Account admins can choose to retain Zoom Team Chat data at the user level for legal and compliance needs. This article guides admins through setting indefinite cloud storage retention for individual user(s) to effectively set a legal hold for that data. This Team Chat data can be exported by admins at any point the legal hold is active.

This article covers:

• Limitations for legal holds
• How to create a legal hold
  • Edit or delete a legal hold
• How to export legal hold data

Prerequisites for using legal holds

• Paid Zoom account
• Account owner or admin with Chat history permissions
• Cloud Storage retention enabled and set for at least 7 days
• Advanced Chat Encryption disabled

Note: It is also recommended that the Store edited and deleted message revisions Team Chat setting is also enabled.

Limitations for legal holds

• Retention policies for users placed under legal hold will override the Account, Group, and Channel-level settings for that particular user(s), even if storage is locked at the Account level.
• Code snippets and voice messages sent before May 20, 2023 will be reflected in the CSV export, but the attachments will not be included.
  • These can however be exported from the Chat History Report, if they are still within the cloud storage retention period.
• Emoji reactions are stored, unless they were deleted by the person providing the reaction.
• If a legal hold custodian is added as a member to an existing channel and allowed to see historical messages, then that channel’s data is only stored from the date that the custodian joins the channel.
• If a data deletion request comes in for a user under an active legal hold, then the legal hold data is not systematically deleted.
• If the following settings are enabled or disabled after a legal hold matter is created, then data may not be stored in the legal hold:
  • Enable advanced chat encryption: If this account level setting is enabled, then messages will not be stored.
  • Set retention period for messages and files in Zoom’s cloud: If this setting is disabled or set for less than 7 days, then impacted users’ messages will not be stored.
  • Store edited and deleted message revisions: If this account level setting is disabled, then the original version of messages that are edited or deleted by a user will not be stored.

How to create a legal hold

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an owner or admin.
2. In the navigation menu, click Account Management then Reports.
3. Click the User Activity Reports tab.
4. Click Legal Hold for Team Chat.
5. Click Add Matter.
6. Provide information for the following fields:
   • Matter Name: Provide a name for this legal hold. This may be an internal ticket ID or other name for the incident you are preserving.
   • Custodians*: Enter up to 20 email addresses of users on your account that you want Team Chat data preserved for.
   • Date Range*: Set an optional date range for how long to hold this chat data.
     Not providing a start-date will cause all data within the chat storage retention period to be held, while not providing an end-date will mean the data is held indefinitely.
     Note: The start date can be set before your account’s chat retention policy, but messages outside of the chat retention policy will not be held.
7. Click Save to confirm the details and create the legal hold.

*Note: After creating a legal hold, the Matter Name can be changed, but Custodians and the Date Range cannot be changed.

Edit or delete a legal hold

After creating a legal hold, it can be edited or deleted entirely.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an owner or admin.
2. In the navigation menu, click Account Management then Reports.
3. Click the User Activity Reports tab.
4. Click Legal Hold for Team Chat.
   Your account’s current legal holds are listed below.
5. To the right of each legal hold, the following options are available:
   • Edit icon : Click to edit the legal hold.
     Note: Only the name of the legal hold can be changed, with custodians and date ranges fields not editable after initial creation.
   • Delete icon : Click to delete the legal hold and then click Delete to confirm.
     Note: Deleting the legal hold will not directly delete the associated chat data, and instead the account’s chat retention policy will determine when the chat data is deleted.

How to export legal hold data

After creating a legal hold, the retained data can be exported for use and reference outside of Zoom.

1. Sign in to the Zoom web portal as an owner or admin.
2. In the navigation menu, click Account Management then Reports.
3. Click the User Activity Reports tab.
4. Click Legal Hold for Team Chat.
   Your account’s current legal holds are listed below.
5. To the right of the legal hold you want to export, click the file icon .
6. Click the Select a Custodian drop-down and choose a user from the list.
   Data prior to the legal hold creation date will be contained in one or more files (with each file being a maximum of 1 GB), while chat data after the creation of the legal hold will be generated each subsequent week.
7. To the right of the data listed, click the download icon .
8. (Alternatively) Click multiple checkboxes to select multiple records for download, then click Download Selected.