Gmail

Gmail in Google Workspace is a collaborative email solution for organizations, offering integrated business tools, security, and administrative controls to support modern enterprise communication. Cloud Protection Service enables you to protect user data in your Gmail environment.

Considerations

Before you register your Gmail instance or perform backup or recovery operations, you must review the following considerations.

Protection Group And Policy

Cloud Protection Service organizes the items you select for backup into a Protection Group. Think of a Protection Group as the container that Cloud Protection Service uses to manage backup scheduling and retention in one place. You assign a policy to the Protection Group, and that policy controls when backups run and how long recovery points are kept.

Recover is also easier when items are organized this way, because you can start a Recover for all items in a Protection Group together. Keep in mind that an item can belong to only one Protection Group at a time, so policy application stays clear and consistent. If you do not already have a suitable policy, you can create one.

Supported Backup Types

  • Full backup
  • Incremental backup

You choose the backup type when you run a backup, for example, when you use Run now. Backup type is not configured in the policy.

Supported Items For Backup and Recover

  • User mailbox
  • Mailbox items
  • Labels

Label Support

The following labels are supported for backup and recovery:

  • Starred
  • Drafts
  • Spam
  • Trash
  • Custom labels
  • Category labels, for example Social and Important

The following label related items are not supported:

  • Snoozed label due to Google API limitations
  • Muted status
  • Scheduled mail

Label Recovery Behavior

  • If a label already exists in the destination mailbox, recovered emails are added under that label.
  • If a label does not exist in the destination mailbox, Cloud Protection Service creates the label and then adds the recovered emails under it.
  • When restoring to an alternate location, you must define a root label.

Unsupported Items For Backup And Recover

  • Mailbox settings
  • Filters and rules
  • Contacts
  • Calendars
  • Chat

Backup Use Cases

Common backup use cases are supported, including backing up all mailboxes, an individual mailbox, or specific mailbox items. Review the points in this section so you understand what is included, what is excluded, and how Recover behaves in different scenarios.

All About Recovery

After a backup completes successfully, you can recover backed up items if data is lost or corrupted.

  • The destination mailbox must already exist. A new mailbox cannot be created as part of the recovery workflow.
  • Bulk recovery of all Gmail mailboxes is supported.
  • Granular recovery of an individual mailbox, multiple mailboxes, or mailbox items is supported.
  • Selecting a recovery point is supported.

Recovery destinations:

  • Original location. Recover to the same mailbox from which the mailbox or mailbox items were backed up.
  • New location. Recover to a different mailbox within the same registered Google Workspace source or a different registered Google Workspace source.

Root Label Behavior For Alternate Recovers

When restoring to an alternate mailbox or location, specify a root label. Cloud Protection Service prefixes Recoverd labels with the root label followed by the original mailbox email address. If the root label is blank, the prefix defaults to the original mailbox email address.

Example 1: Root Label Specified

  • Root label: Recoverd Mail
  • Original mailbox email: alice@company.com

Resulting label prefix examples:

  • Recoverd Mail/alice@company.com/Inbox
  • Recoverd Mail/alice@company.com/Sent
  • Recoverd Mail/alice@company.com/CustomLabel

Example 2: Root Label Omitted Or Left Blank

  • Root label: blank
  • Original mailbox email: alice@company.com

Resulting label prefix examples:

  • alice@company.com/Inbox
  • alice@company.com/Sent
  • alice@company.com/CustomLabel

Additional recovery capabilities:

  • Downloading individual items is not supported.
  • Overwriting an existing mailbox or mailbox item at the destination location is supported.