At Hanzo, we’ve focused on collaboration tools for the last few years—and, as it turns out, we weren’t a moment too soon. The upsurge in remote work due to the coronavirus pandemic means that more workers than ever are working from home. Online collaboration tools have taken the place of meeting rooms, offices, and water coolers. When it comes to collaborating on documents and spreadsheets, many teams are using Google Workspace (formerly G Suite). But even with Google Vault, it’s surprisingly challenging to collect just the data you need from Google Workspace when you’re managing ediscovery for a litigation matter. Over-collection is practically inevitable—unless you have the right toolset. 

That’s what I talked about in a recent webinar, “How to Avoid Inevitable Over-Collecting of Google Workspace (G Suite).” Here’s a quick recap of that conversation.

The Challenges of Collecting Data From Google Workspace and the Limitations of Google Vault

Most of the challenges associated with collecting data from Google Workspace come down to one big problem: data volume. We’ve become accustomed to having enormous—and ever-expanding—amounts of storage. At this point, each user in an enterprise can use up to five terabytes of storage in Google Workspace, which is enough to store over 30 million documents. In ediscovery terms, it is challenging to sort through, cull down to the essentials, and collect that much data without breaking the bank.

Google Vault helps with litigation holds and ediscovery exports, but it does come with some limitations, including these: 

• Inability to visually explore folders or files. Users can retain and collect everything from a custodian’s Google Drive, but they can’t use Google Vault to explore the folders or files on a Drive or hone in on the data that they’re interested in. If a custodian has 4.5 TB of useless video clips and 10 MB of relevant and valuable documents, you certainly don’t want to have to export all of it to get to what you need. 
• Limited culling tools. Because users can’t navigate through a custodian’s Drive, it follows that they can’t meaningfully cull extraneous data before collecting it. That results in wasting time and money collecting and sorting through unwanted data.
• No version history view. The relevant data for a litigation matter will often be an older version of a document rather than the current working version. With Google Vault, users are limited to a single date choice for collection which may not fit the scope or purpose of the collection. 
• Limited metadata preservation. Google Vault creates a limited set of metadata which is provided via a separate XML file, making it much harder to use the resulting exports in ediscovery. 
• Export formats that aren’t ready for review. When you export Google Workspace data using Google Vault, the goal is to be able to plug it into an ediscovery review platform. Unfortunately, Google Vault exports aren’t review-ready—files need to be reassembled with their metadata and converted to the correct format before you can import the Google data into a review platform.

These are the challenges that Hanzo set out to solve with Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace.

How Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace Overcomes Vault’s Limitations—and Makes Collections Easy

Hanzo has created a purpose-built ediscovery collection tool for Google Workspace that overcomes some of Google Vault’s limitations, making it easy to target just the data you need and export it in a review-ready format with more complete and accurate metadata. Want to see what I’m talking about instead of just reading it? Take a look at the demo I provided in the webinar.

With Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace, you won’t be flying blind during data collections. You can see custodian data in their Google Drive and select specific folders and files relevant to your inquiry without collecting everything they’ve ever worked on. You can visually scope a matter in seconds, import, and index targeted data quickly and easily, saving both time and money. And that includes document versions from any previous date or time, so you can focus on the correct version without tediously scrolling through archives. Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace extracts metadata from three sources: Google Vault, Google Drive API, and the Hanzo index engine, so you’ll get complete, fully indexed exports with all the metadata you need for intensive searches and defensible ediscovery.

Plus, we’ve designed Hanzo Hold to be a single tool for managing multiple types of collaborative data. You can cull and manage both Slack and Google Drive data from one intuitive, straightforward interface without switching apps or calling the IT department. 

Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace makes applying custodian holds, scoping matters, and collecting the right collaboration content from Google Workspace easy, fast, and affordable. With instant insight into your Google Drive organization, you can have file-level targeting of collections, effortless version control, complete preservation of all associated metadata, and review-ready exports. Hanzo Hold for Google Workspace is the right way to avoid all but inevitable over-collection of Google data.

Want to learn more?

You can watch this webinar on-demand “How to Avoid Inevitable Over-Collecting of Google Workspace (G Suite).”

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