AFI: Google Workspace Backup and Restore

Introduction

Pima College has purchased services from Afi Technologies for its employees. These services back up your Google Mail, Drive, Contacts, and Calendars data three times a day and provide easy access to retrieve, download, or restore one or more individual files. Backups of your data are available from late Spring of 2021, so you can recover files from any time since then. The backups are immutable and remain available for as long as we have the service.

Aside from being able to view your data, Afi has made it simple to download emails or files to a drive connected to your computer or to recover your data from any selected point in time (for example, a month ago) into a separate folder inside your Google account.

Accessing your Google Workspace Data from Afi Backup

  1. In an Internet browser window, navigate to https://afi.ai.
  2. In the upper-right corner, click Customer Sign in. A page similar to the one shown here displays.

  1. In the Google Workspace rectangle, click Sign in with Google to sign in using your Google account credentials.

Note: Pima users are able to access only the Google Workspace portion of afi.ai.

  1. After you sign in, a Recovery page displays, from which you can view, download, or recover your Mail, Drive, Contacts, or Calendar data.

Recover or Download?

Either way, with Afi, you have the ability to select a date and time prior to when your data was deleted and then restore the information you need.

With the Recover option, you can restore back into your account the information that you may have deleted inadvertently, whether it’s a contact, an email, calendar data, or documents you thought you no longer needed.

With the Download option, you can choose to download and store one or more files, giving you freedom of choice and control over the data’s location. Like the recover option, the files could contain a contact or list of contacts, an email (or group of them), calendar data, or one or more documents from your drive.

Both the Recover process and the Download process start with selecting the date and time the backup was made.

Selecting Date and Time

  1. In the Backup version field on the right side of the Recovery page, click once to activate the calendar pop up.
  2. Use the calendar’s left or right arrows to display the month and year from which you want to retrieve your data.
  3. Click the date your data was available, and then select from the list of times that backups were made.

Each date and time combination is a separate Recovery Point.

Downloading Files

If they are listed at the recovery point you selected, you can download emails, contacts, calendars, or drive files.

  1. Check the box for the item you want to download and then click Download. A popup appears similar to the one shown here.

  1. Select the options you want, and then click Download. A message similar to the one shown here appears momentarily at the bottom of your screen.

  1. Check your inbox; after you receive the email, which should look similar to the one shown here, click the link in it.

  1. After you click the download link, a message similar to the one shown here appears, because some malicious .eml files can trigger scripts in some email clients, such as Outlook.

Because you asked for this file from a vendor approved by the college, it is safe, so click Keep and then specify the location in which to save the download.

Recovering Single Data Files

If they are listed at the recovery point you selected, you can restore emails, contacts, calendars, or drive files to your online account, either to their original location, or to a separate online folder.

  1. In the Backup version field, select the Recovery Point from which to recover your data.
  2. Select one or more items you want to recover by checking their boxes. In the example shown here, a single item is selected from the June 9 at 5:32pm Recovery Point.

  1. Click Recover. A popup appears similar to the one shown here.

  1. Select the options you want, and then click Recover. A message similar to the one shown here appears momentarily in the lower-right corner of the window.

  1. Check your inbox, where you should shortly receive an email stating, “Your restore to the resource (your name and email) has finished successfully.”

Recovering Full Account

The Afi website implies it is possible to recover your full account yourself. However, if you think it necessary to recover your full account, you should contact IT via the Help Desk. In the Pima College environment, this process requires someone with admin-level privileges.

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