In the first two parts of this series, we discussed the basics of email retention and some best practices to follow when implementing an email retention policy. Applying our research and best practices, Zoho Mail now provides our admins their very own eDiscovery portal. Our users can define retention policies, search and retrieve content, and hold investigations—all from the Zoho Mail platform.
Why choose Zoho Mail for email retention
With its unparalleled security and privacy, our model ensures your retained emails stay just as secure as your individual mailboxes. Features are designed for a quick, intuitive user experience, with rule-based filtering returning only relevant results. Having a robust eDiscovery tool built into your platform relieves the burden of having to add or adopt a third-party tool, as well as any doubts about the proper storage of your content. Take a look at how you can get your retention policies up and running.
Getting started with your default retention policy
Mail admins can access the eDiscovery portal through their control panel. Once you have enabled eDiscovery for your organization, your first step is to create a default retention policy, which will apply to all emails in your organization and can be set for either an indefinite period or a given number of days.
Devising custom retention policies
Sometimes, you may need to retain certain emails for a different period than your set default policy. With Zoho Mail, you can create custom policies and set conditions to specify which emails the policy will apply to. The condition query can be one or many email parameters like the subject, sender, recipient, content, attachments, and more. This is useful when you want to retain emails about a specific project or a specific contract for a custom period of time.
Defining retention rules
You may feel that retaining all emails may cost too much in storage for your business. In that case, our retention rules give you the flexibility to choose if you want to retain email across all folders or further scrutinize and retain only emails sent, received, or sent to and received from specific domains. You can also choose to include or exclude deleted and spam emails. The same level of flexibility extends to user accounts, too—simply select the email accounts and apply the retention policy you need.
Managing legal holds and investigations
One of the biggest benefits of email retention is it helps your organization be prepared in case of any legal issues. Whether you've had a complaint lodged against you or you need to investigate and collect proof of any potential information theft, Zoho Mail has features in the e-Discovery portal to help you manage and control the full investigation cycle. Once you create an Investigation inside your eDiscovery portal, here's a couple of processes that will come in handy.
Search:
It's as straightforward as the name suggests. When you suspect certain activity or you're required to turn in specific email data, you can prepare a search to start your discovery across selected or all email accounts. Our powerful Search uses advanced technology in which the entire email is indexed, including header, body, and attachments. This enables the admin to search through millions of emails and spot the one they need. Specify which query conditions have to be satisfied and preview search results to ensure you are using the right search conditions to find what you need.
Holds:
After you run and save a search, you can convert this into a hold on that set of emails, which overrides all other policies and continues to retain emails until the hold is removed. Alternatively, you can create a hold directly, instead of converting one from a Search. An investigation can have multiple holds, each retaining different sets of emails relevant to the same investigation.
Exports and Audit Logs:
To submit a record of the organization's email communication, admins can export saved search results or emails under a hold. To keep admins accountable, the Audit log tracks all activities inside the eDiscovery portal. This report can be previewed and downloaded.
If you're an admin, try out Zoho Mail's exhaustively designed eDiscovery portal. For more instructions and tips, take a look at our Help page.
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