Other challenges with data collection from Google Workspace

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Knowledge workers may never return to the office as we once knew. But now that companies and their employees have learned how well working from home can work both for maintaining productivity and for the quality of remote work for workers, it is undoubtedly here to stay.

For many offices, Google Workspace is one of the tools that has enabled the transition to a completely remote workforce. Google offers exceptional version control, tremendous data storage capacity, and effortless collaboration on shared documents.

Of course, the data that companies generate on Google Workspace is potentially discoverable. For this reason, Google has created a Google Vault tool that apparently helps organizations keep and collect files relevant to litigation. However, identifying, maintaining, and collecting Google Workspace files using Google Vault presents several challenges.

Google Vault Limitations

I have already written in more depth on some of these problems. To recap, Google Vault can lead organizations to excessively collect data due to the way it organizes and presents file information. Google Vault does not currently allow any view of a user’s Google tree or Shared Drive, so there is no way to easily navigate to specific files. Again, users can’t select individual files or folders to export, so you need to export a keeper’s entire Drive if they really only need a portion of it. Also, there is no easy way to view specific versions of documents. While Google Workspace tracks every version a user creates, a user can only access those versions on one document-by-document version, which can be tedious and time-consuming.

Perhaps more importantly, Google Vault exports aren’t ready for platform review. The main problem is that Google Vault uses an XML as the upload file format. This can certainly be problematic as an import source. Filenames are also appended with a Google DocID, making it difficult for users to figure out what the original filename should have been.

But let’s take a closer look at an issue I haven’t talked about much: metadata.

How Google Vault manages metadata

Metadata is essential for ediscovery, both for its management that identifies the correct version of files, and for the rapid search for relevant information and production integrity. For example, suppose an opponent in a litigation sees that you have altered metadata in the collection and production process. If so, chances are they have some serious questions about what else you might have changed.

Unfortunately, Google Vault isn’t ideal for meeting the needs of ediscovery professionals. Three things are missing from Google Vault’s handling of metadata.

As mentioned, Google Vault separates the metadata from the underlying files, exporting the metadata via XML files and labeling the same loose documents with the file name and internal Google Document ID reference number. Then, the user must reassemble these two separate files before a review platform can understand them, greatly increasing the time and effort required to prepare the data for review.

Second, Google Vault omits critical metadata when exporting. It completely eliminates some types of metadata, including:

complete file path description, file version information, root folder information, information that a document has been deleted or moved, and information about file sharing and access permissions.

But that is not all. For example, it also overwrites the original metadata on a document’s creation date; instead it assigns the creation date as the export date. Since metadata is a fundamental research component for discovery, particularly date metadata, the loss of that information can be problematic.

Third, the omission of date metadata makes it difficult to identify the correct version of a document. While Google Drive keeps every version of a user-created document, finding those versions and using them in ediscovery is different. Without the original metadata about a file’s creation date, it’s virtually impossible to know that you’re receiving the correct version of a document, edited by the right person on the correct date.

What you need is a way to export information from Google Workspace in a ready-to-review format without losing or altering the metadata. This is where Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace comes in.

Watch the webinar Take advantage of advanced metadata in Google Workspace on demand.

Hanzo’s improved metadata

Hanzo has been working with collaboration data for years now. We’ve already built a purpose-built solution for Slack data, and now we’ve expanded that platform to collect discovery-ready data from Google Workspace.

Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace corrects the Google Vault metadata challenges by extracting metadata from three distinct sources:

Google Vault, the Google Drive API and Hanzo Index Engine.

In addition to all the information we can glean from Google, our index provides the full-text content of the file in a searchable format so that we can identify every piece of metadata associated with a file. Hanzo exports are ready to be imported into the review platform of your choice without further processing, we do all the hard work of reassembling the metadata upload files with their source files, returning the native files with their native names.

We haven’t just fixed Google Vault metadata missteps – Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace is a visual tool that allows users to easily navigate Google Drive and select only the files and folders that are relevant to their case. As a result, a user can now be confident that they will avoid the Google Vault overcollection workflow and radically reduce the amount of data collected for an issue, reducing the cost and burden of ediscovery.

Ready to find out more?

Does Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace make ediscovery easy, fast and affordable? Contact us to arrange a demonstration.

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