Tag Archives: Google Vault

Export data from Google Vault in PST format

We know that many organizations add their data to e-discovery processing and review tools in Microsoft Personal Storage Table (PST) format. To save those businesses time and to make the process of producing and importing data easier, we’re now giving Vault admins the ability to export Gmail, Google Groups, and on-the-record Google Hangouts chat data in PST format.


For more information on exporting data from Vault, check out the Help Center articles below.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education editions, as well as G Suite Basic users with add-on Vault licenses

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: How Vault exports work
Help Center: Export search results


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Manage legal matters and holds programmatically with the Google Vault API

Google Vault can help your organization meet its legal needs by offering an easy way to preserve and retrieve user data. To harness the full potential of Vault, however, you may need to integrate its functionality with other tools and processes that your business employs. Today, we’re making that possible with the Google Vault API.

The Vault API will allow you to programmatically manage legal matters and holds. This means that you will be able to create, list, update, and delete matters and holds related to data supported by Vault.

For more information on the Vault API, check out the Developer’s Guide. We’ll add more features to the API in the future, so stay tuned.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise editions, as well as any G Suite users with the Vault add-on license

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins, developers, and users with the Vault add-on license

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Google Vault API Developers Site


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Manage legal matters and holds programmatically with the Google Vault API

Google Vault can help your organization meet its legal needs by offering an easy way to preserve and retrieve user data. To harness the full potential of Vault, however, you may need to integrate its functionality with other tools and processes that your business employs. Today, we’re making that possible with the Google Vault API.

The Vault API will allow you to programmatically manage legal matters and holds. This means that you will be able to create, list, update, and delete matters and holds related to data supported by Vault.

For more information on the Vault API, check out the Developer’s Guide. We’ll add more features to the API in the future, so stay tuned.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid Release and Scheduled Release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise editions, as well as any G Suite users with the Vault add-on license

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins, developers, and users with the Vault add-on license

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Google Vault API Developers Site


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More precise, reliable data and other new features in Google Vault

When you use Google Vault for your legal and compliance needs, it’s important that you have the ability to retain exactly the data you wish and that the data you retrieve from the tool be accurate, precise, and comprehensive. Today, we’re introducing four new features in Vault to help you address those needs.

Get more detailed metadata when exporting files from Google Drive
When you search for a particular user in Vault for Drive, the results may include files that the user accessed through an “indirect” relationship. This means that the file (or folder containing the file) was:

  • shared with a group that the user belongs to,
  • shared with the user’s entire domain, or
  • shared publicly.

Previously, when you exported those search results, you wouldn’t see that user listed in the file's export metadata, making it difficult to determine the document’s chain of custody. Going forward, you will see that user listed, as Vault will now include information in export metadata about users who accessed a document via an indirect relationship. Additionally, you’ll now have the option to see what that user’s specific relationship was (e.g. whether the user was a collaborator or viewer).


Search in a specific time zone
You can now select the time zone that you want the dates in your search to be based on in Vault. The time zone you select changes the exact boundaries of your search results, so we recommend that you learn more about the effect of this setting before using it.


Set retention policies for all Team Drives
You can now create a custom retention policy that covers all Team Drives in your domain, in addition to the already existing options that cover specific Team Drives and organizational units (OUs).

Set retention policies for specific Google Groups
You can now create custom retention policies that cover specific Google Groups in your domain, in addition to the already existing option to cover all Groups in your domain.

For more information on these features and others in Google Vault, check out the Help Center articles below.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education editions only, as well as to users with add-on Vault licenses

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Search for data
Help Center: How Vault exports work


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New in Google Vault: Full support for Google Drive, Team Drives, and Google Groups

Google Vault helps your organization meet its legal needs, by allowing you to manage your employees' G Suite data for eDiscovery and compliance purposes. Today, we’re launching additional, crucial functionality in Vault, including full support for Drive, newly launched Team Drives, and Google Groups.

Set retention policies for Google Drive, including Team Drives
Starting now, not only can G Suite admins search and export employee Drive files, they can also set retention policies to manage the lifecycle of files in My Drive and the just-launched Team Drives, regardless of whether they’re Google or non-Google files (as long as they’re owned by users in your domain).

