Tag Archives: Google Vault

Gmail exports in Vault now include a new CSV metadata file

Quick Summary

Now when you create Gmail exports in Google Vault, you will get a new CSV-formatted file of the export metadata in addition to the XML file you currently receive. This can make export processing and review easier and may save legal costs. This change improves interoperability with third-party applications.


Getting started

  • Admins: This feature will be ON by default. Admins automatically receive the XML file when they create a Gmail export.
  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace


Availability

Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, available as an add-on to Frontline, available to domain-verified Enterprise Essentials, GSuite Business.


Resources

Google Vault now supports Google Sites

What’s changing

Google Vault now supports new Google Sites. You can use Google Vault to set retention policies for Google Sites, perform searches of Google Sites data, and export Google Sites content. If you already use Vault to hold Google Drive files, sites files will now be covered by those holds. You can set Sites-specific retention rules if you want to manage sites retention.

Who’s impacted

Admins

Why it matters

This provides you with expanded control over your organization’s data, and can help you meet regulatory or legal obligations for your Google Sites data.

If you have Drive retention rules set to purge data after a retention period, sites will be purged according to those rules.

Getting started

  • End users: There is no end user setting for this feature.

Rollout pace

Rapid Release and Scheduled Release domains: Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility) starting on April 27.

Availability

  • Available to Business Plus, Enterprise Essentials, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, Education Plus, and Nonprofits.
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter and Business Standard customers, and G Suite Basic customers.

Resources

Google Workspace Admin Help: Supported services and data types
Google Help: Google Vault Help

Changes to Google Drive search operators may alter your Google Vault search results

Quick launch summary

We’ve updated Google Drive Search operators to enable better results when searching for files in Google Vault. This includes changes to the behavior of the to: and from: operators, and a new sharedwith: operator.


Starting April 27, 2021, to: and from: won't match files shared before March 2021, but will better reflect actual sharing actions compared to the current logic. See this Help Center article for more information.


Before April 27, 2021, please check your saved Drive search queries in Google Vault and, if needed, make updates to ensure you get the results you expect:
  • If you search for files in Vault using the to: or from: Drive search operators, you might want to change to: to sharedwith: and from: to owner: to keep the current search behavior.
  • If you do not search for files in Vault using the to: or from: Drive search operators, no action is required.

Note, you’ll know when the new behavior is applied to your to: or from: Drive searches within Vault as you’ll see the below notification near the Terms field:




Getting started

Rollout pace

Availability

  • Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, and Education Plus, as well as G Suite Business customers and customers with the Vault add-on license
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, and Business Standard customers, or G Suite Basic customers

Resources

New Google Vault interface will become the only experience starting on May 24, 2021

Quick launch summary 

Last year, we announced a new interface for Google Vault. The new interface makes it easier to navigate Vault and includes new productivity features for faster task completion. See our beta blog post for more information on the improvements in the new interface. 


While the new interface is the primary interface at vault.google.com, it is still possible to access the classic interface at ediscovery.google.com. Starting on May 24, 2021, the classic interface will redirect to the new interface, with no option to revert back. The new interface includes all the core functionality from the classic interface, and there will be no impact on your existing Google Vault setup. 


Getting started 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Education Fundamentals, and Education Plus, as well as G Suite Business customers and customers with the Vault add-on license 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, and Business Standard customers, or G Suite Basic customers 

Resources 

Vault for Google Voice now generally available

Quick launch summary 

Google Vault now supports Google Voice. This means you can use Vault to retain, hold, search, and export Google Voice data including text messages, call logs, voicemails, and voicemail transcripts. 

This provides you with expanded control over your organization’s data, and can help you meet regulatory or legal obligations for your Google Voice data. 


Getting started 

Example of creating a custom retention rule for Google Voice in the new Vault interface 

Example of creating a custom retention rule for Google Voice in the classic Vault interface 

Example of searching for Google Voice data in the new Google Vault interface 

Example of searching for Google Voice data in the classic Google Vault interface 


Rollout pace 

Availability 

Resources 

New interface for Google Vault

Quick launch summary 

We’ve designed a new interface for Google Vault. The new interface makes it easier to navigate, and includes new productivity features for faster task completion. To use the new interface, visit vault.google.com and sign in with your Google Workspace admin account. 

