Challenges of Preserving Slack Data in Slack

Casepoint is among the most advanced platforms available in the market for eDiscovery and litigation. It can help your organization develop an evidence-based story that can defend you in court. With its AI and advanced analytics tools, you can make every single facet of eDiscovery accurate, efficient, and faster.

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Large and medium-scale companies have many active Slack users, meaning that every month, there are over 100,000 messages sent on Slack. Moreover, for each channel, a new file is generated every day. When you have to examine such a large volume of data, the process can be expensive and slow. However, if you can identify specific channels that must be preserved, you can reduce production time and costs.

Hundreds of Slack Messages Are Sent Every Day

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Today, companies use a multitude of platforms to have a single conversation. For instance, an employee asks their manager a question through email, and the manager discusses the answer in a Zoom meeting. Once the Zoom meeting ends, the employee might have some follow-up questions which they ask on Slack. The whole conversation is spread out on multiple platforms. This means that the snippet preserved on Slack won’t provide the full context.

Slack is One of the Platforms Used for Decentralized Communications

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You can export the Slack messages in JSON file format. This format is hard to read. Moreover, it won’t display media like GIFs and emojis. You might have to use an alternative production method.

It's Not Easy to Decipher Slack Exports

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The Slack legal hold feature is available only for the ‘Enterprise Grid’ members. So, if you have any other plan, you will have to find another way to preserve Slack data.

The Legal Hold Features Are Not Available For Everyone

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You can’t analyze or even search data in Slack. Early case assessment is invaluable during litigation, and in order to conduct it, you will have to export data.

No Option for Early Case Assessment

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Enabling the Slack legal hold feature is just one step. You will still need a separate tool for notifying data custodians, sending reminders, and overseeing and tracking holds.

Slack Only Offers a Partial Process

You can address these challenges by using an eDiscovery platform like Casepoint that collects data directly from your Slack environment for processing and review. You will not need a middle-man for data collection, which means no export and import steps.

Why do Companies Need a Slack Policy?

It is crucial to have a Slack policy for your organization, regardless of which solution or method you are using for preservation. With a robust policy in place, you can limit the volume of data that must be pulled during litigation, an internal investigation, or a regulatory audit. Every single employee must know about the Slack policy. Here is what this policy should address:

  • When an employee should use Slack or other messaging platforms
  • When to use public channels vs. when to use direct messages or private groups
  • Other communication tools used by the team members
  • Expected response times
  • Onboarding employees on Slack
  • Person responsible for creating new channels
  • Structuring and formatting conversations
  • Appropriate and inappropriate work conversations
  • Ongoing monitoring
  • Company’s access to the conversations
  • Deletion schedules and retention policies
  • Harassment and bullying on the platform

In order to ensure that your employees follow the Slack policy, you will have to provide training and facilitate monitoring. There are some monitoring technologies that can notify the management of any potential issues while making sure that your employees aren’t under constant surveillance.

Through a Slack policy, you will also be able to create a healthy culture. Not every conversation needs to happen on the app. This will also have an impact on your future eDiscovery efforts.

If you use Slack appropriately and have a proper deletion and retention schedule, you can save yourself a lot of resources. Also, if the conversations are properly formatted and well-structured, recreating them after export will be a lot easier.

Conclusion

When it comes to preserving Slack data for eDiscovery, there is no one clear winner. Depending on your circumstances, you might have to try out different approaches. This includes using an eDiscovery legal hold software like Casepoint. It allows you to collect data from some of the most popular platforms used by businesses, including Slack, Google Drive, Gmail, Dropbox, Office365, and more.