Squirrel Overview
Squirrel is an advanced document archiving solution for SharePoint Online, leveraging Azure Blob Storage to provide cost-effective, secure, and efficient document management. With customizable lifecycle policies, real-time data insights, and seamless integration, Squirrel helps organizations optimize storage costs, enhance operational efficiency, and maintain compliance effortlessly.
Make SharePoint Document Storage Cost Effective
Utilize Azure Blob Storage’s cost-efficiency to significantly reduce your storage expenses.
Squirrel seamlessly integrates with your existing SharePoint Online environment (including OneDrive Synced folders from SharePoint), allowing for an automatic transfer of inactive documents to Azure Blob Storage.
This not only frees up valuable SharePoint space but also significantly lowers storage costs. Squirrel makes it easy to leverage cheaper storage options without sacrificing accessibility or security, optimizing your overall SharePoint budget.
With Squirrel, you gain the dual benefits of cost savings and improved document management efficiency, making it an essential tool for any cost-conscious SharePoint administrator.
SQUIRREL DASHBOARD
The Squirrel Dashboard is your command center, providing a quick and comprehensive view of your document archiving environment.
It offers intuitive navigation and real-time data visualizations, allowing you to monitor the status of archived and restored files, view storage usage, and access detailed analytics and reports.
This dashboard simplifies management and enhances your operational oversight of Squirrel’s functionalities.
ARCHIVAL POLICIES
Squirrel allows you to set a global policy to archive all your SharePoint Online sites based on a date you decide. Additionally, it offers the flexibility to override this global policy by either whitelisting specific sites to exclude them from archiving or applying individual archive policies that differ from the global policy.
Beyond these policies, Squirrel also provides admins with the powerful capability to archive an entire SharePoint site or restore all files within a site with just a click. This feature ensures that not only individual documents but entire sites can be efficiently managed, allowing for complete site archiving when needed, or full restoration if required. This approach helps maintain optimal storage efficiency and adherence to organisational archiving requirements, while also offering flexibility in managing entire sites.
SEARCH
The search area of Squirrel is designed specifically for admins, enabling them to efficiently locate and manage documents within their SharePoint Online sites. Admins can specify a SharePoint site and enter a file name or partial name to search for specific documents, with a dropdown displaying matching files for easy selection.
Once a file is selected, detailed information about it is displayed, including its size, archival status, deletion status, last access date, and last modified date.
Depending on whether the file has been archived or not, admins can either restore or archive the file directly from the search results, streamlining the document management process.
ARCHIVED FILES
The “Archived Files” section provides a detailed list and status of all documents that have been archived from SharePoint to Azure Blob Storage. Here, users can view file names, archiving dates, and metadata, and gain insights into the archiving frequency and patterns. This section helps in tracking archived documents and ensures easy access to historical data for compliance and auditing purposes.
STORAGE ANALYTICS
The “Storage Comparison Analytics” section offers a visual and quantitative analysis of your storage savings and efficiency. Compare the storage space utilized in SharePoint versus Azure Blob Storage, and see the cost benefits and space optimization achieved through the archiving process. This analytics tool aids in strategic decision-making regarding data management and cost optimization.
TRANSACTIONS
The “Transactions” section logs every action taken within Squirrel, including file archiving, restoration, and any modifications to the settings or policies. This comprehensive audit trail is essential for security, compliance, and operational review, providing a chronological record of activities to support governance and troubleshooting.
REPORTING
Squirrel provides detailed insights into your SharePoint environment by reporting on the top 20 file types by total size and file count. This helps you identify which file types are consuming the most storage and which are most prevalent in your system. Understanding your file distribution allows you to manage storage more effectively and make informed decisions about archiving and data management.
GET SHAREPOINT DATA INSIGHTS
Track and analyze the total size of your top 20 SharePoint sites with Squirrel’s comprehensive site size reporting. This feature allows you to monitor storage usage across different SharePoint Sites. Historical site size tracking provides a visual representation of growth trends, helping you predict future storage needs and optimize resource allocation.
SQUIRREL REST APIs
Our Squirrel REST APIs offer a comprehensive set of features designed to enhance your SharePoint and Azure Blob Storage management.
Enhanced Data Insights: The APIs provide detailed metrics on SharePoint sites, comprehensive file statistics, and storage utilization insights, enabling organizations to make informed decisions about their document management strategies.
Automated Workflows: By using direct archive and restore calls, organizations can automate their document archiving processes, saving time and reducing manual effort. This automation ensures that documents are archived and restored efficiently without human intervention.
Improved Monitoring: With the ability to monitor and report on archived files, including their status and history, organizations can maintain better control and oversight of their archived data, ensuring compliance and efficient data management.
Security and Compliance: The use of Entra ID / Enterprise App authentication ensures that only authorized users can access and interact with the APIs, maintaining the security and integrity of the data. This is crucial for organizations that need to comply with stringent data protection regulations.
Data Visualization: The APIs include features like file type graphs, which help organizations visualize and understand the types of files stored within their systems. This can aid in identifying patterns and optimizing storage solutions.
