Given how much communication takes place on Slack and other collaboration platforms these days, it’s highly likely that important information could be hiding in the platform-and by ignoring Slack, teams are missing this crucial information. And, accordingly, they should take proactive steps to ensure that such data is preserved and can be collected, reviewed and produced in a manner that satisfies their legal obligations, while avoiding overproducing irrelevant or sensitive information.”Īpart from the issues of discovery, Slack is simply too valuable an evidence source to ignore.
![slack download all messages slack download all messages](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Ed8oS-5WkAAqFIt.png)
“Thus, companies should assume that they may be compelled to review and produce channel-based data if they become subject to litigation or investigation. “As more advanced e-discovery tools and techniques become available for management of channel-based data, and as use of channel-based platforms becomes more widespread within organizations, it is doubtful that companies will be able to withhold such data from discovery in all circumstances,” argues Brown Vierra. However, given how popular these platforms have become (and how much data they’re likely to contain), it’s safest for organizations to treat this particular form of ESI as discoverable. As lawyers Jessica Brown and Collin James Vierra write in their Law360 article, Are Your Slack Communications Primed For E-Discovery?, courts have had relatively few opportunities so far to consider the discovery obligations related to enterprise collaboration data. It’s also best to assume that Slack data is discoverable.
![slack download all messages slack download all messages](https://mspoweruser.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/slack-1200x819.jpg)
Just consider the very simple Slack interaction below:Īs with emails, PDFs, and other electronically stored information (ESI), Slack data needs to be taken into account when it comes to the discovery process. So when you combine this unstructured nature with the always-on real-time activity of the platform, knowing what information is hiding inside Slack can be difficult.
![slack download all messages slack download all messages](https://cdn.geekwire.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/Excel-File-Preview-on-Slack-Desktop.png)
And as this definition of unstructured data suggests, a lot of the data in modern enterprises would qualify as such, including PDFs, text documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, videos, and audio files.Ī team collaboration tool like Slack exists within the realm of unstructured data. Unstructured data is anything that does not reside in an RDBMS. There’s high consistency in terms of fields and values across database entries, so the relational nature of the data is easy to understand and the database is quick to search. A bank account or employee directory are good examples of this. In other words, if data resides within a relational database management system (RDBMS)-the basis for SQL (Structured Query Language)-it’s by nature highly structured. Structured data can best be described as anything that exists within a relational database. It’s also worth looking at the difference between structured and unstructured data. Is every employee’s emails being archived for seven years? Then the same should happen with enterprise collaboration records. So any organization looking to understand how they should handle the recordkeeping requirements of Slack need only look at how they currently deal with email. Simply put, if a recordkeeping rule applies to email, it also applies to an enterprise collaboration tool like Slack.
![slack download all messages slack download all messages](https://www.free-online-converters.com/blog/2020/09/5180-2.jpg)
Just like with email, Slack content should be archived meet the above requirements.