The new interface includes all the core functionality from the classic interface, and there’s no impact on your existing Google Vault setup. The main interface improvements include the following: 
  • When you first sign in, you’re directed to a home page with up to three options (depending on your permissions): Retention, Matters, and Reporting. 
  • When you set up retention rules and holds, step-by-step flows with more tooltips guide you through the process. 
  • Custom retention rules, holds, and search results are listed in sortable, filterable tables. This helps you more easily understand the scope of your information governance policies and search results. 
  • When you explore search results and hold reports, you keep your context. Clicking an item opens a side panel instead of taking you to a new page. 

The classic interface is still available at ediscovery.google.com. Matters, retention rules, and audit log data will sync between the interfaces and be available in both places until ediscovery.google.com is shut down. We’ll provide more details regarding this turndown on the Workspace Updates blog at least three months in advance. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: The new interface is available at vault.google.com. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Google Vault for your organization. Note that users in the classic interface may see a banner inviting them to try the new interface starting on December 3, 2020. 
  • End users: No end user impact. 
When you first sign in, you’ll now see a home page with up to three options: Retention, Matters, and Reporting. 

Custom rules are now listed in a sortable, filterable table. 

You’ll see a new interface for creating and managing rules. 

Rollout pace 

  • This feature is available now for all users. 

Availability

  • Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers, G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers, and customers with the Vault add-on license 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, and Business Standard customers, as well as G Suite Basic, Education, and Nonprofit customers 

Resources 

New interface for Google Vault

Quick launch summary 

We’ve designed a new interface for Google Vault. The new interface makes it easier to navigate, and includes new productivity features for faster task completion. To use the new interface, visit vault.google.com and sign in with your Google Workspace admin account. 

The new interface includes all the core functionality from the classic interface, and there’s no impact on your existing Google Vault setup. The main interface improvements include the following: 
  • When you first sign in, you’re directed to a home page with up to three options (depending on your permissions): Retention, Matters, and Reporting. 
  • When you set up retention rules and holds, step-by-step flows with more tooltips guide you through the process. 
  • Custom retention rules, holds, and search results are listed in sortable, filterable tables. This helps you more easily understand the scope of your information governance policies and search results. 
  • When you explore search results and hold reports, you keep your context. Clicking an item opens a side panel instead of taking you to a new page. 

The classic interface is still available at ediscovery.google.com. Matters, retention rules, and audit log data will sync between the interfaces and be available in both places until ediscovery.google.com is shut down. We’ll provide more details regarding this turndown on the Workspace Updates blog at least three months in advance. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: The new interface is available at vault.google.com. Visit the Help Center to learn more about managing Google Vault for your organization. Note that users in the classic interface may see a banner inviting them to try the new interface starting on December 3, 2020. 
  • End users: No end user impact. 
When you first sign in, you’ll now see a home page with up to three options: Retention, Matters, and Reporting. 

Custom rules are now listed in a sortable, filterable table. 

You’ll see a new interface for creating and managing rules. 

Rollout pace 

  • This feature is available now for all users. 

Availability

  • Available to Google Workspace Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus customers, G Suite Business and Enterprise for Education customers, and customers with the Vault add-on license 
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials, Business Starter, and Business Standard customers, as well as G Suite Basic, Education, and Nonprofit customers 

Resources 

Changes to Google Chat group conversations and classic Hangouts coming December 3, 2020

What’s changing

Starting December 3, 2020, we’ll make three changes to how group conversations work in Google Chat:
  • Add and change members. You’ll be able to add and change members of new group conversations.
  • Different Google Vault retention policy. If you have a Vault retention policy set, the updated group conversations will respect a different retention policy.
  • Compatibility with classic Hangouts. Group conversations in Hangouts will begin to appear in Google Chat over the coming weeks.
See below for more information on each of these updates.

Who’s impacted

Admins and end users

Why you’d use it

As we announced earlier this year, starting in the first half of 2021, everyone can begin upgrading from Hangouts to Chat. To ensure a smooth transition, we will help automatically migrate your Hangouts conversations and saved history. These changes further ensure compatibility between classic Hangouts and Chat to make migrating your users as seamless as possible.

