

The Projects tab contains all information related to all Legal Hold projects. In this tab, you can create, review, update, and close projects.
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.
Using the new user interface, Legal Hold now has default dashboards that help visualize project status and ownership.
The following fields are also available for use to create other customizable dashboards in Legal Hold:
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 | |
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 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.
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:
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 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 Adding legal hold settings.
When communications are created in the project, but not sent, the PRL icon is blank. The PRL isn't 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.
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.
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.
Manage the project's custodians using the buttons In the Managing Custodians section. The following buttons are available:
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:
To release a custodian:
Note: Releasing a custodian that is on a Preservation Hold will not remove the Preservation Hold from Microsoft 365.
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 don't recommend removing a custodian for auditing purposes. Only remove someone if they were added to a project by mistake.
To remove a custodian:
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.
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:
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 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:
Manage SharePoint preservation targets after they've been discovered. The following buttons are available:
After discovering SharePoint targets, you need to select targets based on SharePoint URLs associated to a custodian.
To select targets, follow the steps below.
Click the Select Targets console button.
In the Select window, select the check boxes next to the custodian name and target URL you want to put on a preservation hold.
Use the arrows to select the custodians.
Click Select Targets.
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.
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