Getting the best out of new jobs

1. Start with one tight manual rule, not five loose ones. A job with no rules never auto-matches, but an overly broad contains rule can just as easily steal another client's mail. Prefer a subject or sender value that's genuinely distinctive — at least 4 characters and specific to that client or job.
2. Let the Review queue teach the system. The first email a brand-new job receives usually has to be assigned manually once. Every equivalent email after that is automatic — that's the learned rule doing its job.
3. Match the rule type to the sender pattern. For a client with their own dedicated backup sender, a from rule on their domain is robust and covers every subject line. For a vendor that sends from one shared address across all its customers (DropSuite-style), use a subject rule on the client's name instead — a from rule there would grab every customer of that vendor, not just one.
4. Watch for ties. If an email could equally match two jobs, BackupWatch sends it to Review rather than guessing. Seeing this happen is a signal that one of those jobs' rules is too generic — tighten it rather than assigning around the problem repeatedly.
5. Set schedules to match reality, not aspiration. A stream of false "missed" alerts on a new job almost always means the expected time / grace hours (daily) or the interval / window / grace minutes (interval) don't yet match when the backup software actually runs. Adjust it under the job's Advanced settings once you've seen a few real runs.
6. Revisit learned rules occasionally. They're ordinary rules once created — visible on the job page tagged learned · OR, editable, and deletable. If one turns out broader than intended, remove it; the next matching email will simply return to Review.
7. Use "New client & job" for genuinely new customers. From the Review queue, this prefills fields straight from the email, so onboarding a new client's first job is one click instead of three separate forms.

Related reading