Dashboard and alerts
The Dashboard tab lets you monitor the operation of the program and navigate to other tabs or cards. It also allows you to control some of the functions of the program, including jobs, storages, server connections, and alerts. The Dashboard tab consists of the following cards:
- Good news or Bad news - show all important notifications or alerts regarding the program's operation, such as jobs' status, start and stop information, or cycle time, the number of failed items per the backup job, free storage space, jobs blocked by other jobs, etc.
- Jobs - shows a list of jobs and their current status,
- Storages - shows a list of storages and their available space,
- Defined server connections - shows a list of servers admins' UPNs or email addresses used for establishing a connection with Microsoft 365 (Office 365) or on-premises Exchange Servers,
- Help - consists of links that allow you to check for program's updates, open the program's user's manual or website, open a quick tour guide, contact Customer Support, or view the licensing status.
Alerts: Good news and Bad news
The program constantly reports various alerts, which are divided into two sections: Good news and Bad news. On the Good news card, you may encounter information regarding running jobs and the licensing. The Bad news card shows errors and warnings that may appear while different jobs are running. Good news alerts are stored in the program log files for 30 days from their occurrence, while Bad news alerts are stored indefinitely. However, these retention periods can be modified to best suit your needs. To learn more, read this article.
You can also customize what information will be displayed on the Dashboard tab or decide to deliver some of the notification types directly to a specific email address. This can be done by using a dedicated window, opened via the settings () button located on both Good news and Bad news cards (Fig. 2.).
Fig. 2. The settings button on the Good news card.
To enable or disable alert notification for the type of alert of your choice, simply select or clear, respectively, a checkbox on the left of the desired option (Fig. 3.). Similarly, to enable or disable email notifications, do the same in the Email notification column, on the right side of the window. To avoid the flood of emails in recipients' mailboxes, you can specify how frequently these messages will be sent.
Fig. 3. An example of alerts' settings.
To specify the recipients of these alerts, go to the Email notifications tab (Fig. 4.). Select a configured Exchange connection from the drop-down menu in the From field. All email notifications will be sent from this email address. If you need to configure a new connection, select Manage Exchange connections instead.
Fig. 4. The Email notifications tab.
Warning
Note that the recipients of these email notifications cannot unsubscribe from receiving these messages on their own. Only admins with the access to the CodeTwo Backup Administration Panel can do that. Make sure not to add to the recipients' list users who might not be interested in receiving mail notifications.
This feature will be activated once the first alert of any type is registered. When this happens, the software will collect other alerts from the last cycle completed in the specified period of time, after which all of these alerts will be sent together in one email (Fig. 5.). The email only contains alerts from the last completed cycle to prevent it from becoming excessively long in the case a user runs a continuous job with backup cycles that repeat very often e.g. every one minute.
Fig. 5. An example of an email with alerts.
Types of dashboard alerts
Despite the alerts are divided into Good news and Bad news, there are two types of alerts displayed in the dashboard:
- One-time - these alerts show up every time after an issue is encountered during jobs' operation or there is an important information to report. Therefore, they stay on the list until you remove them manually.
- Permanent - these alerts show up only once per a particular job after an issue is encountered. Therefore, they stay on the list until the problem is resolved, and you cannot remove them manually.
Please study the tables below to learn more about what different alerts refer to.
Good news
Alert message |
Description |
Alert type |
---|---|---|
Job started |
A job has properly started. |
One-time |
Job finished |
A one-time job has successfully finished all operations. |
One-time |
Licensing information |
Trial and activation status. |
One-time |
Job status |
A continuous job status report. This alert is constantly reported by the desired amount of time, not after finishing a cycle. This behavior is by design, considering reporting completion of fairly short jobs cycles might cause flooding the Good news card. |
One-time |
Bad news
Alert message |
Description |
Alert type |
---|---|---|
Job failed |
The program cannot execute jobs because there is a problem with starting them or the backup or restore process was interrupted. It may show up if there is a problem with a server connection or storage failure. Information in this alert includes the cumulative description of all issues encountered while trying to execute jobs. |
One-time |
Failed mailbox |
The program cannot process mailboxes. This alert contains a cumulative history of all jobs' cycles during which the program failed to process at least one mailbox. The history includes a list of unprocessed mailboxes with descriptions of the cause of failures. |
One-time |
Failed messages |
The program cannot process particular items. This alert contains a cumulative history of all jobs during which the program failed to process items. The history includes a list of issues regarding unprocessed folders and items while pushing data to target mailboxes or pulling data from source mailboxes. You can customize this alert to show up if the number of failed items is greater than the defined value. This setting is common for all jobs of both types (backup and restore). |
One-time |
Job overtime |
A single job cycle lasts longer than it was defined in Notification options. |
One-time |
Job blocked |
One restore job was temporarily blocked by another job. This alert shows up if jobs are using the same data at the same time. Learn how the program resolves jobs' conflicts |
Permanent |
Storage space |
One or multiple Storages are running out of memory to save source data. This alert contains cumulative information regarding all Storages encountering free space issue. You can customize when this alert shows up by defining the value of a free space left. This setting is common for all Storages defined in the program. |
Permanent |
The program encounters a problem with communicating with Storage. It may show up if Storage is removed from the program or deleted from the local resources. Learn how to mount Storage to the program |
Permanent |
|
Trial limitations |
The program cannot restore all data in the trial version. This alert indicates that the number of items being currently restored exceeds the trial version limitations. |
One-time |
No free license seats |
The program tries to back up data for more source mailboxes than the number of available license seats. In such a case, the program backs up data only from the number of source mailboxes corresponding to the purchased license seats. Learn how to extend the license |
One-time |
Retention failure occurred |
The program failed at executing configured retention rules for Storage, Archive or PST Archive Jobs. |
One-time |
Indexer failure occurred |
The Indexer has registered a problem. |
One-time |
Info
Note that each alert message is preceded by the exact date and time an issue was encountered.
Software's windows settings
CodeTwo Backup saves your current windows arrangement at the time of application closing, so the next time you open it, the software would bring all the windows back to the same positions and sizes. In case you ever need to reset this view you can do this by starting the software's executable with the resetsettings parameter.