) can be invoked independantly or in conjunction. They can be invoked:

1. via the User Interface called the SmartBackup Console
2. using Windows Explorer and clicking directly on the component .EXE
3. using Powershell or any typical operations script (PowerAutomate etc.)

For scheduled backups use Windows TaskScheduler, see User Guide

SmartBackup Console

1. Invoke SmartBackup by clicking on desktop shortcut or double-click on console.exe in \apps installation folder
2. A cmd Window will appear running the Console Server with slight delay and then a browser view will be opened running the console client

First Time Users

1. You will be prompted to configure some valid Tenant/s (at least one) by completeing some details
2. To understand details required see Setup & Configuration Tenants file
3. You also MUST setup a Backup Vault within Smartsheet see Setup & Configuration Vault

Your first Backup run

1. Click on Run Now
2. After slight delay a Backup Run started popup will appear.
3. Optionally you can view progress by switching to console server window, alternatively status will be displayed after the backup run is completed

Authors

• Deon Pollard - Base software - deon pollard & associates

See also list of contributors who participated in this project.

License

This project is licensed under the Creative Commons License - LICENSE for details