Daily

Get warned when backups stop arriving

If your backup folder hasn't received a new file in a day, you get an email.

Runs: Daily
Apps: Google Drive
AI: Not needed
Access: read

Send this to your assistant

Create a ClickRuntime automation: check my Backups folder every day at 9am and email me if no new file has arrived in the last 24 hours.

Paste it into your assistant. It tells you what it will send or change before it runs live.

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First time? Adding ClickRuntime to your assistant takes about two minutes.

Why use it

Why teams use this automation

A small agency runs a nightly script that copies client project files into a Drive folder called Backups. In March the service account password expires, the script starts failing, and nobody notices because a failed job produces no error anywhere anyone looks. Five months later a laptop dies, someone opens the folder to restore, and the newest file is from March.

Once a day, ClickRuntime looks up the most recently created file in the backup folder and compares its createdTime with the current time. If the newest file is more than a day old, you get an alert naming the folder and the age of the last file. If a fresh file is there, nothing is sent.

It suits anyone whose backups land in Drive from a script, a database export, an accounting tool or a NAS sync, and who has never had a reliable way to confirm those jobs still run.

What you get out of it

Silent failures surface within a day
A broken export script, an expired token or a full disk usually stops files arriving without any message. A daily check turns a gap of months into a gap of one day, while the logs from the failing job still show what changed.
A restore that actually works
The worst time to learn a backup is stale is during an outage. Knowing the newest file is recent means the data you recover is yesterday's, not a copy from before the last three invoices and contract changes.
Covers jobs that have no monitoring
Many small backup scripts were written once and forgotten, with no alerting of their own. Watching the destination folder instead of the job means every one of them gets monitored the same way, regardless of who wrote it.
Evidence for audits and insurers
Clients, auditors and cyber insurance questionnaires ask whether backups are verified. A daily record that checked the folder, and a history of alerts you acted on, gives a straight answer instead of a guess.
Cheap compared with data loss
Rebuilding a quarter of lost client work costs far more than one email a month about a skipped backup. The check takes no extra tooling and works with whatever already writes into the folder.

How it works

What happens, step by step

Every day ClickRuntime looks at the newest file in your Google Drive backups folder.
It checks how long ago that file was created.
If no new backup has arrived in the last 24 hours, you get an email with the name and time of the latest one.

Before it runs live

Connect Google Drive

What you get

RunsDaily

Get warned when backups stop arrivingtoday, 9:00Succeeded

Email · No new backup in 24 hoursLatest file: db-2026-10-17.sql.gz at 2026-10-17T02:04:11Z

Build your own

Need it to work differently?

This template is a starting point. Copy the prompt and change it, or describe a different automation from scratch, with your own conditions, more apps or an AI step. Your assistant writes it, tests it and runs it on ClickRuntime.

Your own rules
Conditions, thresholds, filters and exceptions, written the way you'd explain them to a colleague.
Any number of apps
One automation can read from one app and update several others. Over 248 apps are ready, and anything with an API works too.
AI where it helps
Summaries, classification, extraction and drafts use ClickRuntime's built-in AI, with no extra key.
On a schedule or on each event
Runs as often as every 5 minutes, or the moment an app sends an event, and keeps track of what it already handled.

Changes you can ask for

Run it at a different time, more or less often, or only on weekdays
Add an AI step, for example to summarize, sort or draft a reply
Add another app, for example also send it to Slack
Combine it with other Google Drive steps into one automation

Under the hood

The code that runs this automation

This is the Python script that runs each time the automation starts. Your AI assistant writes it for you when you send the prompt, and you allow each step in your assistant. To change how the automation works, describe the change to your assistant and it updates the script for you. For every function it can use, see the script reference.

backup_freshness_check.pyexample

from google.oauth2.credentials import Credentials
from googleapiclient.discovery import build
from datetime import datetime, timedelta, timezone
from clickruntime import on_trigger, credentials, notify

BACKUPS = "backups-folder-id"

@on_trigger
def run(event):
    drive = build("drive", "v3", credentials=Credentials(credentials.connection("google", "work")), cache_discovery=False)
    files = drive.files().list(q=f"'{BACKUPS}' in parents and trashed = false", orderBy="createdTime desc",
                               pageSize=1, fields="files(name,createdTime)").execute()["files"]
    newest = files[0] if files else None
    cutoff = (datetime.now(timezone.utc) - timedelta(hours=24)).isoformat()
    if newest and newest["createdTime"] > cutoff:
        return {"fresh": True, "latest": newest["name"]}
    notify.email_me("No new backup in 24 hours",
                    f"Latest file: {newest['name']} at {newest['createdTime']}" if newest else "The Backups folder is empty.")
    return {"fresh": False}

FAQ

Common questions

What counts as a stale backup?

A backup is stale when the newest file in the folder was created more than a day ago, based on the createdTime Drive records. The window follows how often your backup should run, so a weekly job can be checked against seven days instead of one.

Does it check files inside subfolders?

It looks at the folder you point it to. If your backup tool creates a dated subfolder each night, say so when you set it up and the check can look at the newest subfolder or the files inside it instead of the top level only.

Will I get an email every day while the backup is broken?

It can keep reminding you while the folder stays stale, or alert once and stay quiet until a new file appears, depending on how you want it. Most people choose a single alert plus a reminder every few days so it does not become noise.

What permissions does it need?

read. Nothing else in your accounts is used.

Does it need AI?

No. It runs without AI, so it doesn't use your plan's AI allowance.

How many runs does it use?

One run each time it runs (daily). Checks that find nothing to do and stop right away aren't counted.

Can I change how it works?

Yes. Describe the change to your AI assistant, for example a different schedule, channel or filter. It updates the automation, tests it and tells you what changed.

On a schedule