Microsoft 365 - Teams data source

This topic provides details on how to capture Microsoft 365 Teams with Collect.

Considerations

Note the following considerations about this data source:

• Requires enhanced licensing - E5 licensing. For more information, see Licensing requirements.

• To enable an Azure application registration to use metered APIs and services in Microsoft Graph, you must associate the application with an Azure subscription. For more information, see Microsoft's Enable an application section in their Metered API Setup documentation. For more information, see Billing requirements.

• We recommend limiting the date range of the collection. Extended date ranges can increase collection time and potentially create issues.

Accessing Microsoft 365 tenants

Register the Collect application in Azure to access Microsoft 365. When registering the application, the Microsoft 365 administrator creates a Microsoft Application ID and secret. You will use the ID and secret to configure data sources in Collect and they provide access to the Office 365 tenants. You can register the application through Azure Portal or by registering the application permissions through the Microsoft App Registration Portal. After registering the application, request administrator consent. From there, it is possible to revoke application access.

Use this information to create a Microsoft integration point. For more information, see Importing from Microsoft Entra ID.

Depending on your RelativityOne license, commercial or government, and your Microsoft tenant, Microsoft 365 or Microsoft 365 Government, you will be able to collect from either Microsoft 365 or both Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Government data sources. Commercial users can only collect from Microsoft 365 tenants. Government users can collect from Microsoft 365 and Government 365 tenants. These data sources act the same, but have different icons within Collect.

Licensing requirements

With the Teams Export API, Relativity meets compliance when collecting data. To use the API and collect Teams chats, users must meet one of the following licensing requirements. This licensing applies to individual custodian accounts.

• Office 365 E5/A5/G5

• Microsoft 365 E5/A5/G5

• Microsoft 365 E5/A5/F5/G5 Compliance and Microsoft 365 F5 Security & Compliance

• Microsoft 365 E5/A5/F5/G5 Information Protection and Governance

For more information, see relevant Microsoft documentation on the Microsoft site:

• Export Teams content

• Teams licenses

• Microsoft 365 guidance for security and compliance

Billing requirements

To enable an Azure application registration to use metered APIs and services in Microsoft Graph, you must associate the application with an Azure subscription. For more information, see Microsoft's Enable an application section in their Metered API Setup documentation.

You must agree to Microsoft potentially billing you. Microsoft bills you if you exceed their seeded capacity, free quota, of API calls to the Teams Export API each month. For more information, see Microsoft's Payment models and licensing requirements documentation.

• Microsoft considers Relativity a model=A application. Microsoft restricts model=A to applications performing a security or compliance function, and requires a supported license. For more information, see Microsoft's Teams licenses documentation.

• Relativity uses the Get messages across all chats for user and Get messages across all channels APIs. Both have a seeded capacity of 1,600 messages per user per month per app. Each message over the seeded, free, capacity costs $0.00075. Microsoft charges one message for requests returning an empty list. Seeded capacity is shared between chat and channel exports.

  • Per user does not mean a custodian. It means an E5 licensed user. For example, if you have 100 E5 licenses, you have a limit of 160,000 messages per month in seeded capacity.

  • After you reach the seeded capacity limit, according to Microsoft's $0.00075 per notification charge, it takes about 1,333 messages to reach $1. To calculate your exact numbers, use Microsoft's TeamsUserActivityUserDetail report. For more information, see Microsoft's reportRoot: getTeamsUserActivityUserDetail documentation.

Registering the Collect application

Note: During the process, you must associate the application with an Azure subscription to enable an Azure application registration to use metered APIs and services in Microsoft Graph. For more information, see Microsoft's Enable an application section in their Metered API Setup documentation.

Start with registering your application in the Azure portal by following the steps below. For more information on registering an application in Azure, see Microsoft's documentation or Microsoft's authentication documentation.

Note: These steps must be completed by a Microsoft 365 administrator.

1. Open your Azure Portal.
2. Click Microsoft Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory).
3. Click App registrations.
4. Click New Registration to display the Register an application page.
5. Enter an application name in the Name field.
6. Accept the default setting, Accounts in this organizational directory only, as the supported account type.
7. Click Register.
8. Once the application is registered, make note of the Application (client) ID and Directory (tenant) ID for use later when configuring the data source in RelativityOne Collect.

Obtaining a client secret

Next, obtain the client secret for the registered application in the Azure portal. For more information, see relevant Microsoft documentation on the Microsoft site.

Note: These steps must be completed by a Microsoft 365 administrator.

1. From the registered application's page, click the Certificates & secrets option in the left navigation bar.
2. Click the Client secrets tab.
3. Click New client secret.
   
