Projects

The Projects tab contains all information related to all Legal Hold projects. In this tab, you can create, review, update, and close projects.

Watch the Legal Hold training video for more information.

Projects landing page

Understand Legal Hold projects with custom layouts, project views, and project dashboards. Create, update, or delete any layout, view, or dashboard at any time. These features display projects, project status, and the project health.

Project dashboards

Using the new user interface, Legal Hold now has default dashboards that help visualize project status and ownership.

The Project dashboard with widgets and table.

The following fields are also available for use to create other customizable dashboards in Legal Hold:

Group By/Pivot On fields

  • Case
  • Company
  • External Counsel
  • Favorite
  • General Counsel
  • Project Attachments
  • Project Close Date
  • Project Owner
  • Project Start Date
  • Project Status
  • Projects
  • Subject Matter End Date
  • Subject Matter Start Date
  • Template::Project Status
  • Type
  • Use as Template
Object Pivot-enabled field
Attachments Communication Attachments::Acknowledgement Required
Communication Acknowledgement Required
Communication Template::Acknowledgement Required
Entity Company
Entity City
Entity Country
Entity Company
Entity Current Title
Entity Department
Entity Document numbering prefix
Entity Domain
Entity Email
Entity Employee Number
Entity Employee Status
Entity Employment End Date
Entity Employment Start Date
Entity First Name
Entity Full Name
Entity Last Name
Entity Location
Entity Manager
Entity Past Department
Entity Past Manager
Entity Past Title
Entity Phone Number
Entity Redirect Recipient
Entity Secondary Email
Entity State/Province
Entity UniqueID
Entity Username
Entity Zip/Postal Code
Entity Role Communications
Entity Role Communications::Acknowledgement Required
Entity Role Communications::Communication Type
Entity Role Communications::Response Due Date
Entity Role Custodian
Entity Role Custodian::Department
Entity Role Custodian::Email
Entity Role Custodian::Office
Entity Role Name
Entity Role Notes
Entity Role Project
Entity Role Project::Project Status
Entity Role Release Date
Entity Status Custodian
Entity Status Acknowledgement Required
Entity Status Resolved By
Entity Status Escalations Sent
Entity Status Reminders Sent
Message Communication::Acknowledgement Required
Project Use As Template
Question Answer Type
Question Category
Questionnaire Question Send Communication::Acknowledgement Required
Questionnaire Question Alert Communication::Acknowledgement Required
Questionnaire Response Communication::Acknowledgement Required

Legal Hold layouts

Legal Hold layouts are web-based coding forms that give you the ability to view and edit document fields. You can use layouts to develop workflows specific to the needs of your case. You can develop layouts that contain only the fields required to complete specific legal hold tasks, making the legal hold process clean and intuitive.

Creating a custom layout

Create a custom layout to view the important project information. Add custom fields and re-arrange the organization to meet your project needs.

To create a custom layout:

  1. From the Workspace Admin > Layouts sub-tab, filter using the Project object type.
  2. Select the Detail layout.
  3. From the Layout console, click Build Layout.
  4. Edit fields and categories, add custom fields, and re-arrange the layout to your specification. See Layouts in the Relativity documentation site.
  5. Click Save and Close when finished.
  6. Click Edit.
  7. From the Name field, re-name your layout.
  8. From the Order field enter -1 to ensure that Legal Hold uses the new layout as the default layout.
  9. Click Save.

Project views

Use project views to filter specific legal hold projects. Based these views on a set of specified criteria to display legal hold information in an organized fashion to understand projects better. A legal hold view organizes items displayed on the list, based on a set of criteria, displays fields of information displayed for the returned items, and sorts the order of the returned items.

To view a specific project view, select a view from the drop-down menu.

The Projects views drop-down menu.

Creating or editing a project view

  1. Click The pencil edit icon. to edit or The plus add icon. to add a view, and make appropriate updates to any fields. See Views in the Relativity documentation site.
  2. When finished, click Save.

Project response level

The Project Response Level (PRL) aggregates the number of communications sent and the number of responses. A percentage on the number of responsive custodians to the number of communications is created. The PRL percentage is then compared to the set PRL thresholds. As the PRL meets a custom thresholds, the PRL status icon changes between red, yellow, green. The thresholds are set in Legal Hold settings. To learn how to set the PRL Thresholds, see General settings fields.

When communications are created in the project, but not sent, the PRL icon is blank. The PRL is not activated until a communication is sent.

The PRL gives a high-level overview of the project's responses. For a more detailed view of project communications, see Communication Summary Report.

Project Details

The Project Details page appears once you create a project in Legal Hold. Access the project details by clicking the project from the Projects landing page.

From here, you can view all details related to that project.

Legal Hold Project Details page with new Preserve in-place app.

The Legal Hold Project Details page with both preservation apps installed.

  • Project Details—see Project Details layout fields.
  • Communications tab—lists the communications associated with the project. Use the column filters to sort information and click on an item to view its details. See Creating a communication.
  • Custodians tab—lists all of the custodians assigned to the project. Use the column filters to sort information and click on an item to view its details.
  • Mailbox tab—lists all of the sent and received emails from communications for this project. Use the column filters to sort information and click on an item to view its details. See Mailbox.
  • Preservation Hold tab—lists the custodians in Exchange and OneDrive that are currently on a preservation hold. It also lists the custodian targets in SharePoint that are on hold. Use the column filters to sort information and click on an item to view its details. See Preservation hold (Legacy).
  • Preservation Targets tab—lists the status for each discovery of SharePoint targets that each custodian has access to. For more information on the targets, see Preservation target status.

