AvePoint’s Virtual Assistant, or AVA is a Microsoft 365 backup bot that helps Teams users find lost content and restore deleted files. AvePoint originally launched it in 2018 to empower end-users instead of having backup and restore capabilities restricted only to admins.
AvePoint is a software development and technology services company established in 2001. It has conducted three funding rounds, recently raising a massive $200 million amount in Series C in January 2020. The company has a long-standing partnership with Microsoft, winning the Microsoft Partner of the Year award five times. Indeed, a large portion of AvePoint’s solution portfolio caters to the Microsoft ecosystem, including SharePoint, Office 365 products, Microsoft 365 on-premise, and Microsoft Teams.
AvePoint has several products to help Teams admins with migration, governance, and optimisation – but AVA is primarily meant for the end user. We reported on the launch of AVA in 2019, when it was the first-ever solution to offer a bot-based backup service in Teams. The app is currently in version 1.1.3, supported by frequent updates from AvePoint. Let us review it in more detail.
Inside AvePoint’s Virtual Assistant for Microsoft Teams
AVA is AvePoint’s free chatbot for Microsoft Teams. You can start downloading the app from Microsoft AppSource and connecting it with your Microsoft 365 account. Remember that you need an active AvePoint subscription to access files and conversations managed by the AvePoint Cloud Backup Service. The company has several offerings for governance, migration, and end-user adoption, useful for Teams administrators.
Here are the feature highlights you can expect with AVA:
- Chatbot-based functionality – AvePoint’s Virtual Assistant works entirely through a chatbot-based interface. You can use simple commands to help restore various lost/broken files in Teams. Type in “restore a file” or “restore an email”, and AVA will come back with queries that will help you define your search. You can tell AVA if the file is currently in use, type in the product name if you remember it, and enter other details. AVA will look in multiple locations until the asset is found.
- File restoration – You can use AVA to restore files that have already been deleted. By default, the app looks for files in recycle bins as a last resort if they aren’t found elsewhere. Or, you can directly tell AVA that you want to restore a file from a recycle bin. Importantly, you could connect AVA with AvePoint Cloud Backup – this gives you the additional benefit of restoring files that are no longer in Office 365’s native recycle bin feature but are still accessible via AvePoint.
- Email restoration – AVA lets you look up and restore email conversations that cannot be searched in your Microsoft Exchange or Outlook mailbox. The bot will ask you to type in the email subject; if the email is still not found, AVA can search through deleted emails. You could also restore your retrieved emails into an email folder other than your inbox.
- Microsoft 365 search – Using AVA, you can search for virtually any file, message, attachment, conversation, or group file ever shared through a Microsoft 365 product. Simply type in the relevant command, such as “restore Teams data,” “restore a Microsoft 365 group file,” “restore an Exchange item,” and so on. It can also look up files in OneDrive.
- Lost file search – AVA is surprisingly adept at finding otherwise considered lost files. It can navigate through corrupt versions of documents and restore them in a usable format. It can also fix broken URLs to files and documents that a colleague might have shared.
Why AvePoint’s Virtual Assistant App Makes a Difference
AVA gives you the unique advantage of empowering end-users with lost file search, backup, and restoration – functionalities that would otherwise be restricted to Teams administrators. This allows users to get work done faster without involving IT and also dramatically reduces workloads at the IT end. AVA is easy to use and does not require you to type in complex commands or navigate through confusing folder structures to find a file.
What We Think
AVA – as a standalone app or in conjunction with AvePoint Cloud Backup – could dramatically improve Microsoft 365 user experiences.
You can download the app here.