Additional details

Updated group conversations
When a new member is added to a group conversation, all members will see a message announcing the new member. The new member will be able to see the entire conversation, even messages sent before they entered, allowing them to catch up easily.



If you have a group conversation created before December 3, you can easily create an updated conversation with the same people using the “Start a new chat” option in the conversation settings menu.


History and retention settings
While end users can toggle history on and off at the conversation level, admins can control whether to keep chat history for users in their organization. They can set the default and also let users change their history setting for each conversation.

Note that these updated group conversations will also respect a different retention policy in Vault. If you set custom Chat retention rules in Google Vault, the scope of coverage will change. Rules set for “All Chat Spaces” (previously known as “All Rooms”) will apply to existing chat rooms, plus updated group messages and group messages that synchronize between Chat and Hangouts. Visit the Help Center for more details.

Compatibility with classic Hangouts
Group conversations in Hangouts—beginning with conversations, followed by message history—will begin to appear in Google Chat over the coming weeks. This will allow your users to move from Hangouts to Chat without losing context. In addition, 1:1 messages, updated group conversations, and unthreaded rooms from Chat will begin to appear in Hangouts (Note: this change will only be available for users with Hangouts enabled).

Getting started

  • Admins: We recommend you review your existing retention rules and evaluate if you need to change them to retain only the message data you want. You can also visit the Help Center to learn more about turning history in Chat on or off for your organization.
  • End users: Membership in these updated group conversations will be editable by default starting December 3, 2020.

Rollout pace

Updated group conversations
Compatibility with classic Hangouts

Availability

  • Available to Google Workspace Business Starter, Business Standard, Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, and Enterprise Plus, as well as G Suite Basic, Business, Education, Enterprise for Education, and Nonprofits customers
  • Not available to Google Workspace Essentials and Enterprise Essentials customers

Resources

Use the Count API to estimate Vault API export sizes

Quick launch summary 

We’re adding a Count API to the Vault API. The Count API enables you to see the number of messages, files, or other data items that match a search query. 


You can use the number of items to estimate the size of the export, and then choose to proceed with the export or adjust the query to retrieve fewer items. This can help ensure a successful export by reducing the likelihood of export errors due to size. 


Getting started 

  • Admins: Visit the API documentation to learn more about the Count API and review an example. 
  • End users: No end user impact. 

Rollout pace 

Availability 

  • Available to Business Plus, Enterprise Standard, Enterprise Plus, Enterprise for Education, as well as other customers with the Vault add-on license 
  • Not available to Essentials, Business Starter, Business Standard, Education, and Nonprofits customers  

Resources 

Roadmap 

Ensure that Google Vault captures all emails in your domain

What you should know

To ensure that copies of all sent or received messages in your domain are stored in the associated users' Gmail mailboxes, you should set up comprehensive mail storage in the Admin console. This is not a new setting, but we’ve learned that some G Suite admins don’t realize it’s disabled by default.

Who’s impacted

Admins only

Why you’d use it

Storing these emails in Gmail mailboxes means that your Vault retention policies and holds, as well as searches and exports for Gmail, will include these emails. Examples of emails sent or received in your domain include mail sent from Calendar and Drive and other G Suite services.

How to get started



Additional details

One example of email captured by comprehensive mail storage is email written in Calendar. For instance, it’s sometimes useful to email all or a subset of the people in a meeting invite. If you click the "Email Guests" icon, it will send an email from your email address. You have the option to email all guests, target people based on RSVP status, and/or send a copy to yourself. There are no CC, BCC, or attachment options, but the details of the calendar event will be included in the email.

If you uncheck “Send copy to me” and the comprehensive mail storage option is disabled in your domain, a copy of the sent message will not be stored in any Gmail mailbox. If comprehensive mail storage is enabled in your domain, a copy of the sent message will be stored in your Sent mailbox.

Helpful links

Help Center: Set up comprehensive mail storage

Availability

Rollout details


G Suite editions

  • Comprehensive mail storage is available to G Suite Basic, G Suite Business, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite for Education, G Suite Enterprise for Education, and G Suite for Nonprofits.
  • Vault is available to G Suite Business, G Suite Enterprise, G Suite Enterprise for Education, and any G Suite users with add-on Vault licenses.

On/off by default?

  • Comprehensive mail storage is OFF by default and can be enabled at the OU level.

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