Hi

I've scoured the help, forums and KB but not quite found what I'm after - apologies if I've overlooked something.

I love SP and am trying to make it our standard backup solution for all clients - still learning though as we come accross new situations.

How do others setup laptop users (domestic users so no server etc. at the office)  so they can do manual backups whenever it suits them - i.e. connect their usb hard drive and click "backup" ? I'm trying to make it as simple as possible for them, ideally I would like to be able to use a .cmd file to launch SP with the required parameters. I also plan to include some way of choosing either a full or incremental backup.

thanks

Rob

I put this same request to developers months ago but apparently no one found the time to publish the changed interface description in 3.x. Or maybe the policy changed. Maybe once 3.3 is out in English something might show up. I have a client that would be very interested in single click backup ("Go" button) for representants of the company's laptops while they are at the office on one day of the week.

Would this accomplish what you want?  Create a backup with schedule type "Now", uncheck the Execute Now checkbox on the final wizard page, and then any time you want a full backup run ShadowProtect, select the job and click on the execute button.

 bsdice:- I subsequently found a post from Nate explaining why they can't provide support for script development (understandable). Even some info on running SP from the command line with a parameter for a job etc. would be great though.

Doug:- That's what I have at present, but I would like to make it as simple as possible i.e. "double click this icon and the backup will run". Our current .vbs script checks if the external hd is connected and it would be nice if we could just run an SP job (either full or inc.) from there as well.

thanks for the input

R

Doug: Imagine a group of 20 to 30 people who are able to boot their WinXP on their laptop, open Outlook, use Word to write documents and maybe create a PDF. What is ShadowProtect? Click where? Why? When? You explain to them how the software works but in a couple of days they forget 95% of it. They are mostly in their 40s and 50s and should in my view not even be required to remember this, they are paid to handle projects completely unrelated to IT. We here take great pride in thinking up 1-job-1-click style products that even my mom could use. Like your car, you turn the key and drive, simple as that.

So what my idea was to write some small wrapper in AutoIT scripting langugage that is like robf suggested a 1-click icon. Whenever the person is at the main branch office he will click on the icon, confirm the intent and the "wrapper" script will:

- Determine the closest backup store (because he could be in 5 different places) by looking at the network

- Create a destination to a share expressedly reserved for such jobs

- Create and run the job

- Bonus: Display animated icon and mouse-over balloon in task tray with % finished if API permits

- When done, produce balloon saying thanks and goodbye.

- Cleanup destination and job

I bet you 10 bucks this is a niche many admins would like to see accomplished to regularly backup key persons' notebooks. Given some documentation I could handily come up with such a tool. Pending approval from company management (of which I am one member) we could maybe sponsor development and publish full sources for all customers benefit. We'd get some free recognition of our company as a technical SP partner in Germany by having unintrusively some "Sponsored by..." logo somewhere.

Just an idea to improve the live of the modern day janitors who make it possible to even run the show: The admins. Let me know if this could fly, Nate has my details.

Exactly what I want to achieve - although it sounds a bit more polished than what we were planning.

 Backups *must* be simple, otherwise they just don't happen most of the time.

Rob

 I'll wait with bated breath then, I'm sure there are some exciting developments in the pipeline.

In the meantime I'll put my trainers hat on.