MC803566 - Change in attachment links in Viva Engage messages to SharePoint location for eDiscovery

Currently, when Viva Engage messages are ingested in eDiscovery, the attachments do not show up along with the messages in the eDiscovery collection. As a result, finding and mapping the attachments accurately with corresponding conversations was a challenging task for our customers.

We are introducing an important change in our ingestion solution to improve this experience. The new solution will replace the link to the attachment from Engage to SharePoint location of the attachment in the Engage message. With this change, all the attachments will appear along with the messages in eDiscovery review sets.

When this will happen:

We will begin rolling this out in late June 2024 and expect to complete by mid-July 2024.

How this affects your organization:

If your tenant uses eDiscovery in Microsoft Purview for Viva Engage, then this is information is important for you.

When a user adds an attachment to a message in Viva Engage, a link to the attachment is sent to eDiscovery, that is shown at the top left of the message card in eDiscovery UI (see the screenshot below). Currently, the link ingested points to the snapshot of the attachment as stored in Engage backend. Due to this, the attachments currently do not show up with the Engage messages in the eDiscovery review sets. This is sub-optimal both in terms of desired experience as well as solution behavior.

We are changing this behavior now. Going forward, instead of the link to the location in Engage backend, we will ingest the link to the SharePoint site location where the attachment is stored. As a result, this link will open the attachment from its SharePoint location. There are several benefits to this solution enhancement:

1. aligns Engage with other products (such as Teams) in terms of eDiscovery data access.
2. streamlines how attachments within a conversation show up as nested items under that conversation in the review set, making it easier for analysis as well as export.
3. displays the correct name of the attachments (consistent with as it is shown in review set) when retrieved through SharePoint location.
4. is more robust, scalable, and reliable for electronic discovery purposes. 

Once the solution is GA, any new Engage message with attachment that is ingested to eDiscovery will have the SharePoint links to the attachments with them (instead of Engage links). This will not change anything with the records that have already been ingested to eDiscovery. 

Please do take note of the following scenarios:

1. An existing message in a conversation is edited (content is edited, but attachment is unchanged
2. An existing message in a conversation is edited, along with the attachments (attachment is updated or new attachment is added)
3. A new message with an attachment is posted in an existing conversation.

In all the above scenarios, any new version of the messages will be ingested to eDiscovery with the SharePoint links to the attachments. All previous versions that were already ingested, will continue to be in their previous state, with the attachment link to Engage.

What you need to do to prepare:

You may consider updating your training and documentation as appropriate.