Microsoft Purview – The Difference Between eDiscovery Solutions

Want better records management? It’s worth considering an eDiscovery solution, especially if you already own Microsoft licenses. eDiscovery, is a method of recognizing and providing digital information to a standard that can be used in litigation. This is extremely useful and, in some cases, necessary in response to a lawsuit or investigation. Using eDiscovery in the Microsoft 365 Purview, content can be searched for and extracted from various everyday workspaces such as Microsoft Teams, SharePoint Online, Outlook/Exchange, and OneDrive.

There are three types of eDiscovery solutions: Content Search, eDiscovery (standard), and eDiscovery (premium). Each level contains everything in the level before it and adds more features on top. For example eDiscovery (standard) contains all the features included in Content Search, and eDiscovery (premium) contains all the features included in eDiscovery (standard), thus contains all the features in Content Search as well.

	Key Differences	Microsoft Licensing Required
Content Search	Content Search allows: Role-based permissions Export search results Search for content Keyword queries and search conditions Search statistics	A minimum of one of the following subscriptions are required for access. Office 365 E1 subscription Office 365 Education A1 subscription Office 365 Education A1 subscription Microsoft 365 E1 subscription Microsoft 365 G1 subscription Microsoft 365 F1 or F3 subscription, or F5 Security add-on
eDiscovery (standard)	eDiscovery (standard) allows: Everything in Content Search as well as Place content locations on legal hold Case Management	A minimum of one of the subscriptions below are required for access. Office 365 E3 subscription Microsoft 365 Education A3 or Office 365 Education A3 subscription Microsoft 365 F5 Compliance add-on or F5 Security & Compliance add-on Microsoft 365 G3 subscription Microsoft 365 E3 subscription
eDiscovery (premium)	eDiscovery (premium) allows: Everything in Content Search, eDiscovery (standard) Analytics Collection statistics and reports Optical character recognition Conversation threading Advanced indexing Tagging Custodian management Legal hold notifications Error remediation Exporting to customer-owned Azure Storage location Support for cloud attachments and SharePoint versions Review sets Review set filtering Predictive coding models Computed document metadata Transparency of long-running jobs	Microsoft 365 E5 or Office 365 E5 subscription Microsoft 365 Education A5 or Office 365 Education A5 subscription Microsoft 365 F5 Compliance add-on or F5 Security & Compliance add-on Microsoft 365 G5 subscription with G5 Compliance add-on Microsoft 365 G5 subscription with G5 eDiscovery and Audit add-on Microsoft 365 G5 subscription Microsoft 365 E3 subscription with E5 Compliance add-on Microsoft 365 E3 subscription with E5 eDiscovery and Audit add-on

As you can see, eDiscovery (premium) comes with many more features than eDiscovery (standard) and Content Search however the licensing required is more extensive and as you would assume, more expensive. For more details on eDiscovery features and the licenses required to operate it, contact Cadence Solutions.