Hey @David Coales 

I’m a product manager at Miro and your request at least partially lies in my product domain. I’d like to learn more about your wish beneath this request. What is your use case, why do you like to have backups in Google Drive? Why Google Drive?

@Kiron Bondale @Konstantin Likhachev @mlanders @kal  I see you liked the request. Could you share your thoughts as well?

It will help me to better understand your needs and think about how we can address them.

Hey @Anton Telitsyn 

Since we want to use Miro for remote example mapping, our Miro Boards will be crucial containers of rules and requirements for our development work.

And to be able to actually start using it properly we need to be able to take backups of the boards to keep the information if … you know pandemics or something. 

It would be perfect with an API that we could use to automate this ourselves. But Google Drive, Dropbox, … whatever, would be great as well.

I would also consider this connected to another topic with ownership of boards. That the team should have an admin that can pseudo own all boards and be able to download backups of all boards of the team.

@kal it definitely makes sense! I’m just trying to understand what the main point here is: 

• to save data from accidental editing/deleting by the collaborators OR
• to save data independently of Miro servers

Could you clarify this as well?

Save data independently of Miro servers is the most important thing.

Save data from accidental editing/deleting by the collaborators is something I expect Miro to handle. And if some version control isn’t enough it’s my job to restore a backup (edit: From the independent server if needed).

Thanks @kal! But one more question - what is the reason to save data independently of Miro servers? 

Internal rules. We won’t keep important data in just one source that we can’t control. Preferably we won’t ever have to use our own source, but if hell breaks loose we’re still fine. Precautions precautions precautions … you know.

@Anton Telitsyn -

The reasons for wanting automated backups are similar to the ones provided by @kal , but in our case, I’d also be fine with having the backups stored on Miro servers so long as we had the ability to restore those “on the fly” vs. having to place a Miro support request.

Kiron

I agree with the previous comments. I have two separate concerns.

The first is being able to restore a board to a previous version if necessary; especially as it's very easy for someone to accidentally move/delete stuff and maybe not notice immediately.  I've noticed this is especially true of the new grids. If you delete a grid, all of the content on the grid goes as well whereas if you delete a frame the content remains.  Restoring data can be solved with backups held on Miro servers or with a Google docs like version history and compare/revert to version functionality.

However, I'm also concerned with the worst case scenario where Miro just goes away or isn't available for an extended period. A remote backup in human readable format, e.g. PDF, means that I can get to my data no matter what.  While many people may initially come to Miro as a meeting collaboration tool they will quickly realise that the content they produce during these sessions is extremely valuable and considerations of availability, security, organisation and discoverability of boards and their contents soon become really important if you want to use use Miro as a trusted knowledge base rather than just another remote whiteboarding tool.

The location of the backup needs to be outside your servers but obviously accessible by you in order to create the file. Google drive, Dropbox, OneDrive et al would all be acceptable. I just prefer Google.  In giving you access to create the backup I would only want to grant access to read and write files you create not general access to the file system. I notice at the moment that if I connect to Google drive I have to give you full access which I'm not prepared to do. 

If you have a Dynalist account you can see how they do it.

Thanks for a great product

David 

@Anton Telitsyn :

I see one thing:

Not miro, no we users are responsible for our backups.

To prevent postings like there where here in this community: My dates are lost or so I find it usefull if I get a hint either when I enter my dashboard or when I leave my dashboard like this one:

So i see clearly which of my boards i haven’t backuped and which of them not. And I’ll be remembered:
“Hey: Would you backup your board please”.
So on the miro site everything is done - and on the usersite it’s the same or not …
 

Michael

Hi @mlanders, I think that would be useful too but if I have 10 people who could all edit the board, often at the same time, would they all see the message? If so I might get lots of copies of the backup and I would have to hope they put them in the approved place. If only the owner gets the message do they get it by email after anyone leaves the board, once a day or the next time they log in which may not be for a while?

I think this would be a useful feature where there is one main editor but I don't think it would remove my requirement for an automated overnight backup given that I have a team working on shared boards.

