Teams as Data Source

Finally Solving the Mystery - How Do I know There Are Private Channels?

If you’ve not seen it on the Roadmap, this feature to identify Teams as a Data Source in Purview Premium eDiscovery is in Preview and will roll out later this month.

I was immediately interested in this because I’ve often had to talk to folks in corporate legal departments about needing to understand where Teams data was stored to apply legal holds or run collections.

Many of them were expecting to “go to Teams” and collect the data. The news that Teams data was actually stored in various mailboxes, SharePoint sites, and user OneDrive locations was not good news for them.

It got worse when you explained that Teams channel conversations could be found in the group mailbox, but private channel messages would be in the mailboxes of the members of that channel.

The obvious question - How do I know who is in the private channel? Or, how do I even know it exists if I’m not a member?

Good question, unless you’re a global admin, or have a SharePoint admin role and want to go digging. There was no easy for someone in Legal to know about private channels. They’d need some help from IT.

This isn’t the worst thing in the world, but it can cause some delays and complications.

Enter the ability to identify Teams as a Data Source in eDiscovery Premium.