Like with mail, the default rule will apply to all users in your domain. You can set an indefinite retention policy (such that files are never expunged), or you can choose to have files expunged at the end of a specific time period. This default rule can be applied to all files or only to files that have been deleted by users.

You can also set custom retention rules for specific organizational units (OUs) or for Team Drives. Like with mail, custom rules override the default rule and, if multiple custom rules apply to a file, the longest rule wins. Custom rules can be applied to all files or only to files that have been deleted by users.

Unlike with mail, you cannot target custom Drive retention rules with specific terms.


Place legal holds on Google Drive files
In addition to setting retention policies, you can now place legal holds on your employees' Google Drive and Team Drives files, whether they are Google files or non-Google files (as long as they are owned by users in your domain). Doing so will preserve all files that are owned by or shared with the user on hold, regardless of whether that user deletes those files. If a user on hold deletes a file, it will appear as deleted for him or her—but it will be available in Vault until the hold is removed. Remember that holds always take precedence over retention rules.

Note that both the retention policy and legal holds features are not yet available for Apps Script.

Export point-in-time Google Drive files
Vault now also allows you to export revisions of your employees’ Drive and Team Drive files from a specific point in time (this applies to Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files). This can be done by simply specifying the desired Version Date in the search form.

Note that this feature is not yet available for Google Forms, Apps Script, or any non-Google document types.


Use Vault for Google Groups
Finally, Vault now works with Groups, meaning you can search, export, and set retention policies and place legal holds on your employees’ Groups content. Groups can be used for email lists, forums, and shared or collaborative inboxes, and now you can apply the same retention and eDiscovery programs that you use in Gmail for content stored in Groups archives.


To learn more about how Vault's support for Drive, Team Drives, and Groups can help your organization meet its legal obligations and archiving needs, check out the Vault Help Center.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Enterprise, and Education editions only

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Google Vault
Help Center: Supported data types


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Introducing new, enterprise-ready tools for Google Drive

(Cross-posted from The Keyword, with some additional details)

Google Drive has always made it easy for individuals to safely store, sync and share files. But as larger companies move to the cloud, there's more to think about — like the risk of data breaches, bumpy migrations, and compatibility with legacy tools. Our team has been working hard to solve these complexities for the enterprise. That’s why we're introducing powerful additions to Drive that can help your organization:
  • Create, share and work confidently as a team with Team Drives
  • Stay in control of sensitive company data with Google Vault for Drive
  • Migrate easily to the cloud with our latest acquisition, AppBridge
  • Work seamlessly with the tools you're already using with Drive File Stream
  • Access relevant files immediately with Quick Access, powered by Google machine intelligence


Team Drives: work confidently together in the cloud

Most file storage solutions weren’t built to handle the explosion of files that are now created and shared in the cloud — because they were initially designed for individuals, not teams. With this amount of shared data, admins need more controls to keep their data safe and teams need to feel confident working together. Team Drives deliver the security, structure and ease-of-use enterprises need by making it easy to:
  • Add new team members. You can manage team members individually or with Google Groups and give them instant access to relevant Team Drives.
  • Keep track of your files if a team member leaves. Team Drives are jointly owned by the team, which means that anything added to Team Drives stays there no matter who comes or goes. Whirlpool Corporation, for example, uses Team Drives to manage file access. Says Troy McKim, Collaboration Principle at Whirlpool Corporation, “If you place files for a project in Team Drives, you don’t have to worry about losing them or moving them when files are re-owned.”
  • Understand and manage sharing permissions. Team members automatically see the same files regardless of who adds or reorganizes them. You can also manage share permissions by defining the restrictions for editing, commenting, reorganizing or deleting files.
  • Manage and view Team Drives as an admin. Admins can see Team Drives for a user and add new members if necessary: “Team Drives also ease the speed at which a team member can onboard and become effective in their new role,” says McKim.

Team Drives are generally available to all of our G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise customers starting today. Set up Team Drives for your organization.


Additional info for G Suite admins

You will need to enable the creation of Team Drives in the Admin console (Apps > G Suite > Drive and Docs > Sharing settings > Team Drive creation) before anyone in your organization can create Team Drives. You will have the option to enable Team Drives creation for your entire domain or for specific OUs. We recommend using this option to deploy Team Drives to your users in the manner most appropriate for your organization.

If you disable Team Drives creation but allow users to receive files from outside your organization, your users can still be added to Team Drives created by users in other organizations. They will be able to view those Team Drives in Drive and access the files in them.

