When a Microsoft 365 data loss incident strikes, most organizations face the same uncomfortable reality: they have backups but they do not have a plan. Their data may be preserved, but the path back to business operations is not.

For IT leaders, that gap is where real risk lives.

This is the first installment of a two-part series about how Rubrik closes that gap by helping customers establish a minimum viable business (MVB), including the proactive work organizations do in peacetime to define what needs to be recovered, for whom, and in what order. 

 

Minimum Viable Business: the Solution to the "Restore Everything" Problem

We have already covered why traditional M365 recovery fails: when organizations attempt a full restore of every mailbox, every file, every archive, they eventually collide with Microsoft's API rate limits and spend weeks recovering content that may never matter. So what comes next? How do you build the plan that makes a smarter recovery possible? That work happens before any incident occurs, and it starts with the minimum viable business (MVB).

A MVB  is a recovery framework that defines, before any incident occurs, what your organization needs to survive an M365 disruption. Rather than treating every user and file equally, MVB identifies your most critical people and the data they depend on, and builds a validated, actionable recovery plan around them. 

 

The Five Stages of a Validated MVB Playbook

The MB playbook unfolds across five stages:

 

 

Stage	What It Does	Impact
1. Define	Map critical users to Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams.	Aligns IT recovery priorities with actual business continuity needs.
2. Discover	Rubrik maps identities and assets to generate a real-time restore time benchmark.	Replaces assumptions with factual data and a baseline RTO.
3. Personalize	Refine the scope using natural language AI commands.	Defends against Microsoft API throttling by stripping out low-value data.
4. Optimize	Rubrik’s AI agent recommends plan adjustments based on usage trends.	Ensures the plan adapts dynamically to changing user behaviors.
5. Finalize	Lock in a standing, validated recovery playbook.	Delivers predictable, push-button readiness before a crisis hits.

 

Stage 1 - Define Your Critical Users and M365 Applications: MVB begins with two deliberate business questions: which users are most critical to continuity and which M365 applications are essential to their work? This is not purely a technical exercise; answers typically include input from executive leadership, legal, finance, and key customer-facing roles (though every organization differs). Administrators define those individuals and map them to Exchange, OneDrive, SharePoint, and Teams. This policy becomes the foundation for everything that follows.

Stage 2 - Rubrik Discovers Your Environment and Builds a Baseline Plan: With the MVB policy defined, Rubrik Security Cloud goes to work in your actual production environment. Rather than relying on outdated documentation or manual asset tagging, Rubrik directly integrates with your native infrastructure, leveraging Microsoft Entra ID and AD groups and roles. It also accesses logs to discover user identities and automatically map the specific M365 applications and assets tied to them.

The output is a dynamic relationship map that bridges identity and data. The system traces each critical user to their corresponding mailboxes, OneDrive files, SharePoint sites, and Teams channels. Most importantly, Rubrik aggregates this metadata to surface an estimated restore time baseline immediately.

Stage 3 - Personalize the Plan with AI and Natural Language: A baseline plan reflects what Rubrik discovers, but organizations often have additional context that should shape it. Rubrik's AI and natural language capabilities allow administrators to refine the plan conversationally, without navigating complex menus or writing scripts.

For example, an administrator might type one of the following commands: 

• "Exclude company-wide broadcast emails from Exchange recovery," since restoring all-hands announcements at scale wastes API capacity on low-value content. 

• "Restrict OneDrive recovery to files labeled Confidential." 

• "Remove archive folders older than three years from the SharePoint scope." 
   

Each instruction is processed immediately. As each is applied, the system recalculates the plan in real time, updating asset scope and estimated restore time. Narrowing the recovery scope in this way can reduce a projected 1.5-hour restore to 55 minutes, a meaningful difference when the business is offline.

Stage 4 - Rubrik's AI Agent Proactively Recommends Adjustments: MVB planning does not stop at what the administrator defines. Rubrik's AI agent surfaces recommendations based on real-time signals and historical usage patterns in your environment. It might flag that a SharePoint site has seen a spike in activity among critical users and warrants inclusion in the plan, or that infrequently accessed archive data could be deprioritized to preserve API capacity for higher-priority content. The administrator always has final authority; every recommendation can be accepted or rejected. The agent improves plan precision over time without making decisions on behalf of the organization.

Stage 5 - Review and Finalize Recovery Plan: With personalization and agent recommendations incorporated, the administrator reviews the complete plan. Every decision updates the estimated restore time in real time, so the final view reflects exactly what will be recovered, for which users, across which applications, and how long it will take.

The plan can be saved as a standing recovery playbook, ready to execute the moment an incident occurs, or executed immediately if recovery is already underway. When it runs, the goal is not a full restore. It is to restore your MVB, the operational state where your most critical functions are back online, decisions can be made, and the business can respond. A full restore follows,but MVB is what ends the crisis.

 

Coming Soon: Part 2

A strong MVB plan is the foundation. In Part 2, we cover how autonomous business recovery (ABR) takes the plan your team built here and delivers your minimum viable business state in hours rather than weeks, without requiring anyone to make a prioritization decision in real time.If you are ready to assess how MVB planning fits your organization's recovery strategy today, reach out to your Rubrik account team or request a demo.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this document are not currently available and may not be made generally available on time or at all, as may be determined in our sole discretion. Any such referenced services or features do not represent promises to deliver, commitments, or obligations of Rubrik, Inc. and may not be incorporated into any contract. Customers should make their purchase decisions based upon services and features that are currently generally available.