Seamless Integration: The suite of APIs enables robust integration with existing systems, allowing organizations to incorporate Squirrel’s capabilities into their current workflows and IT environments. This flexibility ensures that Squirrel can be tailored to meet the unique needs of each organization.
Cost Efficiency: By obtaining insights into storage utilization and managing archiving processes effectively, organizations can optimize their storage solutions, potentially reducing costs associated with data storage and management.
This suite of APIs facilitates robust integration, automating workflows, and enabling detailed data analysis within your SharePoint and Azure Blob Storage environments.
AI-Powered Lifecycle Policy
Coming Soon
We are currently developing an AI-powered (Artificial Intelligence) lifecycle policy feature for Squirrel, designed to revolutionize how clients manage their SharePoint storage. This intelligent system will enable organizations to define the total amount of SharePoint storage they have licensed and set a target percentage they wish to maintain. The AI will continuously monitor storage usage, automatically adjusting lifecycle policies to archive older or less frequently accessed data to Azure Blob Storage. This ensures that clients remain within their allocated storage limits without manual intervention.
By utilizing this AI-powered solution, organizations can optimize their SharePoint environment, avoiding unnecessary storage costs while maintaining easy access to critical data. The AI will proactively identify data suitable for archiving, streamlining the process, and freeing up SharePoint space for active projects. This not only helps reduce storage expenses but also ensures compliance with storage quotas, preventing potential overages and the associated costs, and enabling clients to avoid purchasing additional SharePoint storage.
The lifecycle policy feature is fully automated, meaning clients do not need to refine or adjust their policies manually. The AI takes care of this, making intelligent decisions based on real-time data and usage patterns, ensuring continuous optimization without any additional effort from the user. This feature provides a hands-free approach to managing SharePoint storage, enabling a more efficient, cost-effective, and scalable SharePoint management strategy.
Lowering SharePoint Costs is Effortless with Squirrel.
Optimize your archiving processes, manage storage efficiently, and reduce expenses effortlessly. Squirrel offers an easy-to-implement and user-friendly solution for enhancing your document management, making cost reductions simple and stress-free..
Automated Document Archiving
Squirrel streamlines your document management by automatically transferring documents from SharePoint Online to Azure Blob Storage based on customizable lifecycle policies. This automation ensures your document archiving is consistent and error-free, allowing your IT team to focus on other tasks.
Dashboard and Reporting
Squirrel comes equipped with a comprehensive dashboard that provides real-time insights into your archiving activities and storage utilization. This feature helps you monitor performance, track cost savings, and refine your document management strategies based on data-driven insights.
Support and Scalability
Squirrel is supported by a dedicated team ready to assist with any issues, ensuring your document archiving process runs smoothly at all times. As your organization grows, Squirrel scales with you, capable of handling increased document loads without performance hitches.
Advanced Security Features
Squirrel secures your documents with industry-leading encryption protocols both during transmission and while at rest in storage. Additionally, integration with Azure Active Directory ensures that only authenticated users can access documents, maintaining stringent security and compliance standards.
Seamless Integration
Designed to integrate effortlessly with your existing SharePoint Online setup, Squirrel provides a plug-and-play solution that requires minimal setup. This seamless integration preserves the user experience and existing workflows, making adoption smooth and straightforward.
Accessibility and Compliance
Archived documents remain fully accessible and searchable through SharePoint Online, ensuring users experience no disruption. Squirrel helps your organization comply with legal and regulatory requirements for document storage, ensuring that you meet industry standards effortlessly.
Cost-Effective Storage Solutions
Utilize Azure Blob Storage’s cost-efficiency to significantly reduce your storage expenses. Squirrel makes it easy to leverage cheaper storage options without sacrificing accessibility or security, optimizing your overall storage budget.
Exceptional Ease of Use
Squirrel’s intuitive interface makes it easy for administrators and users to manage document archiving and rehydrate data as needed. This streamlined approach minimizes administrative tasks, positioning Squirrel as the go-to for efficient document management.
Customizable Lifecycle Policies
Gain full control over your document management policies with Squirrel’s customizable settings. You can set rules based on document age, type, or access frequency, ensuring that documents are archived exactly when needed.
Analyze Your Own Data
Empower your organization with Squirrel’s robust data analysis tools. This feature allows you to delve deep into your own SharePoint data, providing valuable insights into usage patterns, storage efficiency, and operational productivity.
By analyzing your own data, Squirrel helps streamline processes, optimize resources, and make informed decisions that enhance your organizational efficiency within a secure environment.
The insights gained help tailor your archiving strategies to better align with actual usage, improving both cost-efficiency and system performance while maintaining rigorous data security standards.
Unlock the potential of seamless, secure, and cost-effective document management. Download our Squirrel Information Pack now to see how Squirrel can revolutionise your SharePoint Online experience. Learn about our innovative SharePoint Online archiving solution, data encryption, and effortless file retrieval. Take the first step towards smarter document management today! Send download link to:
Squirrel - SharePoint Online Archiving Solution