4. Enter a description for the client secret in the Description text box.
5. Select 730 days (24 months) from the Expires list. The client secret will expire after this time frame.
   
   Notes: Once the client secret expires, you must create a new client secret in the Azure portal as described in these steps. Then, you must update your Collect data sources with it. Refer to "How to handle expired Azure client secrets" below. For any additional assistance with client secrets, please contact the Azure Admin in your organization.
6. Click Add. The Secret ID is generated.
7. Copy the Secret ID to the clipboard by clicking the copy icon and paste it to a safe location. This information is used later when creating the data source in Collect.
   

Caution: Microsoft will only show this secret this one time, and there is no way to recover a secret.

8. Give your Relativity Admin the Application ID and the Client Secret for setup of Collect. This application secret is also needed for setting up a Microsoft Entra ID integration point. For more information, see Importing from Microsoft Entra ID.

Setting permissions

Each data source has its own set of permissions necessary to allow access to the tenants. To add the correct permissions based on your selected Microsoft 365 data source, follow the steps below. For more information, see relevant Microsoft documentation on the Microsoft site.

Note: These steps must be completed by a Microsoft 365 administrator.

1. From the registered application's page, click the API permissions option in the left navigation bar. The User.Read permission is automatically added by default.
2. Click Add a permission.
3. Click Microsoft Graph.
4. Select Application Permissions.
5. Select the following permissions from the Permission list. Refer to Azure Application Registration Permissions for Collect below for more information about these permissions.

   • User.Read.All

   • ChannelMessage.Read.All

   • Chat.Read.All

   • Files.Read.All
   • Group.Read.All
   • TeamsTab.Read.All
   • Team.ReadBasic.All
     
   • ChannelMember.Read.All
     
6. Click Add permissions.
   
7. Click Grant Permission.

8. Make a note of the application ID that Microsoft assigned to the app registration. This ID is also required for setup of data sources in Collect.

9. The window displays all permissions granted. Verify that all permissions have been granted.
10. Click Accept to grant the permissions.

Azure Application Registration Permissions for Collect

The Collect application in RelativityOne is a tool designed to streamline the data collection process for eDiscovery. Its primary purpose is to gather data from various sources, such as cloud-based applications and other data repositories, in a manner that is secure, defensible, and efficient. Collect aims to reduce the time and effort involved in data collection, ensuring that the data is accurate and complete, while maintaining chain of custody and compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.

Due to the architecture of the Collect application, Delegated permission can’t be used and are not supported. The Collect application requires the use of Microsoft Graph API Azure Application permissions to facilitate the collection of data that occurs in processes running in the background.

The Collect application requires specific Graph API Application permissions be granted to an Azure Application Registration to facilitate efficient and comprehensive data collection for e-discovery and compliance purposes.

Following is an explanation of each Azure application Graph API permission required and why it is needed to support collections of M365 data. For a PDF of this information, see Azure Application Registration Permissions for Collect.

Finding Azure credentials

If an application is already created and you need to find the application information to complete the Source Connection step, follow the steps below in the Azure Portal. For more information, see relevant Microsoft documentation on the Microsoft site.

1. Open your Azure Portal.
2. Click Microsoft Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory).
3. Navigate to Enterprise applications.
4. In the list of applications, locate and click on your application.The application page displays.
5. Navigate to Properties.
6. Click the copy icon next to the Application ID. The ID is copied to your clipboard to use as needed.

Limiting application registration access to accounts

Limit the access of Collect to specific Microsoft user accounts and mailboxes by using the New-ApplicationAccessPolicy Powershell cmdlet. For more information, see Microsoft documentation.

Revoking application access

Revoke the application from the Azure portal or by using a PowerShell script. For more information, see Microsoft's documentation.

Revoking access via Azure Portal

To revoke access from the Azure portal:

1. Open your Azure Portal.
2. Navigate to Enterprise Application.
3. Under All applications, search for your application and click its link.
4. Under Manage > Properties, click Delete.

Collect no longer has access.

Revoking access via Powershell

Revoke access in Powershell using the Remove-MsolServicePrincipal script. See the Powershell example below of retrieving and deleting an application registration.

Creating the data source in Collect

The Collection Admin tab is where you create, edit, and remove data sources from your workspace. You only need to setup each data source once. You must create your data sources prior to setting up your custodian targets.

1. In RelativityOne, navigate to Collect.
2. Click the New Collection Source Instance button.
3. Enter in a unique name for the data source.
4. Select Microsoft 365 Teams. 

   Note: Collect automatically collects any preserved data in an in-place hold or litigation hold. Microsoft stored data on a hold in a preservation library and separate folders. For more information, see Microsoft Retention Policies.
   