@David Coales 

ok David I see - so it should be automated - you give in a place where it gets saved into and then the backup runs on the time you decided before.

And additional - my personal idea:

If you do not have any place to put your backup to then you can buy your backupspace with your miro package additionally (if you like to have an automated backup with backup space)

This sounds good for us users and makes a plus on the miro site

Michael

i’ve been looking through Miro community pages for answers to the question of deleted content. It happened to me a couple of days ago.

I have come up with some solutions to avoid this  but more importantly i wish to know how is that we as a community can come together to ask Miro to gives the data. I’m seeing a standard response which is doing no good to clients or Miro.
Since primarily Miro is a data storing application, the collaboration part of it, is a feature of the service.
Therefore letting the board owner have control on the board history he/she is the ‘owner’ and should have access to to it’s history ( owner of content at all periods of time)
If it’s available in the paid version, can we subscribe and get the data ? (at any point in time?)
b)It should function like offline softwares with ‘roll back’ and ‘cntrol+z options’ which are independent of the internet.
c) A dialogue confirmation box if the page refresh is pressed or when multiple items are selected for deletion.
d) My page reloaded automatically because of the ‘internet connection cutting off and returning back’ I was helpless with the control+z button.  There would many reasons for a page to reload without our control, this is a serious issue for the user.

Let’s help miro help us. What can we do now to get Miro to start the process ?

KR

Hey @K R! We are starting working on a solution that should prevent any chances of content loosing.

The best way to help us is to let us understand better the cases why you lose the content.

I understand that you case is somehow connected to the internet connection, could you please elaborate on it and describe in detail? How exactly it happened?

@Anton Telitsyn -

Losing content usually happens when one of two things happens:

1. “Fat finger” error or malicious corruption by a user followed by the closure of the board 
2. A technical glitch - browser/desktop app issue, Internet connectivity, etc.

While automated backup is great, taking a backup does take some time and requires the board content is “frozen” while the backup is done, so a better strategy would be to enhance the activity log to actually be a script of actions done to the board which could be used to rebuild it to any set point in time. 

Kiron

Hi @Anton Telitsyn  good to hear from you,  I agree with @Kiron Bondale for the solutions for this issue.
in my case it was both the fat finger and internet connectivity.

While presenting our board, I personally was deleting some elements in one of the canvases. I was doing them a bit quickly, using the scroll of the mouse to zoom in and out. I accidentally selected 99% of the boards and hit delete in a swift action.
Unfortunately for me right at that moment my internet lost connectivity and regained it in a few minutes. But the page i was working on had already accepted the delete command, refreshed it to a board post the change.
Finally left with two boards that were really far away from the main canvases area and control + z didn’t undo the refresh command hence made no difference. The presentation became a speech.

The way i see this is that Miro support needs to update their data request parameters. As essentially Miro is an online data storage application, surely with features such as collaborative working etc.
Being a board owner should apply to the data on it and it’s history. I.e to access, edit the history and log the changes as well.

Miro support needs to update their T&C to accommodate these requests as the data storage is their ‘main service offering’ and it’s a no-brainer to give access of it to the owner.

Google documents offers version history in which, the history is editable, elements can be copied individually through all their applications. Essentially fully transparent.

@Anton Telitsyn  as of today I’m not able to recall any of the data a need urgently for a client presentation, I’m glad to know you’re working on this.
But is there a way to expedite my request for miro support to “allocate resources’ as they mention to recover my data ?

Thank you

Regards

KR
 

Hey @K R! Thank you for the explanation, it really helps to understand the case and make the right decisions regarding further Miro development. Yes, we are on a solution that should solve such cases, though I can’t share any ETA yet.

Unfortunately, currently the data restoration process is extremely time and resource consuming, so the support team has strong policy when and how we can help and when not. Please bear with us, I’m sure they will do their best.

Hey @Anton Telitsyn , happy to give data to help Miro develop better. 
As a service designer, I’m often on both sides of the service. Making it and using it.

