Hi ​@UKMedia 

A sound idea (pun intended)!

Thank you - I've marked this thread as a feature request and it will be seen by the relevant teams for consideration. Keep the ideas coming!

Expensive. It means standing up a server and storing a bunch of data. How many systems are out there? Neat idea, but likely extremely costly. Would be interesting to intelligently argue the economics of that, with real data. 

I think that depends upon who hosts the cloud storage.  I agree that a Sonos central cloud storage location would be the best approach, and with current data storage costs not a huge cost, or If this could be generated as a standalone file then the user could store the file within their own cloud storage space.

Depends, I would think, on two things. How much data is stored in your ‘backup’ (just the speakers? Or are we including all the playlists data?) and how many customer’s data are being saved.

I used to be responsible for backups of game player data, it was a lot of data, surprisingly so, and not cheap, at the time, but certainly part of the expectation given our monthly subscription model…something Sonos doesn’t have (across the board, that is, they do have Sonos Radio HD).

But I don’t have real numbers for either variable. I like the idea, I’m just not sure of the added cost. Not to mention the code changes necessary to support exporting data in order for it to be stored. 

+1 Iike this idea. Doesn’t need to be cloud stored. Prompt users when doing a reset. Backup playlists, favourites etc to local storage. 

Hi All

Regarding storage, I don’t think it would be much - it’s just a list of URLs, after all, and as such, highly compressible. Local storage could be an option, but I think it would require far more coding (at least on the speaker/app side of things) and would likely be a manual process, whereas a cloud backup could be automatic and transparent.

It would not be possible to prompt before a reset, however, as a reset does not involve the app. If it were added as a feature, it could certainly be mentioned in the factory reset instruction page, however.

Regarding ​@Airgetlam cost and data storage concern. I can think of two possible solutions to defray some of the cost and offset data storage problem. The ideas are not original and have been used by Apple for years on….

Paid Cloud Storage

• Apple charges $0.99 plus tax_USD for 50GB of cloud storage for iOS devices and scales the cost upward for larger desired capacities.

Granted Apple has other revenue streams to support the administration of such; but maybe Sonos can figure how to cost effectively support such a platform. Sonos might consider buying or partnering with a cloud storage company.

Cloud storage could also be useful for “what-if” Sonos development scenarios for during testing. Although, I suspect Sonos already has something similar in place (I would hope ).

Computer Storage

• Those who don’t want to pay Apple have the option to backup their iOS data to their PC via iTunes directly to the HD/SSD or removable storage.

Both storage avenues allow for a complete restoration of the iOS device. Sonos would have to solve the issue of how to incorporate the backup scheme into its OS. The other concerns mentioned above not withstanding.

Additionally, to mitigate what to back-up issues (i.e playlist, speakers etc) I think the back-up should be all or none.* Fragmenting the back-up calls for more “buckets” of administration and quite frankly would probably be too difficult for the EU to manage. If the EU changes and/or erases something just restore the previous system and then have them consult the Community or call Sonos Tech Support to sort it out.

 * Even Apple with its abundant resources (financial and human) doesn’t allow “piece-mill” iOS back-ups for restoration purposes.

Agreed.  I was envisaging the backup containing, Music Services, Voice Assistants, Playlists, Favourites, and Settings.  I suspect that Devices could possibly be an issue (If subsequently removed), or not even necessary.  

I would suspect that Music Services and Voice Assistants would have to be re-initated as they are not curated/owned by Sonos; as well as requiring a Sonos account owner sign-in to “activate all Sonos features.

Hi ​@UKMedia 

I’m with ​@AjTrek1 on this one - music and voice services would likely need to be added manually, if for no other reason than to prevent us from storing copies of the credentials. I don’t think it would be necessary to store devices (beyond registration) as a reset device will either be added or sold anyway.

Playlists, favourites, settings (I’m thinking EQ, mostly) and the Music Library path (but not the database) could easily be stored, and if compressed, I doubt it would take more than a few megabytes per system - I would not be surprised if all settings for all users could be stored on single, but large, drive (Apple, mentioned above, store photos and videos, which requires multiple orders of magnitude more space to store). And that’s only for people who use playlists and favourites a lot - if everyone were like me, it would be about 2 kilobytes each! 

I like where this thread going...thanks ​@UKMedia for bringing it up. However, we can’t put the cart before the horse.  The” horse” being Legal. 

Backup’s be they stored in the cloud or locally will contain a certain amount of PII. Even if the EU decides to store the backup locally on their own PC or removable storage Sonos will have a hand in that process and PII will be seen and/or captured to a certain degree.

Apple users like myself have to sign-off that we allow Apple to capture certain types of information as the back-up process is designed and implemented by Apple; be it cloud based or local storage. 

So my point is this.  Before the engineers/coders start to work on what is being proposed (assuming it gets a green light) Legal should be consulted first. Legal needs to determine what liabilities Sonos might be exposed to and draft the appropriate permission documents for the EU to agree upon.

Like it or not good ideas and/or convenience designed for the consumer always demand thorough investigation to forestall potential liabilities. 

Hi ​@AjTrek1 

I think there’s very little chance of us doing something like this without consulting Legal first.

Isn’t permission required for Apple because of AI analysis they do to the photos to tag or categorise them? Not an Apple user, never will be, so I could easily be wrong - just asking.

P.S. I just figured out that EU is End User and not European Union 

I agree that storing credentials would be problematic, and that would make backups not very useful for the majority of users. 

I also think restoration would be difficult.  How would it identify what settings belong to which speakers?  By mac address?  Would there need to be some sort of verification that the account owner hasn’t changed between restorations and/or delete backups when selling.?  Even if credentials are not stored, you wouldn’t want current owners favorites and settings to be visible to new owners. 

