Overview

This article explains how to leverage the 360Plus module. 360Plus helps you define backup strategies, search and compare backup copies, restore objects from backups, recover deleted content through the recycle bin, and automate SAP BusinessObjects content promotion with scheduled tasks.

For more information about 360Plus configuration, refer to the corresponding documentation.

Backup Strategies

Backup strategies are the foundation of 360Plus. Their goal is to retain a controlled number of backup copies for SAP BusinessObjects content so that you can restore content after accidental deletion, corruption, or platform issues.

A typical backup strategy includes the following:

• Configure the 360Plus backup work directory and indexing settings.
• Schedule recurring backup tasks for the content that matters to your organization.
• Define how many backup copies must be retained.
• Decide whether to include sub-containers, content, instances, or personal content depending on the object type.
• Prepare restoration scenarios in advance for disaster recovery or operational rollback.

Backup tasks are incremental. This means 360Plus stores only objects and parent containers that were created or modified since the last backup, which reduces the amount of data to process compared to a full copy each time.

In practice, backup strategies are useful for the following use cases:

• Protecting critical folders, universes, connections, calendars, profiles, and security objects.
• Keeping several recent copies before a risky change, deployment, or migration.
• Building a recovery plan in case content must be rolled back quickly.
• Generating snapshots to document the backed-up scope when this option is enabled.

When you create a backup task, the main decisions are:

• Which object kinds must be backed up.
• Whether to include only the root objects, sub-containers, or sub-containers with content.
• How many copies must be retained. This can be specified from the administration console configuration.
• Whether the backup should run now, on defined dates, on a BusinessObjects calendar, or from an external trigger.

For large environments, it is important to balance coverage and performance. Parallel backup can speed up execution, but excessive parallelism may impact the platform.

Find Backups - Backup Audit

Backup Audit helps you verify that the expected objects are actually backed up and lets you find the available backup copies for a specific object.

This feature is particularly useful when you need to:

• Confirm that a backup strategy covers a given object or folder.
• Check how many copies exist for an object before a restore.
• Track backup history for maintenance or support purposes.
• Delete obsolete backup copies manually when needed.

In Backup Audit, you search by object kind, path mode, object path, and object name. The results list shows the matching backed-up objects. From there, you can:

• Review the available backup copies.
• Restore an object directly.
• Delete a backup copy after confirmation.

This is the best entry point when a user asks, “Do we have a backup for this object?”

Compare Backups - Backup Comparison

Backup Comparison is intended for Web Intelligence documents and universes (UNX or UNV). It helps determine what changed between the live object and one of its backup copies.

This feature is useful when you need to:

• Investigate differences after an unexpected modification.
• Decide which backup copy should be restored.
• Document content differences for support or audit purposes.
• Export comparison results for offline review.

The comparison is used from the object context menu by clicking Manage Backups, then by selecting the backup copy to compare. The result highlights differences with color codes:

• White: the element exists in both versions and matches.
• Blue: the element exists in both versions but values differ.
• Green: the element exists only in the backup copy.
• Red: the element exists only in the live version.

If needed, comparison results can also be exported, for example to XLSX, which is useful when support teams need to document or share the differences.

Restore a backup

360Plus supports unitary restore operations, which means you can restore a single object instead of restoring a full environment.

This is the preferred option when:

• A report, universe, folder, or security object was modified incorrectly.
• Only one object must be restored without impacting the rest of the platform.
• You want to recover content quickly from an existing backup copy.

To restore an object, browse to the object, open Manage Backups, choose the desired backup copy, and launch the restore.

Two restore modes are available:

• Replace: restores the selected backup and overwrites the current object.
• Duplicate: restores the selected backup as a duplicate while keeping the current object unchanged.

Duplicate mode is particularly useful for validation or investigation because it lets users review the restored content without overwriting the live version.

360Plus can restore a wide range of object types, including folders, connections, universes, profiles, calendars, access levels, and groups.

Restore a deleted object - Recycle Bin

The Recycle Bin is designed for deleted objects. It allows users to search for deleted content and restore it to its original location, provided backup indexing is enabled.

This feature is especially useful when:

• An object was deleted accidentally.
• Support must recover deleted content quickly.
• Users do not know the exact deletion date and need to search by object kind, path, or name.

The Recycle Bin offers two search modes:

• Fast mode searches through the existing backup index and is the quickest option.
• Live mode performs a repository scan before returning the results and is useful when the deletion is recent and the index may not have been refreshed yet.

After you find the deleted object, you can restore one of the available backup copies from the search results.

The Recycle Bin can also permanently delete entries, but this operation must be used carefully. Once an item is removed from the recycle bin, the deletion cannot be undone and all of its backups are also deleted.

Scheduled Tasks

Scheduled tasks allow 360Plus processes to run automatically instead of relying on manual actions. This is essential for repeatable operations such as backup creation and promotion workflows.

Typical scheduled task use cases include:

• Running backups every day or every week.
• Triggering tasks on defined dates or BusinessObjects calendars.
• Launching tasks after external events.
• Standardizing administrative operations across environments.

BOBJ Promotion

360Plus can also automate SAP BusinessObjects content promotion. This is useful for moving content between environments or packaging content into BIAR files.

The main promotion scenarios are:

• CMS to CMS: direct promotion between two SAP BusinessObjects environments.
• CMS to Files: export content from a CMS to local files or FTP/SFTP as BIAR files.
• Files to CMS: import BIAR files into a target CMS.

Promotion tasks are useful for the following use cases:

• Promoting content from development to test or production.
• Exporting content as BIAR files before a change window.
• Re-importing packaged content into another environment.
• Running controlled and repeatable promotion jobs through scheduled tasks.

Depending on the scenario, users can promote all objects of selected kinds or only objects added to the selection cart. For CMS-to-CMS promotions, 360Plus also supports several promotion modes:

• Full Promotion: promotes the selected content regardless of modification date.
• Delta Promotion: promotes only objects that are more recent in the source than in the target.
• Hierarchy Selection Promotion: promotes the content present in the selection cart with hierarchy adjustment in the target.

Before using promotion tasks, verify that:

• The accounts used on both environments have the required permissions.
• The BusinessObjects recycle bin is empty; otherwise, promotion can fail with duplicate GUID issues.
• The promotion options are reviewed carefully, especially when security, restrictions, or overwrite behavior are involved.

In support terms, BOBJ Promotion is the right tool when the customer needs a controlled, repeatable, and schedulable way to move content across environments.