Before you perform a search of Gmail messages in Google Vault, you can see the number of results that your search criteria will return—helping you plan next steps and establish resources for review. Going forward, in addition to the total number of results, you’ll also see the number of accounts with matches. You can then download a list of those accounts and the number of messages that match each. This can help you determine the key custodians involved in an investigation. (Note that this feature is only available when searching Gmail messages.)



Programmatically save your search queries with the Vault Matters API

In addition to the feature above, we’re making it possible for admins to programmatically read, create, and delete saved search queries with the Vault Matters API. This will allow you to quickly and easily copy search parameters from one matter to another, saving you valuable time.

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

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

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: How does the count feature work?

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We launched the Google Vault API in 2017 so that customers could integrate Vault with the other tools and processes critical to their business. We’re now improving the API by making it possible to programmatically create and manage exports, in addition to legal matters and holds.

With this launch, you can use the Google Vault API to:

• create an export—send a request to export messages and files that match your criteria.
• list exports—retrieve the status of all exports associated with a matter.
• get an export—retrieve the status of an export anytime, and if the export is completed, download that export using the standard Cloud Storage API.
• delete an export—remove an export from a matter when it’s no longer needed.

For more information, check out the Google Vault API Developers Guide.

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

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

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Google Vault API Developers Guide


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We're introducing new features in Google Vault that allow for more granular retention and provide a more transparent search experience. These features can help you retain exactly the data you need and thereby reduce your liability risk, as well as improve your eDiscovery process with better search and export capabilities.

Set retention policies for Hangouts Meet recordings
Previously, Hangouts Meet recordings were subject to applicable Drive retention rules. With this launch, you can set default and custom retention rules specifically for Hangouts Meet. This will allow you to set shorter retention periods for Meet recordings if, for example, they happen to contain more sensitive content.


Set retention policies for files in Drive trash
As a G Suite admin, you can now also set custom retention rules specifically for Drive files that have been moved to a user’s trash. This option provides more flexibility for organizations who wish to control the lifecycle of files deleted by users separately from those files still active in their users' My Drive and Team Drives.


Large search improvements
With this launch, we’re making the process of searching your entire domain and large OUs easier and more transparent. If a data type supports domain-wide search, you can now select “All Accounts” to search the entire domain.


As Vault processes your large search request, you’ll see an activity indicator and the amount of time that has elapsed. You’ll also have the option to cancel your search or run another search in a new tab.



When your search is complete, in addition to your results, you’ll now see the total time taken for the search. For a Gmail search, you’ll also see the total number of accounts searched and the number of accounts searched per second. This will give you an idea of Vault's performance during the large search.


Simpler exports for Hangouts Chat
We’re also making it easier for organizations to export large amounts of Hangouts Chat data. Going forward, export data from Hangouts Chat will be condensed into a small number of files. Previously, you’d see one conversation per file; now you’ll see multiple conversations included in the same file, until the file size limit is reached.

For example, in the past, 100 conversations would be exported as 100 MBOX or PST files. With this launch, those same 100 conversations will be exported as just one or two MBOX or PST files, making it simpler to process the results.

In addition, each Chat conversation will continue to have metadata associated with it, but with two new fields: (1) type of conversation (direct message or room), and (2) conversation ownership (either the room name or a comma-separated list of accounts that participated in a direct message).

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 G Suite users with the Vault add-on

Rollout pace:
Gradual rollout (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: What's new in Vault


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We just announced some new G Suite products and features to help your organization collaborate more effectively and efficiently. As part of that announcement, we introduced Google Vault support for Hangouts Chat. Below are some admin-specific details to help you get started.

The newly launched Hangouts Chat is an intelligent and secure tool that makes team collaboration easy. An enterprise-ready solution, Hangouts Chat gives G Suite admins the governance controls they need to manage and secure their organization’s data, including full support in Google Vault—a tool that can help with their eDiscovery and compliance needs.

Set retention policies for Hangouts Chat messages
As a G Suite admin, you can now set retention policies that apply to all Hangouts Chat messages, including those sent directly and those sent in rooms.

You can set a default rule that applies to all users in your domain. This can be an indefinite retention policy (such that messages are never expunged), or one that expunges messages at the end of a specific time period. The default rule applies to all direct messages and rooms in your domain.

You can also set custom retention rules for specific organizational units (OUs), which apply to direct messages only, and/or for all rooms, which apply to room conversations only. This allows you to manage the lifecycle of direct and room messages separately. Custom rules override the default rule and, if multiple custom rules apply to a message, the rule with the longest retention coverage period takes precedence.


Place legal holds on Hangouts Chat messages
In addition to setting retention policies, you can now place legal holds on your employees' Hangouts Chat conversations, whether they take place via direct message or in rooms.

Doing so will preserve room conversations in which a held user is a participant (i.e. they’ve sent a message) and direct messages in which a held user is a member (i.e. they’ve sent or received a message), regardless of whether that user deletes those messages. If a user on hold deletes a message, it will appear deleted to them—but it will be available in Vault until the hold is removed. Remember that holds always take precedence over retention rules.


Search, preview and export chat content 
Finally, you can now search, preview, and export your employees’ Hangouts Chat messages. This enables you to apply the same eDiscovery programs you use for other G Suite services (like Gmail and Drive) to content stored in Hangouts Chat direct messages and rooms.

To learn more about how Vault's support for Hangouts Chat 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 (up to 15 days for feature visibility)

Impact:
Admins only

Action:
Admin action suggested/FYI

More Information
Help Center: Google Vault
Help Center: Supported data types
The Keyword: New ways to help teams work faster and smarter with G Suite
The Keyword: Move projects forward from one place—Hangouts Chat now available
G Suite Updates: Hangouts Chat now generally available



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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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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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Update - April 5, 2017:

Team Drives is now available to G Suite for Nonprofits customers, in addition to G Suite Business, Education, and Enterprise customers as previously stated.

---------------------------------------

Original - posted March 9, 2017 (updated to reflect new Team Drives availability):

(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, Nonprofits, 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, Nonprofits, 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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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, as well as G Suite Basic users with add-on Vault licenses

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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