NOTE: We plan to automatically enable Team Drives creation for all eligible G Suite customers no earlier than January 1st, 2018. We will update you in advance of that change.

Launch details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise editions only

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (potentially longer than 3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins and end users

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More information
Help Center: Manage Team Drives
Help Center: Share files with Team Drives
G Suite Learning Center: Drive

Google Vault for Drive: new, advanced admin controls for data compliance

Managing the data lifecycle of your files (like which files you keep or delete) is complicated and time-consuming. But ensuring compliance with your company’s data policies is essential and mistakes can lead to expensive legal costs. That’s why today we’re adding on to Google Vault for Drive, which already offers search and export capabilities.

The new Google Vault for Drive capabilities give admins the governance controls they need to manage and secure all their files, both in employee Drives as well as in Team Drives. These new features let admins set retention policies that automatically keep what they need and get rid of what they don't. For example, you might need to place a legal hold on files that are critical to a certain legal case.

With powerful data protection tools, Google Vault for Drive ensures your admins have full control of your company data in the cloud. Google Vault for Drive is generally available to all of our G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise customers today.


Additional info for G Suite admins

See our dedicated post for more information about the Vault for Drive features launching today.

AppBridge: moving to the cloud made easy

Migrating to the cloud can be complex. It's not just your files that need to be moved; permissions also need to map correctly; content likely needs to be reorganized, and some data probably needs to be archived. To address that challenge, today we are announcing the acquisition of AppBridge, an enterprise-grade, G Suite migration tool that helps organizations seamlessly migrate from their on-prem, cloud-based and hybrid solutions to Google Drive.

With AppBridge, your organization can migrate files effortlessly to G Suite from your existing file servers or content management systems like SharePoint, or from many other cloud platforms you might be using. File permissions are also brought over when you migrate, which means your team's file access remains unchanged and your data stays safe. We’re working together with AppBridge to bring them into the G Suite team. Stay tuned for more information in the near future.

Drive File Stream: work without breaking your business processes

After you migrate to the cloud, you should be able to easily access all your content using your existing tools and processes. While other cloud-based solutions use traditional, time-consuming (and hard drive-consuming) syncs, Drive File Stream, now available in the Early Adopter Program (EAP), allows teams to quickly stream files directly from the cloud to their computer. This means that all of your company data can be accessed directly from your laptop, even if you don’t have much space left on your hard drive.

Drive File Stream lets you:
  • Access, search and manage files on-demand from your computer in seconds.
  • Get just the files you need and make certain files available for offline use later.
  • Access your work even quicker, as your most-used files become available in the background intelligently.
  • Avoid the risk of users downloading all of your company data to their hard drives.

Say goodbye to time-consuming file syncing and any concerns about disk space. With Drive File Stream, all your files are always ready for you and your colleagues. Sign up for the EAP of Drive File Stream today.


Quick Access for teams: make the most of your content with machine intelligence

You’ve migrated all of your data to the cloud. Now, it’s time to make the power of the cloud work for you. Quick Access in Drive now works with Team Drives on iOS and Android devices, and is coming soon to the web. Quick Access is powered by Google's machine intelligence, the same technology used in Gmail’s Smart Reply and Google Sheets Explore, which means that teams can save time and make smarter decisions because the right knowledge will surface to the right employees at the right time. Quick Access intelligently predicts and surfaces files based on:
  • Who specific files are frequently shared with
  • When relevant meetings occur
  • What files are used at specific times during the day
  • And many others


Additional info for G Suite admins

Available in the Drive Android app since September, Quick Access can now be used on iOS devices as well.

Launch details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Editions:
Available to all G Suite editions

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
All end users

Action:
Change management suggested/FYI

Try Google Drive for your enterprise

With these powerful new enterprise additions to Drive, you have the tools your employees need to execute on big ideas while you maintain the control your organization needs to keep your data safe. Get started on Google Drive today or contact a sales representative to learn more.