Project console

Use the Project console to take an action related to that project and its assigned custodians. Buttons are shaded gray when the action is unavailable or may not appear at all, depending on your permissions. See Securing a project. For more information on data preservation, see Creating a preservation.

The Project console with the new Preservation in-place app buttons.

The legacy Project console.

Manage Custodians

Manage the project's custodians using the buttons In the Managing Custodians section.

Note: When adding custodians to the project, only add one custodian per email address. Multiple custodians with the same email address will cause issues when sending emails and releasing custodians.

The following buttons are available:

Releasing a custodian from the project console

You can release a custodian from a project at any time. Releasing means that this person is no longer an active participant in the project but they will still appear in any reports associated with the project in a Released status. This allows for a record of their involvement to remain in the application. If the custodian is on a preservation hold and is released from the project, no changes will be made to the hold itself.

The following must be true in order to release a custodian from a project:

  • A release notice exists.

To release a custodian:

  1. From the Project console, click Release.
  2. Select one of the following options:
    • Release: with Communication—if there are multiple release notices on the project, select a release notice from the drop-down list.
    • Release: Silently—release a custodian silently. This means that the custodian will not receive a release notice. You can silently release a custodian even if they are not a Silent Custodian. See Assigning roles to custodians.
  3. Click Release.
  4. From the Item picker, select custodians.
  5. Click Select.
  6. Click Release. If you're not releasing a custodian silently, Legal Hold sends the release notice and releases the custodian from the project. If the custodian is a Silent Custodian or if you've just released a custodian silently, that custodian won't receive a release notice from Legal Hold notifying that they were released from the project. See Assigning roles to custodians. If the Send Releases Notices for Legacy Projects is set to Yes, the custodian does not need any prior communication to be released.

Note: Releasing a custodian that is on a Preservation Hold will not remove the Preservation Hold from Microsoft 365.

Removing a custodian from the project console

You can remove a custodian from a project at any time. Removing means that this person is longer an active participant in the project and won't appear in any reports. A custodian cannot be removed if they have Custodian Interactions redirected to them from another custodian that has their Custodian Interaction level set to Redirect. For more information on redirecting communications, see Custodian Interaction level

Note: We do not recommend removing a custodian for auditing purposes. Only remove someone if they were added to a project by mistake.

To remove a custodian:

  1. From the Custodian console, click Remove.
  2. Select a custodians.
  3. Click Select (#).
  4. Click Remove.
  5. Verify that you want to remove the custodian from all selected projects or only from projects where they are already released.

Note: Custodians currently on a Preservation Hold cannot be deleted. In order for a custodian to be removed, the custodian cannot be on a preservation hold. To remove the custodian, change the role of the custodian from a preservation role to another role. For more information, see Changing a custodian's role.

Changing a custodian's role

You can change a custodian's role on a project at any time. For information on each roles, see Assigning roles to custodians.

To change a custodian's role:

  1. From the Project console, click Change Role.
  2. Select the checkbox next to a custodians.
  3. From the Assign Role drop-down menu, select a new role for the custodians.
  4. Click Select.
  5. Click Change Role.

Note: A warning will appear when changing a custodian's role from a preservation role to a non-preservation role. Select Yes to remove the custodian from the preservation hold or No to continue with the custodian's preservation hold. When a custodian is removed from a preservation hold, the custodian's data in Microsoft 365 is no longer preserved.

Manage Project

Manage the project using the buttons In the Manage Project section to create communications, send project reminders, and to close the project. The following buttons are available:

  • Create Communication—create a communication. See Creating a communication.
  • Project Reminder—send periodic reminders to all active, on-hold custodians to review their hold obligations on a specific project. These reminders can be sent without a required acknowledgement. For more information, see Project reminders.
  • Close Project—close a project. See Closing a project.

Data Preservation

Manage your preservation holds from the Project console. Click Preserve Data to navigate to the preservation wizard. For more information, see Using the preservation wizard .

Manage SharePoint preservation targets after they've been discovered. The following buttons are available:

  • Discover Targets—manually start the Sharepoint preservation target discovery process for the project's custodians. Can use to retry errors.
  • Select Targets—select Custodian's SharePoint target sites to be placed on a preservation hold. Access to the button when the custodian discovery status is Discovered. To learn how to select targets, follow the steps in Selecting SharePoint targets.

The length of the SharePoint targets discovery process in your environment depends on the size of your Microsoft 365 environment. Size depends on the number of users and how many custodians are on hold.

Selecting SharePoint targets

After discovering SharePoint targets, you need to select targets based on SharePoint URLs associated to a custodian.

To select targets, follow the steps below.

  1. Click the Select Targets console button.
  2. In the Select window, select the check boxes next to the custodian name and target URL you want to put on a preservation hold.
  3. Use the arrows to select the custodians.
  4. Click Select Targets.

Reports

Run a project-specific report from this section. The report appears inline. See Report types for more information about each report.

Note: You may not be able to view all reports depending on your permissions.

If you run the Question Responses report from the Project, or Communication console, you must manually clear the applied search condition by clicking the magnifying glass icon after Legal Hold reroutes you to the Question Responses tab. This is the only way to view other responses not related to a specified project, especially when navigating back to the Question Responses tab later in your browsing session.