Even with the best intentions, administrators and agents have seen incidents where they have either deleted important data or modified records, only to realize that it was by mistake. This is why it's so important to have a copy of your help desk data to fall back on at any time. With this in mind, Zoho Desk provides various options to download all your data periodically. You can even schedule a backup to take place at a specific time of your choice. These instant and scheduled data backups ensure that you always have recent data from your help desk account and are protected against any data loss.
Important:
The data backup feature has a maximum export limit of 10 million records. If this limit is reached, customer support will contact you.
- Once a full backup is initiated, you cannot back up your data for the next 30 days.
Multiple custom backups can be created within a 30-day period.
What Gets Backed Up?
When you create a backup, all the module data, including tickets, knowledge base, contacts, accounts, etc., are saved to the download file.
Here is the list of modules that will be backed up:
- Tickets
- Threads
- Comments
- Time Entries
- Attachments (via download link)
- Contacts
- Accounts
- Activities
- Tasks
- Calls
- Events
- Products
- KB Articles
- Agents
- Teams
- Departments
Note:
- Forum topics are not available for back up.
Backup Options
There are two main options in Zoho Desk to take backups of your data: Instant and Scheduled. With the instant option, the backup starts immediately. With the Scheduled Backup, you have the following frequencies to choose from:
- Weekly - Backup will be taken every week on a specified day.
- Bi-weekly - Backup will be taken once every other week on a specified day.
- Every Month - Backup will be taken once every month on a specified date or day of a week.
- Quarterly - Backup will be taken once every three months on a specified date or day of a week.
Note that the backup file that you receive will be a single compressed file consisting of multiple CSV files belonging to various Zoho Desk modules.
Instant Backups
With instant backups, the backup process starts immediately, and a copy of your data is available soon for you to download. You can either download all your data at once or download only those modified during a custom period.
To initiate an instant backup:
- Log in to your Zoho Desk account as the primary contact.
- Click the Setup icon ( ) in the top bar.
- Click Data Backup under Data Administration.
- Under Back up now choose one of the following:
- Full Backup - A copy of all the desk data will be available to download immediately.
- Custom Backup - It allows admins to take a backup of the data within a period of 31 days. For example, businesses can take 15 days or 21 days of backup. If the backup period entered exceeds 31 days, eg., June 1st to July 3rd will throw an error.
Organizations that require more than 31 days of backup data downloaded can divide it into multiple backups. For example, to back up data from January 1, 2024, to March 15, 2024, which is 75 days, you can divide it into three backups of 25 days each.
- Click Download Now.
A compressed file with the data will be available for download under the Backup History section.
Schedule Backups
Another efficient option for data backup is to schedule it. You can automate the process of data backup to occur at regular intervals. Keep in mind that your first scheduled backup will run as a full backup, then subsequent backups will only have new and modified data. Note that you can create only one scheduled backup in a month.