#313 Simple report for non-technical end users

[user198379]

PROBLEM:

In my experience, non-technical end users' biggest challenge with backups is verifying they are complete and successful. They assume the backup is working, go months/years without checking (and don't know how to check even if they think of doing it), and only find out there's a problem when it's too late: They've lost data, need the backup, and find out the latest good one is six months old.

PROPOSED SOLUTION

I tried to find solutions that might be simple to code but have a large impact for non-technical users:

1) After the backup, as part of the verification, actually restore and verify a few files (in a temp directory). Choose a diversity of files (e.g., at least one from each source), nothing too big of course. Non-technical users never test their backups, and it should be simple to do automatically. It's not a perfect test, but it's much better than nothing.

2) When the backup (or any operation) concludes, display a simple form in a modal window that guides users to check their backup. Below is ane example of what I envision, with any errors in red. Note that the putting the date front and center is important; otherwise users overlook that the backup didn't run and they are reading an old report -- I've seen users go months without realizing it!

------------------------------------------------------

    Date: MONDAY, JAN 23 2016, 9:22 PM EDT

    Result: POSSIBLE PROBLEMS, SEE BELOW!

_________________________________________________
| STATUS                                        |
|_______________________________________________|
|                   |                           |
| Backup operation  |   Complete with [errors]  |
|___________________|___________________________|
|                   |                           |
| Verification      |   Complete, no errors     |
|___________________|___________________________|
|                   |                           |
| Quick restore test|   Complete, no errors     |
|___________________|___________________________|


_________________________________________________
| DATA CHECK: Source & Backup should match!     |
|_______________________________________________|
|           | Source    | Backup    | Result    |
|___________|___________|___________|___________|
|           |           |           |           |
| # Folders |     3,155 |     3,155 |   ok      |
|___________|___________|___________|___________|
|           |           |           |           |
| # Files   |    31,390 |    31,390 |   ok      |
|___________|___________|___________|___________|
|           |           |           |           |
| # Bytes   | 1,234,234 | 1,236,001 |  ERROR!   |
|___________|___________|___________|___________|


------------------------------------------------------