01/26/2012
Like lots of companies that use Google Apps, we have multiple people with administrative access. What we don’t have is a one-click way to keep track of what other admins are doing, whether it’s resetting a user’s password, creating a new suborganization, or creating a new email alias (er, “group”). So we built something new and are giving it away for free.
True, you can dig into the Google Apps dashboard and find a list of the individual events in your audit log, but they’re not organized into higher-level activities, and frankly it’s just a little ugly.
The free Spanning Admin Audit Log Viewer is a handy way for you to, well, view your audit log. Activities like “User Settings Updated” or “Group Settings Updated” are listed and can be expanded to reveal their underlying events with a click.
You’ll find the Admin Audit Log Viewer in the new Free Tools section of spanning.com. Add it to your Google Apps domain, check it out, and let us know what you think!
Thanks,
Charlie
01/13/2012
After months of development, we’re proud to announce the launch of Spanning Backup for Google Apps v3.0.
The most readily apparent change is a revamped user interface. We’ve studied users’ interactions with Spanning Backup and used our findings to create a simplified, streamlined experience that effectively reduces the distance between you and your data.
We’ve also listened carefully to feedback from Google Apps admin power users, many of whom told us they need to be able to restore data on behalf of their users within seconds. So we’ve revamped the user impersonation function, making it more intelligent, easier to use, and even faster than it was before.
We’ve also integrated our Admin Dashboard into the application itself. Admins now have a single, consolidated view into their backup coverage, 30 days of Google Apps service health history, and their storage usage.
Finally, we’ve done a lot of work below the waterline. We back up terabytes of data for thousands of businesses, and are constantly improving our backend services to maintain our position as the highest-rated backup app on the Google Apps Marketplace.
We’ll be describing the new functionality in Spanning Backup v3.0 in a series of posts over the next couple of weeks, so stay tuned. 2012 is off to a beautiful start!
10/10/2011
Last week the spanning.com WordPress site was affected by a malware attack which resulted in Google’s displaying a content warning to visitors to the site. The company that hosts our WordPress site, WP Engine, quickly found and fixed the problem.
Note that only the spanning.com site, which is operated by a third party on their own infrastructure, was affected. The Spanning Backup service at spanningbackup.com, which runs on our own secure infrastructure, was not affected.
WP Engine has written a post-mortem of the event explaining the root cause of the problem, the steps taken to remediate it, and the preventative measures taken to prevent similar problems from happening in the future.
Security is of the utmost importance to us, and while this issue had no effect on Spanning Backup, it’s still embarrassing. We’re working with the team at WP Engine to minimize the risk of such lapses in the future.
Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns.
Thanks,
Charlie
10/05/2011
Update (6-Oct-2011): This problem has been resolved and the warning has been removed from Google. We’re working with our WordPress host now on a detailed post-mortem. When that is complete, we’ll post it here.
This morning Google detected a piece of malware that had been injected into the spanning.com WordPress-based website. The malware has been identified and removed.
It’s important to note that while our public web site was affected, our application was not, and the Spanning Backup service (which runs on completely different infrastructure) was not compromised.
Chrome and Safari users visiting spanning.com saw a warning like the one shown here. A similar warning was included in Google search results. We’ve notified Google that the malware has been removed and are optimistic they’ll remove the warning soon.
The support staff at WPEngine, where we host our public web site, removed the malware and is currently investigating how it got there in the first place. As soon as we have a post-mortem we’ll post the details here.
Again, this issue pertains only to the spanning.com public website and had no effect on the Spanning Backup service. Spanning Backup was not compromised and all customer data remains completely secure.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate o contact us at support@spanning.com.
Thanks,
Charlie
10/02/2011
Q: Does Spanning Backup back up Google Chat history?
A: Yes! You’ll need to configure your Gmail account to show chats in IMAP so they’re accessible to Spanning Backup. Here’s how:
- Sign into Gmail and click on the “gear” icon in the upper right to open Settings.
- Under “Labels”, enable “Show in IMAP”. You can also optionally “show” in the label list.
- Under “Chat”, select “Save chat history”.
- Save Changes.
