"Last 7 Days" display of no use

[Monster]

I was discussing the use of the "Last 7 Days" Display in Backup Exec 2012 with a Symantec technician and I like to see your opinions on the functionality.

As far as I am concerned, it’s absolutely useless, how it works at the moment. The display triggers when finishing a backup job and displays a green, red or white icon on the corresponding day. So, if your monday backup starts at 10 pm and finishes three hours later, the display shows a white bar on monday and a green one on tuesday. That is useless because I cannot see WHAT backup finished how! One example:

You run daily full (Mon-Fri) backups starting at 10pm. Hours your backup jobs needs to finish:

• Monday       < 2h
• Tuesday      > 2h
• Wednesday > 2h
• Thursday     < 2h
• Friday          > 2h

According to that, the display shows:

• Monday       green
• Tuesday      white
• Wednesday green
• Thursday     green
• Friday          white
• Saturday      green
• Sunday        white

What happened to Tuesday? What happened to Wednesday, since two jobs finished here. The display is random depending on the time the job took. It takes me more than just one look to actually figure out what is happening.

I think it would be better if the display would display the state of the backup that started on that day. It would look like the following because I know that I have five backups a week. Hence I have one look and instantly know what's going on.

• Monday       green
• Tuesday      green
• Wednesday green
• Thursday     green
• Friday          green
• Saturday      white
• Sunday        white

Please let me know your opinion on that topic. I like to know how other users feel about that display.

[Colin_Weaver]

The 7 day ribbon shows the date and time that the jobs finished and not when they started. I am however interested in the feedback that the OP has asked for as well - as such I will be monitoring ths thread.

[Jaymz]

I would agree with the OP.

My backups are scheduling to start in an evening but will run over night until the next morning.  The 7 day ribbon and the "back up size" is really useless to me.

[TomW_BE]

I'm an engineer with BE.  Would it be more useful if the Last 7 Days grouped the backups by end time rather than start time?  I have heard similar comments and wondering if this is a common thought.  Also, what if the Last 7 Days were to allow for customization of what a "day" means?  A "day" could be defined as 8PM to 8PM or something like that.  Would that improve the usability of this information?  Or, if you have your own ideas of what you think would help, please share.

If the Last 7 Days is not currently useful, you can remove that column.  Right-click on any column header in the Servers list and uncheck the Last 7 Days column.  Or from the Sort and Filter menu in the ribbon, click Columns and a dialog will be displayed that lets you customize which columns are displayed.

Thanks for providing feedback on this part of the BE UI.

[Jaymz]

For me my inc/diff backups start at 8pm on MTWT and finish around 4am next day.  The full backup starts friday 8pm and finishes sunday or occasionaly monday morning.  If this can be grouped into a custom day and then be used by the last 7 day column and other things like backup size, then yes, much more useful.

I had thought about end time but some of the jobs only take a few minutes to run and I would rather the backup jobs for that "day" be grouped together for the columns, reports etc.

[Monster]

TomW_BE,

The possibility to configure the Ribbon would be great, such as by start/end time. Rather than having it displayed by end time only. But being able to configure what a day means, would go to far, in my opinion, because that would be too far away from the ribbon's name.

Just another thought:

When I look at the Ribbon, I honestly expect to see a "Last 7 Backups" thing. In most small/medium sized companies where I am using BE, I start one full backup every day, so "Last 7 Days" represents it very very well. And I consider it a wonderful feature to check whether everything is alright. That's why I prefer a display by start time.