Set Up the Backup Wizard

When you log into Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 for the first time, the onboarding wizard will appear and you can now get a thorough check on your preparations before enabling the backup services.

To get started with AvePoint Cloud Backup Express, activate your Microsoft 365 tenant in AvePoint Cloud Backup Express first. If the Microsoft tenant has been activated by another backup controller, it will be deactivated and enter a grace period. During this grace period, you can configure the backup settings. The first backup will start automatically at the end of the grace period.

*Note the following:

- If your organization has Multi-Geo enabled, the users assigned to multiple regions in AOS will need to select a region. The users with only one region will be automatically redirected to that regional Cloud Backup instance. 

- If you signed up to AvePoint Online Services with the data center **North Europe (Ireland)** or **Australia Southeast (Victoria)**, and you have purchased the subscription to use **AvePoint Azure storage** to store the backup data, Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 will store your data in the data center you signed up for AvePoint Online Services.

- > ***Note**: AvePoint Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 supports **United Arab Emirates (Dubai)** as a new data center in October 2025 release.

- If you want to select a different storage region for backup data in Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365, follow these steps:

	1. Sign up for AvePoint Online Services in the desired data center.

	2. Activate your AvePoint Online Services account and log in to Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365, but do not save any settings.

	3.  Contact AvePoint support for further assistance. 

- The following storage regions will be available for selection when you sign into the Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 interface for the first time.

Data Center You Signed Up for AOS	● Available Storage Region forCloud Backup for Microsoft 365
● North Europe (Ireland)	● North Europe (Ireland)● Qatar Central (Doha)
● Australia Southeast (Victoria)	● Australia Southeast (Victoria)● New Zealand North (Auckland)

If you have the BYOS subscription, you must configure a custom storage location to store the backup data to your own storage on the Storage location page. Note that the storage location information cannot be changed once saved. If you purchased the backup service from a service provider and the service provider has already configured the BYOS storage location, the storage information is read-only on this page.

To get started with your backup service, follow the steps below.

On the Backup modules page, you must select at least one service that you want to enable. By default, no services are selected. If you have both AvePoint Cloud Backup subscription and AvePoint Cloud Backup Express subscription, you can select services for them separately. You can click Set up later to skip the following steps and navigate to the home page of the Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365 with no services enabled.
Click Next, after you select the backup modules that you want to enable.
*Note: If you select the Teams Chat service using AvePoint Cloud Backup and click Next, a pop-up window will appear, and you must select an API to protect Teams Chat. You can change the API for Teams Chat later in Settings > Backup.
On the Backup configuration step, you can check whether you have scan profiles for the selected backup services and whether your apps have enough permissions.
- Navigate to the App management page in the AvePoint Online Services interface to configure the app profiles. For the apps you can use for each backup service, refer to App Profile Authentication.
- Navigate to Auto Discovery in the AvePoint Online Services interface to configure scan profiles for the objects that you want to protect in Cloud Backup for Microsoft 365. For details, refer to .
If you want to protect Public Folders using AvePoint Cloud Backup, you must also configure impersonation accounts on the Settings > Backup page since we only support using impersonation accounts to protect Public Folders after the June 2023 release. Note that the Public Folders backup will perform operations by using the permissions that are associated with the impersonation accounts. We recommend a 1:500 ratio for the impersonation accounts and the Public Folders. For more information about impersonation technology, see .
The impersonation accounts configured must meet the following conditions:
- The impersonation account must have the Exchange Online product license.
- This user must also have the Owner permission to the Public Folders.
If you want to protect Teams Chat using AvePoint Cloud Backup, you must customize the backup time range for Teams chat messages on the Backup configurations page. Note that the backup time range cannot be changed once saved.
On the Backup scope page, you can select the All objects in existing and any further containers option for all selected services, which will automatically include all existing containers and the objects registered later. If you want to customize the backup scope for each service, select Custom backup scope per service type. For each service, you can select All objects in existing and any further containers option to include all objects in existing and any further containers in the backup scope or select Custom backup scope to include the containers that you want to back up.
To view objects included in the containers, click the Expand () button next to the container.
To search for an object, enter the object name in the search box and press Enter on your keyboard.
When you finish selecting the objects to back up, you can click Start backup to save the configurations and start the backup jobs.

*Note: After you click Start backup, the backup job for an object type will not start if the backup service for this object type is disabled.

#Set Up the Backup Wizard

Set Up the Backup Wizard