I would think that a lot of people would want to use this feature to restore previous trueplay settings. Either because they temporarily moved speakers into a new configuration, or where happier with the results from old tuning rather than latest.  That would mean having the ability to restore trueplay only and store multiple, identifiable, backups. 

​@melvimbe 

Hi ​Danny

I think it would have to be stored with the HHID in mind (the system identifier - HouseHold IDentity) but would also reference the serial number of the speaker. This way, if the speaker goes to another system or owner, no backup would be available. When adding a reset speaker to the system it was on previously, the app could simply say, “we found some stored settings for this device - would you like to restore them?” If there is a conflict, like the room name being taken, it could just have a number added - “Kitchen 2”, for example.

It gets complicated when all speakers have been reset, which is key for the purposes of restoring playlists and favourites. This would probably mean that we would have to have the app maintain the HHID after all devices have been reset and allow adding them again without changing it - I am not sure if this is already possible or not. Of course, that would mean if the app were reset as well, all would be lost. It’s conceivable we could allow transfer of the backup from one HHID to another, as long as they are on the same account, though.

Honestly, I think the whole idea is pretty workable, and it is entirely possible that it was already thought of and possibly even one of the reasons for the new app being made in the first place - if this is the case, I am not privy to it, to be clear.

Permission was required long before AI became a thing and the advancements for consumer convenience were developed.!

Glad to know you’re keeping up with identifying acronyms and abbreviations (EU). In hindsight I violated a cardinal rule to explain an abbreviation before employing it. 

Agree that using the HHID does make sense, and you’re mention of the new app and potential future features makes sense.  In fact, perhaps users wouldn’t need to even request that a backup be created, as settings could automatically be stored without prompting.  As you stated, when a device is setup, it could do a quick call to the cloud to see if there are any previous settings.

Whatever scheme, there should be a capability of restoring a system from scratch. I’m thinking of the case where a fire or flood destroyed all of the system units. The replacement units would need to be able to restore the previous Music services, playlists, and there should be a reasonable way to restore access to a local library.

Should this backup be automatic for all users? If kept offline, who would pay for the resources required? Although not 100% safe from fire or flood, a backup could be stored on the controller device. Potentially, this scheme could survive fire or a flood via routine user backup of the controller device. An issue with this scheme would occur with multiple controllers. Depending on how often the controller used for recovery was active, the backup might be stale.

While not likely to be popular from a marketing standpoint, I can imagine a USB dongle backup scheme.

My brain aches from imagining the amount of code needed to support these ideas, and the cost necessary to implement them. All great ideas, just not as important as parity with the previous app. 

​@buzz wrote the following in BOLD. My best guess/opinion is in BLUE.

Should this backup be automatic for all users?

• I would think not because of PII capture

If kept offline, who would pay for the resources required?

• By offline do you mean by the EU or Sonos storing the data somewhere? If the latter it’s technically not off-line as Sonos has eye’s to it.

Although not 100% safe from fire or flood, a backup could be stored on the controller device.

• That is possible. Although the EU woulds have to agree as internal storage space may be a concern

Potentially, this scheme could survive fire or a flood via routine user backup of the controller device.

• Here again the back-up would ideally be automatic by EU permission to maintain integrity.

An issue with this scheme would occur with multiple controllers.

• Maybe not. Assuming each device has the same OS the backup’s could be identified by a unique system number common to the owner of each device. 

Depending on how often the controller used for recovery was active, the backup might be stale.

• Here is where automatic backup’s would be helpful. If left to manual you are correct a restored back-up might be stale causing additonal issues. I would envision backup’s occurring at a specified time at night; as long as the device is turned on similar to Auto-Updates.

This is all speculation and conjecture at this point. However, I’m sure Sonos could work out the bugs (i.e. potential downsides).  Besides, we don’t want to continually aggravate ​@Airgetlam’s brain 

I’d be happy if I could just save local copies of my playlists to the drive on the machine the web controller is running on. Maybe on a phone/tablet from the App if there was enough space.

Looking at my setup that is where almost all my time went in setting things up and would be most missed on restore.

Hi All

Like ​@Stanley_4, I was thinking last night that it would probably be easier just to have a local file act as a backup, and just for Favourites and Playlists - the two things that take the most work to restore without a backup. In addition, for those with 2 or more systems in other houses, they could just copy all the favs and playlists from the home system to the holiday home system, quick and easy. Maybe it could be added to S1 controllers (I don’t think it would need any change to firmware on the speakers, so possibly doable) too, for the same reason.

That could al least be a quick win, phase 1, with possible further embellishments during future development cycles.

There’s already a backup stored on every speaker.

Anyone who factory resets all of their Sonos devices at the same time deserves the consequences.

Hi ​@Mr. T 

Somewhat harsh.

This discussion came about due to a relatively new user who only has one speaker, and was asked to reset it by a technical support agent in need of more training. They lost all their playlists and favourites as a result. Obviously, the agent involved will get additional training, but the situation prompted ​@UKMedia to suggest backups as a feature request.

Would there be a performance benefit, besides backup utility, for storing this data locally or in the cloud?  For example, if a user is on the app,  a locally stored copy of the playlist could be accessed faster than making a call to the speaker(s) to retrieve that info?  Although, it sounds good in theory, I’m thinking it’s probably not a good idea. In most systems, there’s probably not a lot of time savings.  Of course there is the potential of sync issues between the two data sources (they will surely have to sync very often), and it complicates the logic in the code slightly.  A single source of truth is probably still the best option.

I was going to suggest that there could maybe some sort version of reset that retains personal settings, but clears everything else?  I don’t know what that looks like or when it would actually be useful.  The only time I’ve used factory reset is when a speaker is leaving my system, or during an initial setup that’s seem to go off the rails and wanted to just start over.