Current + Slide integration

Slide is a backup and disaster-recovery product built around a box on the customer site and the systems protected behind it. Current's Slide integration is a view-only feed into the strategic business review module and the company alert band. It reads what Slide already knows and never writes back.

What the integration does

Current authenticates to Slide with an API token created in the Slide Console, then walks your client list, boxes, protected systems, alerts, backup attempts, boot verification and live restores every six hours. Instead of exporting a protected-systems list the week of the review, the backup numbers are already sitting on the company record when you open it.

What data flows

• Partners — the Slide client roster, matched to your Current companies so every signal below lands on the right record, with box and protected-system counts on each.
• Boxes — each appliance with its model, service state, software versions, when it last checked in, how full its storage is, and when its warranty runs out.
• Protected systems — each machine with its type, operating system, agent version, backup schedule and interval, retention policy, and whether its backups are paused or its encryption key is unloaded.
• Backup history — thirty days of attempts rolled up per system per day: attempted, succeeded, failed and canceled, plus the newest attempt's own status.
• Boot verification — whether the last snapshot booted, how long it took, and the address of the screenshot Slide captured.
• Restore activity — every file restore, image export and virtual machine, with the snapshot it came from, when it ran, and whether Slide recorded it as a test or as a real disaster.

The feed is one-way. Current does not start restores, export images, boot virtual machines, delete snapshots, pause or resume backups, edit a schedule or retention policy, reboot a box, or change a network. Every request is checked against a fixed list of read addresses before it is sent, and that list is matched exactly rather than by prefix, which matters here because Slide's write operations sit at addresses that begin the same way its reads do. Slide stays the source of truth for management; Current uses the evidence.

The restores are the part nothing else can show

Every other backup number an MSP reports describes readiness: how many machines are protected, how fresh the last copy is, whether it boots when it is tested. Those are the right numbers and they are still hard to argue with. What they cannot show is the backups being used. Slide records each file restore, image export and virtual machine it creates, and whether it was a test or a real disaster, so a review can say the recovery ran and how often rather than only that it could.

One detail shapes how that history reads. Slide lists the restores that are live at the moment it is asked, and every restore expires, so a file restore that ran three weeks ago is simply gone from the API. Current keeps every restore it has seen and marks it ended once Slide stops listing it, which means the history grows from the day you connect rather than arriving complete.

Unknown reads as unknown

A boot check that was skipped, is still pending or never ran shows as unchecked rather than as failed, and unchecked systems sit outside both halves of the verified figure with the count of those that answered printed beside it. A canceled backup counts as neither a success nor a failure, because a run somebody stopped has no outcome to record. A status the connector does not recognize is unknown rather than a pass. A backup number built by treating silence as success is one you cannot defend when a partner asks which machines it covers.

One definition of a failing backup

A protected system counts as failing when its last good backup is more than three days old, or its most recent attempt failed, or its last boot verification came back with a warning or an error, or Slide itself has an open alert saying the system's backup failed or that it is not backing up. The same definition drives the company card, the alert and the dashboard tile, so they cannot disagree. Paused systems are counted separately rather than as failures, because pausing is a decision somebody made. So are sealed systems, where the encryption key is unloaded and no backup can run until it is loaded again — a real problem, but a different one from a backup that tried and failed.

Alerts that clear themselves

Slide joins the same backups-failing alert as every other backup source Current reads, alongside Axcient and the rest, so a company raises one alert whichever tool saw the problem rather than one per product. The alert clears itself when the count returns to zero on a complete run.

Matching clients to companies

Each Slide client is one end-customer. Current links clients to companies by normalized name, with punctuation and Inc/LLC/Ltd-style suffixes stripped, and only when exactly one company matches. Where two companies could both be the answer, the client stays on an unmapped list for a person to decide rather than being paired on a guess. A mapping set by hand is never overwritten by a later automatic match, and mapping a client attaches its boxes and systems immediately instead of waiting for the next scheduled sync. A box with no client set in Slide arrives unfiled and counts toward nobody, because guessing which customer a box belongs to is the one mistake a business review cannot survive.

What is deliberately not read

Slide's API also exposes your invoices and subscriptions, the people in your Slide account, an audit log, a file search inside a protected system, and the network configuration of each box. None of it is read. What you pay Slide is your cost rather than your customer's posture, and the file browser would let Current look inside a customer's own documents. The boot screenshot is treated the same way: Current keeps the link and shows it as a link, never as a picture on the page, because the image is a customer's desktop as their server came up.

Where the data appears

• In strategic business reviews, in the backup and continuity chapter, including a line naming the restores performed in the period and how many were a real recovery.
• On the company record, where the backup section shows protected systems and how many are failing, boot verification, the boxes and their storage, and the recent restores.
• In dashboard backup metrics, including protected systems, systems failing, and the share of backup attempts that completed over the last thirty days.
• In the company alert band, as a backups-failing entry that reflects what is failing now.

Why it matters

An MSP running Slide for a partner like Northwind Traders can open the account and see twenty-two protected systems with one failing and two paused, that the box on site is at seventy-one percent of its storage, that nineteen of the twenty-two boot-verified on their last snapshot, and that two file restores and one real recovery were run in the last quarter — without anyone assembling an export first. The failing count ends an argument. The restore count starts a better conversation, because it is the only evidence in the room that the backups were not just present but used.