I’ve noticed policies do help but they can sometimes be a detriment in helping the personnel take decisions.
The risk of being like every other customer care support system, where repetitiveness and policy recital becomes the solution to a client’s issue.

I’m sure you and your team are doing their best to develop these features to Miro and won’t have an ETA. 
Thank you taking my issue into account. i hope indeed this improves but until this feature is made clear,using Miro is risky.

As you mentioned that data retrieval is time consuming and resource consuming,If the Miro team could setup an account for “payfordata” , board owners could send in a fixed amount.  I’m ready with my wallet !

Thanks again and I’m hoping something turns out really soon.
 

@Anton Telitsyn 

A classic back-up regime is to journal the actions to create a state which are then playable to be applied on-top of a baseline state.

So a board create or export defines a baseline and resets the journal and the journal is incremental from then and accessible. In these cases i’d suggest the reasons/ causes of need become irrelevant (don’t they?) and that simplifies the development assessment f requirements to just “Snap-shot state” plus “record changes” plus “restore snapshot” plus “play journal”

The suggestions above that the transaction history be editable is very powerful

This scheme would make set-up of repeated workshops such as training sessions flexible. Training uses must increasingly be a source of sign-ups for you?

Personally for my uses I’m OK where ever the data is stored although as with others a nominated place for you to drop the journal rather than open access to a whole filesystem is preferable

Ciao

Hi @Anton Telitsyn 

I am surprised about your question on why someone would want an automatic backup and why in a different location.  My question would be why wouldn’t someone want this for any application?

I am new to Miro and really like it, however not having versioning or backups is a big negative.

I looked at the API and looks like something could be created there, however before I get started my question would be is all the data for a board be available?  I know you can not give an exact ETA on your development but is this the kind of thing where the earliest would be 3 months or earliest would be a year?

@Anton Telitsyn - just echoing what everyone else is getting at. As an employee at an enterprise, i would really like to be able to backup/version control our Miro boards in a place of our choice (Sharepoint/Git/Dropbox etc etc) so that our colleagues can trust that all their hardwork isnt lost in a way that would fall foul of company policies i.e. keep data inhouse.

Regardless of how swell the tool is...trusting that our work doesnt go boom (however unlikely) is a basic expectation.

 

Dear @Anton Telitsyn and whole Miro-team,

Today we’ve lost almost everything on one of our main boards. It is like 3 months work of our team. Because you can’t make backup system we don’t know what to do now. This board was crucial to start new department on next week.

It curious if this disaster will push you to do something with version control.

Just today our team had a significant portion of an important board go missing.   This was a giant bummer for a few folks involved.    

As far as Undo...we went back about 20 steps but that didn’t help (some other editing had taken place since the disappearance).

We checked the lightning bolt for action history, but we were both a) unable to tell exactly where/when it happened and b) going back those steps in the action history didn’t re-show that old content (whatever had been deleted).

That makes the deletion button WAY more scary now -- to think I could lose a significant amount of work with one large select/delete and then someone else makes twenty sticky notes… then it seems gone forever.    For that level of destruction, most programs offer warnings.

Would like this feature for Box since it is what we use at our company. 

First of all - great to see that Miro hired such talented Product Managers, it’s a joy reading your very processed way of breaking out the issue here @Anton Telitsyn - UX kudos!

My use case is that I run most of my workshops with full edit rights to all participants during a longer time period. A typical project could mean that I only hold 2-3 sessions where I, as the board owner, am online and making sure backups are made consistently. Most of the other time, teams are in by themselves or individuals do totally asynchronous work, such as primers or pre-work assignments for an upcoming session. I sometimes have around 100 people with edit rights to the same board.

So manual backups that are depending on me as a board owner isn’t doing the trick. The #1 need for me is to somehow know that a backup is being made. The more often the better. Maybe it could be triggered on the amount of edits rather than on time. So backed up every night, or after 100 edits, whichever comes first.