Australian Law Firm Saves Critical Business Data and Increases Administrator Efficiency by Protecting and Managing Microsoft SharePoint with DocAve
Success Highlights
Customer Location Australia
Industry Law
Platform SharePoint 2010
Critical Needs
- Backup of SharePoint data according to organisational needs and quick restoration of SharePoint data
- Ability to assign permissions for SharePoint users in bulk to save time while managing environment
- Swift movement of content between SharePoint environmentsAccurate, automated reports on SharePoint usage
The Challenge
An Australian law firm implemented SharePoint in order to in order to simplify collaboration for its employees. Previously, knowledge workers throughout the organisation would manage projects with a heavy reliance on Excel worksheets stored in file shares. The organisation is now utilising the collaboration features of SharePoint to track project progress to get a real time view of project milestones. “SharePoint lets our users manage their own project content updates and handles aspects of versioning and access version control for them,” said the organisation’s Infrastructure Architect. “SharePoint gives a more immediate view of the world of each project.”
Additionally, the organisation utilised SharePoint to support the movement of its corporate intranet from Lotus Notes, allowing employees to more easily access company information and documentation on the platform. When this decision was made, the organisation’s administrators were certain that a backup and restore solution was necessary. “From our experience and research, SharePoint was not always conducive to snapshot restoration, and we felt its native data protection abilities were not strong enough for our needs,” said the Infrastructure Architect. “Our database is very active with a lot of users making a lot of changes on a regular basis, so it was important that we not lose any content.”
With this need in mind, the organisation’s administrators began to search for a solution.
The AvePoint Solution
After investigating solutions and consulting with a vendor partner, the organisation implemented AvePoint’s DocAve Software Platform – the enterprise-class management platform for SharePoint governance. “The vendor we partnered with and other references in our industry recommended DocAve,” the Infrastructure Architect said. “AvePoint is clearly the leader in the third-party SharePoint solution space.”
Administrators implemented DocAve Backup and Restore for its SharePoint data protection needs. DocAve provides business-aware, comprehensive protection of SharePoint environments, addressing the need for a fast, flexible, and intelligent backup solution. The organisation runs scheduled full backups of the organisation’s SharePoint farm in addition to externalised content. On one occasion, the organisation experienced a critical failure on its E-drive, which caused the loss of Microsoft SQL Server backups and critical data. With DocAve, the administrators were able to restore the SharePoint environment to exactly as it was before the failure within six hours, minimising the outage for users. “If it weren’t for DocAve, we would have lost months’ worth of changes to our SharePoint environment,” the Infrastructure Architect said. “We were able to restore everything and users were never the wiser.”
DocAve also minimises business interruption with quick, granular restoration down to the item level while maintaining all metadata, security settings, and version histories. “Granular restores with DocAve are exceptionally quick, and the interface is very clear and intuitive,” the Infrastructure Architect said. “We can restore content for end-users in minutes, as opposed to the hours that SharePoint’s native abilities would take.”
The organisation implemented additional products within DocAve’s fully integrated platform, including DocAve Administrator, which simplifies SharePoint management with unmatched control over content, configurations, and security. “DocAve Administrator helps when new employees begin, as we can replicate permissions for them in bulk,” the Infrastructure Architect said. “For some users, what used to require many hours of work – especially when inheritance was broken in lower level sites – now takes minutes, allowing our administrators to focus on more productive work instead.”
DocAve Content Manager enabled administrators to be more efficient when moving SharePoint content, sites, and topology across SharePoint environments. “Exporting content created in our test environment was always problematic, as SharePoint did not provide a failsafe way to do it,” the Infrastructure Architect said. “With DocAve, we could successfully promote the content to production in minutes, eliminating risk of failure and saving hours of work.”
DocAve Report Center presented administrators with a comprehensive understanding of SharePoint usage while generating customisable reports. “Since our team invests so much time building web parts, we needed a way to see how the components are being used,” the Infrastructure Architect said. “DocAve gives us that information and allows us to report to management with a higher degree of confidence.”
From the implementation of DocAve, the organisation’s administrators worked closely with AvePoint’s live, 24/7 technical support team. “AvePoint’s technical support is exceptional,” the Infrastructure Architect said. “They’re always willing to spend a couple of hours to run through the product with us and help us get the most value from it.”
The Road Ahead
By implementing DocAve, administrators at the organisation were able to give its enterprise data the protection it required while managing the platform more efficiently through an intuitive interface. “You want your software to be simple, and DocAve has the added bonus that it happens to also be good software,” the Infrastructure Architect. “It’s functional and it saves the business money.”
