Short message conversion for Microsoft Teams

This page covers information for Microsoft Teams (Teams) conversion. To view the Relativity supported and unsupported file type tables, see Supported file types for processing.

Processing can automatically convert discovered Teams conversations within Microsoft eDiscovery (Standard) export data files (PST). For information on enabling short message conversion, including how files should be converted (via slicing), see Short message conversion settings.

Note: This documentation contains references to third-party software, or technologies. While efforts are made to keep third-party references updated, the images, documentation, or guidance in this topic may not accurately represent the current behavior or user interfaces of the third-party software. For more considerations regarding third-party software, such as copyright and ownership, see Terms of Use.

Microsoft eDiscovery (Standard) PST exports

  • To learn more about exporting Teams data with the Microsoft eDiscovery (Standard) solution, see Feature reference for Content search on the Microsoft website.
  • Processing expects data to be provided as a PST container where a single PST might contain both email and Teams data.
  • Teams messages are automatically identified based on the message class of emails inside the export. IPM.SkypeTeams.Message or IPM.SkypeTeams.SystemMessage is considered Teams messages.
  • If you have enabled Teams conversion in the processing profile, the original MSG files that contain Teams information are not discovered. If you want to retain the original files, disable RSMF conversion.
  • The email processing and Teams conversion jobs are independent within a single container processing. If the conversion fails with a document-level error, email files are still discovered.
  • Any attachments embedded inside the PST are extracted and processed; any attachments not inside the PST are kept as links within RSMF files (for example, attachments shared via OneDrive or SharePoint.)
  • You can use Inventory to filter PST files to a specific path. Note that the number of files returned at Inventory represents the number of messages, not the number of generated RSMF files.

Microsoft eDiscovery (Premium) HTML exports

Microsoft eDiscovery (Premium) HTML exports are currently not supported for RSMF conversion in processing. See Relativity Collect documentation for collection capabilities for Microsoft 365.

Generated RSMF fields

The following table lists the metadata fields found in RSMF files after Teams conversion.

Relativity source
field name		 Field type Description
Subject Long Text

The name of the conversation.

  • For channels: Team: TEAM_NAME Channel: CHANNEL_NAME
  • For group chats/dms: Chat: list of participants/CHAT_NAME
EmailFrom Long Text The display name and email of sender of first event in the conversation.
EmailTo Multiple Choice A list of display names and emails of all participants in conversation that generated events.
Date Date The date of first event in conversation.
Rsmf/Version Long Text 2.0.0
Rsmf/Participants Multiple Choice
Caution: Use the Long Text field type when mapping the Rsmf/Participants field. Selecting Multiple Choice can lead to hundreds of unique choices that may impact performance.
 A list of display names of all participants in conversation that generated events.
Rsmf/Generator Long Text Relativity Processing
Rsmf/Application Long Text Teams
Rsmf/MessageCount Whole Number The number of events in the conversation.
Rsmf/AttachmentCount Whole Number The number of attachments in conversation.
Rsmf/EventCollectionId Long Text The conversation ID that is persisted between file slices.
Rsmf/BeginDate Date The date and time of first event in conversation.
Rsmf/EndDate Date The date and time of last event in conversation.
Rsmf/HasPlaceholders Yes/No Set if the generated RSMF contains any placeholders. See Troubleshooting for more information.

Metadata used to group Teams conversations

Relativity uses the ThreadID header to group Teams conversations. The header is found in every Teams conversation in a PST file. The full header string is: 

IOpenTypedFacet.SkypeSpaces_ConversationPost_Extension#ThreadId

Troubleshooting

Relativity tries to extract all available data it finds. In some cases, errors may occur due to the data in the Microsoft eDiscovery (Standard) PST export files. Errors reported include:

Discover error message Details
An error occurred while extracting some events during the Teams-to-RSMF conversion. The error is likely due to missing metadata in the PST file. Instead, Relativity extracted such events as standalone MSG files. You can ignore this warning or consider disabling Teams conversion and then rediscover the data. Some messages are missing JSON metadata that Relativity uses to build RSMF conversations, even though they had the expected IPM.SkypeTeams.* message class. The missing data may be due to errors during the Microsoft eDiscovery export process or schema differences (such as an old export). Relativity provides these events as emails.
An error occurred extracting {0} type events found in PST during the Teams-to-RSMF conversion. Relativity currently does not support extracting events of that type. Instead, Relativity created placeholders for the events in the generated RSMF files. You can ignore this warning or consider disabling Teams conversion and then rediscover the data. Relativity encountered unsupported events while converting Teams messages. Relativity created placeholders for these events in the RSMF files. {0} is the detected type, for example, Media_CallRecording.

The event placeholder in the RSMF file will appear as follows:Unsupported type: Media_CallRecording.

Placeholders contain all attachments provided in original event.

RSMF metadata field Rsmf/HasPlaceholders can be used to identify files with placeholders.

If this data is critical to the investigation, you can reprocess it as an email to retrieve the full body content.

See Known issues and limitations for more information.
An error occurred extracting some events during the Teams-to-RSMF conversion. The error is likely due to missing metadata in the PST file. Instead, Relativity extracted the raw metadata for the events and included them in the RSMF files. You can ignore this warning or consider disabling Teams conversion and then rediscover the data. Relativity encountered an unexpected error while extracting the metadata for a specific event. To avoid data loss, Relativity generates the raw metadata (JSON) for the event, which you can view and search. Where possible, contact support with examples of these errors, which will help improve future versions of Teams extraction.
An error occurred during Teams-to-RSMF conversion. The error may be due to an unsupported or corrupt PST file. Repair the file and reprocess the data. Relativity could not extract any RSMF data due to a corrupt PST file. Contact support for help in troubleshooting the file.
An unexpected internal error occurred during Teams-to-RSMF conversion. Rediscover the data to proceed. Relativity encountered a transient issue. You should retry the processing job. If the issue persists, contact support for help.

Known issues and limitations

The Teams metadata available within the PST depends heavily on the Microsoft eDiscovery (Standard) search configuration. The following is a list of known issues and limitations:

  • Teams metadata limitations in RSMF conversion capability:
    • Giphy app and stickers. GIFs are provided as links in the RSMF files. Only custom text from stickers is available within RSMF files. For more information, see Send an emoji, GIF, or sticker in Microsoft Teams.
    • Loop components are downloaded as HTML attachments linked in the RSMF files. For more information, see Send a loop component in a channel.
    • Media cards are provided by connectors and apps like Praise or Approvals. They are provided as placeholders in RSMF files with HTML attached to the event.
    • Meetings, Call Recordings, and Call Transcripts are provided as placeholders in RSMF files.
  • Known issues with Microsoft eDiscovery (Standard) PST metadata:
    • Migrated Teams Chats do not contain the JSON metadata used by Relativity to build RSMF and are processed as MSG files.
    • Join/leave events are available only for chats exported with specific Microsoft eDiscovery content search. These are system events, so they are not retrieved if the export is filtered only to instant messages (itemclass:IPM.SkypeTeams.Message) or Teams (kind:microsofteams).
    • Announcements do not include edit information. For more information, see Send an announcement to a channel in Microsoft Teams.
    • Full participant information (full display name and email) becomes unavailable once the participant has left the chat.

Resources