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Better preservation in Google Apps Vault

Creating a hold in Google Apps Vault allows you to preserve your employees’ Gmail messages indefinitely, in order to meet legal or preservation obligations. Today, we’re introducing several improvements to the existing holds system that will help you better meet those obligations. The key enhancements include:
  • Create and manage holds for organizational units (OUs) - Previously, you could create holds for specific users or entire domains. With this launch, you can create holds for specific OUs. In addition, delegated admins can create and manage holds for those OUs (or the individual employees within those OUs) that they have delegated administration over.
  • More intuitive hold functionality - Prior to this launch, when no users were specified for a hold, Vault would default to holding all users in that domain. That meant that if all users in a user-specific hold were removed, that hold would suddenly apply to all users in the associated domain. With this launch, that hold will apply to no users, as is likely the intention.
  • Enhanced user interface - The language and interface for applying holds has been improved and is now more similar to the recently updated retention flow.

Launch Details
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Changing how Google Apps admins set new retention rules in Google Apps Vault

Starting today, we are changing the way Google Apps Vault admins set up new retention rules in Google Apps Vault. This change will not impact any current retention settings—existing rules will continue to retain and delete messages according to their original configuration. Going forward, admins will be prompted to select one of the following options when setting up a new rule:
  • Retention rule applies to deleted messages only - If an admin selects this option, the rule will only affect messages that have been deleted by individual employees. This is the default option for new rules and is equivalent to adding label:^deleted to a custom retention rule. 
  • Retention rule applies to deleted messages and messages in user mailboxes - If an admin selects this option, the rule will apply to all messages—except those that meet any custom rules or holds the admin specifies. If an admin opens an existing custom retention rule that uses label:^deleted, it will have this option selected. The custom rule, however, will continue to work according to its original configuration and override that option, and only deleted messages will be affected.

Remember—Vault is fully integrated with Gmail, and there is no separate archive. If an admin chooses the second option above, it means that they want the rule to apply to all messages, whether employees have marked the messages for deletion or not. This could potentially delete messages that employees expect to keep. For example, if an admin sets a default retention rule to retain messages for 365 days and selects the option to apply to all messages—and there are no custom rules or holds in place—Vault will delete every message in that admin’s domain that is older than one year.

Setting up the retention policies that your organization needs can be complicated, so we've put together this article to help.

Launch Details [learn more]
Release track:
Launching to both Rapid release and Scheduled release

Rollout pace:
Full rollout (1–3 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested

More Information
Help Center

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

New admin policy and compliance controls for Google Hangouts chat

Google Hangouts provides an end-to-end chat solution for Google Apps customers, allowing people within an organization to securely communicate with one another across all devices and platforms. 

Today we’re adding two new policy options for Apps admins to give them greater control of how Hangouts chat is used in their domains, as well as introducing Google Apps Vault for Hangouts.

New chat policy options
Admins will now see two new options in the Hangouts chat settings in the Admin console, allowing them to: 
  • Force Hangouts chat history to be on or off
  • Require only Hangouts chat to be used
chat-controls.png
While admins could previously default all Hangouts chat conversation history to on or off, chat participants could change this on a per-conversation basis. With this new feature, admins can ensure chat participants cannot change this setting for new conversations. This also means that participants with Hangouts chat history forced on will not be able to communicate with participants with chat history forced off.

To enforce the Hangouts chat history policy, the new Hangouts chat only option must be selected. Please note that chat within Docs and Hangouts video calls will not be available for those customers who select the Hangouts chat only option. In addition, third party chat clients will not work with the Hangouts chat only option enabled. 

Vault for Hangouts
Google Apps Vault lets you retain, archive, search, and export user data for your eDiscovery and compliance needs. With today’s launch, we’ll now extend Vault to support Hangouts chat history. For customers already using Vault, full chat retention for all messages will start automatically once chat history is forced on using the new setting.

Release track:
Rapid release and Scheduled release

For more information:
Help Center: New chat policies
Help Center: Vault for Hangouts
Google for Work blog post


Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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Google Apps Vault added to all Google Apps for Education accounts

In September 2014, we announced that Google Apps Vault would be added to all Google Apps for Education accounts at no charge. 

As of yesterday, all new Google Apps for Education customers will receive Vault as part of their Google Apps for Education suite. Existing Google Apps for Education customers who do not already have Vault enabled will now see it added to their account (note: these customers will first have to set up retention policies for archiving to begin). Existing Google Apps for Education customers who already have Vault enabled will not see any changes.

Release track:
Rapid release and Scheduled release

For more information:
Help Center

Note: all launches are applicable to all Google Apps editions unless otherwise noted

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