Squirrel Dashboard for SharePoint Archive Admins

The Squirrel Dashboard provides administrators with a real-time, high-level overview of the platform’s performance, system activity, and archiving impact. It’s designed to give actionable insights at a glance - helping you monitor data movement, track storage savings driven by your archive policies, and ensure Squirrel is running efficiently. For administrators new to the platform, the Getting Started guide covers initial setup before the dashboard becomes populated with data.

Once you have logged in with your Admin account, you’ll be presented with the main dashboard screen.

What the Dashboard Shows You

Each widget is designed to display up-to-date metrics for archiving and restoring data across your SharePoint environment.

Key Metrics Displayed on the Dashboard:

• Total Archived Data:
  Displays the total volume of archived data (in terabytes). Useful for tracking the cumulative impact of your archiving policies and viewing what's been moved on the Archived Files page.

• Archived Data – Today / This Month / This Year:
  Shows how much data has been archived over different time frames, helping you measure short- and long-term activity.

• Total Archive Transactions:
  The number of files or items that have been successfully archived across all sites.

• Archive Transactions – Today / This Month / This Year:
  Breakdowns of archiving activity by day, month, and year.

• Total Restore Transactions:
  Displays the number of items restored from archive back into SharePoint. For detail on how rehydration works end-to-end, see the Restore Process page.

• Restore Transactions – Today / This Month / This Year:
  Tracks how often users or admins restore files across your environment.

• Total Savings:
  A real-time estimate of the storage cost savings achieved by archiving files to Azure Blob Storage instead of retaining them in SharePoint.

• Percent Archived:
  Indicates what percentage of your SharePoint storage has been archived so far. This is a key metric to help you measure storage optimization.

• Latest News:
  Displays the most recent Squirrel announcements, updates, and new feature releases - keeping admins informed about what's new in the platform.

Dashboard Widgets Explained

Each metric appears in a widget-style tile designed for clarity and speed. These widgets are updated daily or in real-time (depending on the data type) and provide a live snapshot of the health and performance of your Squirrel environment.

You can use the dashboard to:

• Confirm if scheduled archiving is occurring as expected
• Quickly identify spikes in restore activity
• Measure storage reclaimed over time
• Track cost savings for reporting to stakeholders
• Stay updated on the latest platform improvements

If you're unsure about a specific widget or need help interpreting your dashboard data, reach out to support@smikar.com for assistance.

Common questions

Q: Why is my Squirrel dashboard showing zero archived data?

• A dashboard with zero archived data usually means no archive policy has run yet. Check your global settings to confirm a retention rule is enabled, and review site custom policies to make sure at least one SharePoint site is in scope. Newly installed deployments typically populate their first metrics after the next scheduled archive cycle.

Q: How often does the Squirrel dashboard refresh?

• Most widgets refresh on every page load against the live database, so metrics reflect activity in near real time. The "Latest News" widget pulls in updates as they're published. Storage-cost estimates (Total Savings) are recalculated daily because they depend on Azure tier pricing.

Q: Why is the Total Savings widget different from my actual Azure bill?

• The dashboard's Total Savings is an estimate based on the difference between SharePoint storage cost and Azure Blob Storage cost at standard pricing. Your actual Azure bill depends on the storage tier configured (hot, cool, or cold), redundancy options, egress, and any enterprise discounts. Use the figure as a relative indicator rather than an exact bill match.

Q: Can I export the dashboard metrics for stakeholder reports?

• Yes - the Reports page provides exportable file, storage, and site-level reports that align with what's surfaced on the dashboard. For ad-hoc views, the Activity Monitor gives you transaction-level detail.

Q: I see archive transactions but no files in SharePoint have changed. Why?

• Squirrel logs an archive transaction the moment a file is moved from SharePoint to Azure Blob Storage; the file is replaced in-place with a small stub file that retains the original name and metadata. Users still see the file in SharePoint, but its content now lives in Azure.