Microsoft’s new Teams collaborative notes are rolling out in public preview and will soon introduce Loop based notes, agenda and tasks to your eDiscovery workflows. Previously, Teams meeting notes and comments were added to the shared Teams channel wiki and had limited functionality/adoption. Having recently spent time developing similar features for productive, well-formed meetings, I am excited to see Microsoft roll out this solution in just 6 months from roadmap.
However, this rapid development may prove to be a challenge to legal/risk/compliance stakeholders struggling to keep policies, practices and tools up to date. Office 365 Reports and Neowin have good articles covering the new features from admin and user perspectives. Before you panic, your admin can disable Loop components in OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams until you have a plan. Managing the Loop app and workspaces is a different beast and an upcoming topic.
As of April, Purview Premium eDiscovery (E5 license required) is rolling out search, preview and export HTML versions of loop components. That does not mean that your external eDiscovery platform or provider are ready for these new dynamic file types from the Microsoft ecosystem. I can envision scenarios wherein the conversion of the native .loop/.fluid files to flat HTML renderings may not ‘preserve’ vital context (metadata) or possibly break ‘modern’ embedded links/attachments.
Fundamentally, Loop components are simply tables, notes, tasks, etc. with expanded accessibility to enhance collaboration. The Purview team added support for collection of modern cloud attachments (within tenant) earlier this year. Peers should be able to test these new ESI sources and update your policies/practices to identify edge cases that may require special handling. Bring your downstream partners and counsel into the discussion to prevent unexpected bills or inadvertent omissions. Follow my upcoming pieces on Microsoft Substrate, Syntex repository services and more M365 compliance from the front lines.
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