5. Enter the required information in Settings. For more information, see Settings fields.
   
6. Click Save.

After clicking Save, Relativity verifies the parameters and connectivity to the Microsoft 365 data source. If successful, Collect saves the data source. If the connection fails, a message appears indicating the connection failed. If verification fails, verify that the values are correct. Collect will save the data source when it's corrected and verified.

Once the set up is complete, the data source information on the Collect Admin page.

Settings fields

To connect Relativity to a Microsoft Teams data source, you need to gather and enter the information for the following fields:

• Domain—enter the Tenant ID or Primary domain (domain name usually ends with .onmicrosoft.com) of the Microsoft 365 tenant the collection is intended for. To locate the tenant ID or primary domain name, see Microsoft documentation.
• Application Id—enter the application ID created during registering the Collect application in Microsoft 365.
• Application secret—enter the application secret created during registering the Collect application in Microsoft 365. For more information, see Accessing Microsoft 365 tenants.

Depending on your RelativityOne license, commercial or government, and your Microsoft tenant, Microsoft 365 or Microsoft 365 Government, you will be able to collect from either Microsoft 365 or both Microsoft 365 and Microsoft 365 Government data sources. Commercial users can only collect from Microsoft 365 tenants. Government users can collect from Microsoft 365 and Government 365 tenants. These data sources act the same, but have different icons within Collect.

Data source details

Each data source details page includes an Action console. Each data source has different actions.

On the Microsoft Teams data source page, click Validate Connection in the Actions console to validate the client ID, certificate, and other credentials with Microsoft 365.

Configuring the data source in Collect

In RelativityOne, configure the data sources chosen in the Collection Details step.

Notes:

• The Microsoft 365 Teams data source collects the most recent version of each message.

• Deleted messages are available to collect for 21 days from the time of deletion.

• Task module content is not currently supported for collection.

Data source criteria

Add criteria to collect specific data. To configure the data sources, complete the following fields:

• Select and unselected tabs—choose the data sources to collect from by moving unselected data sources to the selected list.

• Field—choose the field to filter on within the data source.
  
  

  Note: This field is only required when you select a calendar source.

• Operator—choose an operator such as equals, contains, greater than, or less than.

• Value—enter a value to find in the selected field.

After selecting field options, you must click Add Criteria.

Details to know about criteria:

• Each criteria is then separated by an AND operator.
• Leave the data source criteria empty to collect all data from the sources.

The following table lists the filter criteria supported for Microsoft Teams collections.

Relativity collects Microsoft Teams data in RSMF. For more information, see The Relativity Short Message Format .

Note: You must register Relativity in Microsoft 365 before using this data source. For information on registering Relativity in Microsoft 365, see Accessing Microsoft 365 tenants.

When using search criteria to filter for Teams, you must select start dates and end dates. All dates are in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). The maximum date range supported is five years. For example, you can select Start Date 1/1/2016 and End Date 1/1/2021, but no further.

Criteria	Operators	Description	Example
Chat Type	Equals	When you use the Chat Type property in a query, the search returns all messages in either Private Channels, Private Chats, or Public Channels.	If you search a Chat Type with the Public Channels operator selected, Relativity collects only messages in public channels that the custodians are in.
End Date	Less Than or Equals	When you use the End Date property in a query, the search returns all messages the day of and before the entered date.	If you search a Start Date of 1/1/2001 and an End Date of 1/1/2020, Collect returns all messages on and between the two dates.
Slice in Interval in Hours	Equals	When you use The Slice Interval in Hours property, the search returns all messages in a specific time range or defaults the slice interval to 24 hours.	If you search with a slice interval set to one hour and a conversation spans five hours, you will end up with five RSMFs after processing. For more information, see RSMF Slicing.
Start Date	Greater Than or Equals	When you use the Start Date property in a query, the search returns messages that exist the day of and after the entered date.	If you search a Start Date of 1/1/2001 and an End Date of 1/1/2020, Collect returns all messages on and between the two dates.

Included in the Microsoft 365 Teams criteria are two toggles:

• Collect linked files external to M365—enable the toggle to collect modern attachments, or files linked in Teams that are external to the Microsoft 365 tenant. You must opt in to confirm that you want to collect files outside of Microsoft 365.
  

  Note: This option is only available for RelativityOne production environments. RelativityOne Government environments cannot collect external files.

• Enable Dedupe—enable the toggle to exclude cards contained in Teams chat messages. Due to the nature of how Microsoft provides card information, inclusion of cards prevents deduplication of RSMFs during processing. For more information, see Microsoft's documentation.

For more information, see Microsoft Security and Compliance Center documentation.