Google Recently launched additional, crucial functionality in Vault, including full support for Drive, newly launched Team Drives, and Google Groups. Google Vault helps your organization meet its legal needs, by allowing you to manage your employees' G Suite data for eDiscovery and compliance purposes.

VAULT RETENTION POLICIES FOR GOOGLE DRIVE, INCLUDING TEAM DRIVES:

Now onward along with Emails, G Suite admins can search and export employee Drive files, they can also set retention policies to manage the lifecycle of files in My Drive and the just-launched Team Drives, regardless of whether they’re Google or non-Google files (as long as they’re owned by users in your domain).

This default rule will apply to all users in your domain. You can set an indefinite retention policy (such that files are never expunged), or you can choose to have files expunged at the end of a specific time period. This default rule can be applied to all files or only to files that have been deleted by users.

Admin can also set custom retention rules for specific organisational units (OUs) or for Team Drives. Like with mail, custom rules override the default rule and, if multiple custom rules apply to a file, the longest rule wins. Custom rules can be applied to all files or only to files that have been deleted by users.

The implementation of retention rules and holds, as well as the expiration of files in Drive, can be subject to delays:
When you create or update a retention rule or hold, it can take up to three hours for the rule to take effect and protect the relevant files. Files deleted by users during this period are not retained and cannot be retrieved.
When a retention coverage period expires or a hold is removed, it can take up to 15 days for affected files to be removed from Drive.

Unlike with mail, you cannot target custom Drive retention rules with specific terms.

LEGAL HOLDS ON GOOGLE DRIVE FILES

In addition to setting retention policies, you can now place legal holds on your employees' Google Drive and Team Drives files, whether they are Google files or non-Google files. Doing so will preserve all files that are owned by or shared with the user on hold, regardless of whether that user deletes those files. If a user on hold deletes a file, it will appear as deleted for him or her—but it will be available in Vault until the hold is removed. Remember that holds always take precedence over retention rules.

EXPORT POINT-IN-TIME GOOGLE DRIVE FILES

Vault now also allows you to export revisions of your employees’ Drive and Team Drive files from a specific point in time (this applies to Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Drawings files). This can be done by simply specifying the desired Version Date in the search form.

VAULT FOR GOOGLE GROUPS

Vault now works with Groups, meaning you can search, export, and set retention policies and place legal holds on your employees’ Groups content. Groups can be used for email lists, forums, and shared or collaborative inboxes, and now you can apply the same retention and eDiscovery programs that you use in Gmail for content stored in Groups archives.

Vault is fully integrated with Gmail and Google Groups. Thus when you’re searching for email with Vault, you're actually searching your organization’s message archive. This means:
Messages are available in Vault as soon as they're received by Gmail or posted to a Group.
You can use the same familiar search operators you use with Gmail.
Vault indexes approximately the first 250 pages of text in a message. 

Group owners are able to turn archiving on or off for their groups. You can use Vault to retain and search all messages in Groups where archiving is turned on. If a group owner turns archiving off, the messages from that group are still available in the mailboxes of licensed Vault users.

Notes:

• Both the retention policy and legal holds features are not yet available for Apps Script.

• This feature is not yet available for Google Forms, Apps Script, or any non-Google document types.

If you want to know more about Google Vault features or want to implement G Suite with Google vault for your organisation, please do contact us.