How to Create Flow or Folder Backup and Save It to Google Drive
Tags: nocode, workflows, okta, ipaas
Published: 2022-08-29 17:54:53

---
title: How to Create Flow or Folder Backup and Save It to Google Drive
published: true
date: 2022-05-11 21:40:53 UTC
tags: NoCode,Workflows, Okta, ipaas
canonical_url: https://maxkatz.net/2022/05/11/how-to-create-flow-or-folder-backup-and-save-it-to-google-drive/
---

[Okta Workflows](https://www.okta.com/platform/workflows/) how-to guides are questions and answers from weekly community [office hours](https://calendly.com/oktaworkflows/group-office-hours-okta-workflows), MacAdmins [Workflows Slack channel](https://www.macadmins.org), and other places. 

Read all previous how-to guides ⤵️
{% embed https://dev.to/oktaworkflows/all-okta-workflows-how-to-guides-4nl9 %}

On to the question.

**_How to create flow or folder backup and save it to Google Drive_?**

Workflows has two cards to help with backing a flow or a folder:

- **Flows – Export Flow**
- **Folders – Export Folder**

Both cards work in similar way. The **Flows – Export Flow** card creates a backup for a particular flow, and the **Folders – Export Folder** card creates a backup a folder with one or more flows.

Here is an example of a flow that uses **Export Folder** to create a backup of a folder and upload it to Google Drive. The flow is schedule to run every Monday at 9 AM.

[![Folder backup to Google Drive](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/workflows_howto_folderbackup.png)](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/workflows_howto_folderbackup.png)
<figcaption>Folder backup to Google Drive</figcaption>

The flow has the following steps:

1. Run the flow on a schedule ( **Schedule Flow** )
2. **Folders – Export Folder** card creates a backup of a selected folder
3. You want to have a unique name for each backup. The **Date & Time – Now** cards returns the current time
4. Using the backup file name and the current time, the **Text – Concatenate** card creates a unique file name
5. The last step is to upload the file to Google Drive using **Google Drive – Upload File** card. **Parent folder ID** is specified in order to upload the file to a specific folder

Flow backup looks almost identical. The only change is the flow is now using **Flows – Export Flow** to backup a particular flow.

[![Flow backup to Google Drive](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/workflows_howto_flowbackup.png)](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/workflows_howto_flowbackup.png)
<figcaption>Flow backup to Google Drive</figcaption>

Google Drive folder looks like this after running folder back and flow backup one time.

[![Google Drive folder](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/workflows_howto_googdrive_backup_directory.png)](https://katzmax.files.wordpress.com/2022/05/workflows_howto_googdrive_backup_directory.png)
<figcaption>Google Drive folder</figcaption>

I also recorded two short videos that show how these flows work:

📺 [How to Create a Flow Backup and Save It to Google Drive](https://youtu.be/Ol_3ZrJ52EI)

📺 [How to Create a Folder Backup and Save It to Google Drive](https://youtu.be/GvATQNSHcKQ)

You can also backup a flow to GitHub. Check out [Versioning for Flows and Folders with Github](https://github.com/okta/workflows-templates/blob/master/workflows/flow_folder_versioning_github/readme.md) template to learn more.

* * *

💎 Read all other [Okta Workflows How-To Guides](https://maxkatz.net/okta-workflows-how-to-guides/).

📒 Have a question about Okta Workflows? Join the weekly community [office hours](https://calendly.com/oktaworkflows/group-office-hours-okta-workflows) to get help.