eDiscovery of Lync Archive Data

A new integration feature with Lync 2013 and SharePoint 2013 is the use of SharePoint eDiscovery to search Lync archive data. eDiscovery describes the process of searching through electronic content, which could include documents, websites, email messages, and other electronic sources, and then collecting and acting on the content that meets a particular criteria, such as that which might be needed for a legal case. Typically, eDiscovery is a task that is performed by records managers and litigators, and SharePoint 2013 facilitates the eDiscovery process for content that is stored in SharePoint through the use of eDiscovery Centers. An eDiscovery Center is a central SharePoint site that is used to manage perseveration, search, and export of content stored in SharePoint and Exchange across multiple servers and server farms. For example, the in-place hold feature can be used to preserve data within SharePoint sites or Exchange mailboxes, but still allow users to continue editing and deleting preserved content.

Although eDiscovery of Lync archive data can correctly be called an integration feature for Lync 2013 and SharePoint 2013, in reality this feature involves integration of both products with Exchange 2013 as well. The reason for this is that Lync 2013 must first be configured to archive content to Exchange 2013 before SharePoint eDiscovery can be used to search that data. In reality then, the first task involved in configuring eDiscovery of Lync archive data is the integration of Lync archiving to Exchange, as detailed in the “Lync Archiving Integration” section earlier in this chapter.

After Lync 2013, Exchange 2013, and SharePoint 2013 have been configured as partner applications as described in the “Server-to-Server Authentication” section earlier in this chapter, and after Lync archiving integration has also been configured, SharePoint eDiscovery can be configured to search Lync data that has been archived to Exchange. The following example shows the steps involved in using SharePoint eDiscovery to search Lync archive data:

1. To begin the eDiscovery process, the user that will be performing the discovery must be assigned to the Discovery Management role group in Exchange. The following Exchange Management Shell command would be used to assign a user to the role:

Add-RoleGroupMember "Discovery Management" -member cbennett

2. The next step is to create an eDiscovery site. For example, the following two commands would be used in the SharePoint Management Shell to create an eDiscovery site under an existing SharePoint site named abcsite.companyabc.com, with the user who will be performing the discovery being specified as the owner:

Click here to view code image

$template=Get-SPWebTemplate | where-object {$_.title -eq "eDiscovery Center"}
New-SPSite -Url http://abcsite.companyabc.com/sites/Discovery -OwnerAlias cbennett -Template $template -name "Discovery Center"

3. To generate Lync archive data to be searched using eDiscovery, the Lync archiving policy needs to be enabled for archiving to Exchange for at least one user. For a detailed description of the Lync archiving integration feature, see the “Lync Archiving Integration” section earlier in this chapter. The following sample command would be used to enable archiving to Exchange for an individual user:

Set-CsUser dross -ExchangeArchivingPolicy ArchivingToExchange

4. After Lync data has been archived to Exchange, Exchange 2013 needs to be added as a content source in SharePoint. The SharePoint 2013 Central Administration site can be used for this. Start by selecting Search Service Application from the Manage Service Applications menu.

5. Add a new result source named Exchange, with the protocol also specified as Exchange. For Exchange Source URL, enter https://<ExchangeFQDN>/ews/exchange.asmx, with <ExchangeFQDN> being the fully qualified domain name of the target Exchange 2013 server, as shown in Figure 21.13. Also, ensure that Autodiscover is not selected.

Figure 21.13. Exchange configured as a content source in SharePoint.

6. The user who has been granted Discovery Management rights now logs on to the Discovery site created previously, and uses it to create an eDiscovery case. The URL to connect to is https://<SharePointSite>/sites/discovery, or for this example http://abcsite.companyabc.com/sites/discovery. When a title and website address are specified for the case, these should be named in a descriptive manner so that the case can be easily found; for example, the name of the user whose mailbox will be searched can be included in both.

7. After the case has been created, the final task is to create an eDiscovery set using the eDiscovery case created in the preceding step. Within the properties of the eDiscovery set, specify the user who has been configured for archiving to Exchange. Start and end dates for the discovery can also be specified, and in-place hold can be enabled as well.

8. SharePoint now initiates a search against the specified mailbox and displays the results in a preview window. The eDiscovery can be saved at this point so that the same discovery criteria can be used later.