Forum Discussion
eDiscovery case (Premium) and on-premise file share content
We have E5 license and Purview eDiscovery premium. We have a need to create eDiscovery case with on-premise file share data source. As part of this configuration, we have done the following:
- Installed a graph connector agent on the on-premise file share with azure app registration with the appropriate permissions.
- In Microsoft 365 admin center, configured file share data source linking to file share graph connector above. The files on the file server were successfully indexed. No issues.
However, in the next step, while creating an eDiscovery case (Premium), we don't see "Add Graph Connector as a data source within a case" to add the above graph connector. What are we missing?
The user has Global Administrator permissions.
5 Replies
Thanks for your response. Graph connectors really made sense for non-Microsoft 365 work loads and I don't understand why Microsoft backtracked on this solution. I started on this path by reading the documentation which no longer exists now. :(
Thank you for taking time to respond. You understood exactly what I am trying to achieve. Trust me I started on this work by reading up Microsoft's online documentation. It really made sense for me to proceed on this track with the graph connector. The eDiscovery (premium) graph connector page no longer exists now. There is not even mention of graph connector (now called copilot connector) data sources in the current documentation.
Thanks again.
You cannot have an on-premise file share as a data source. The only option you have is to search the external data and group the data into folders by custodian. Then you load the non-Microsoft 365 data into Microsoft 365 as part of an eDiscovery Premium Review set to a designated custodian. Then, when you search the review set for the custodian data, you see the option for the non-Microsoft data. The details are here Load non-Microsoft 365 data into a review set | Microsoft Learn
Thanks for your response. I understand that I cannot have on-premise file share as a data source. To bridge this gap, Microsoft recommended Graph connector agent which ingests data and makes the index available in o365 cloud for further use in its services. The documentation Microsoft website on using Graph connectors with eDiscovery (Premium) no longer exists. This is what it said before.
"Microsoft 365 customers can perform eDiscovery searches on content ingested for enterprise search. This support helps organizations improve their compliance posture to external content sources by bringing them within the purview of Microsoft compliance solutions. With Graph connectors, you can enable content from external data sources to be available to Microsoft Purview eDiscovery premium solution"
What you’re running into is actually a limitation of how Microsoft Purview treats graph connector data today. Graph connectors can index content from on-premises file shares and make it available for Microsoft Search. Still, they are not yet supported as a discoverable data source in Purview eDiscovery (Premium). That’s why when you create a case, you don’t see an option to add your connector as a source — the eDiscovery workflow only supports Microsoft 365 native workloads like Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, OneDrive, Teams, Viva Engage, and some third-party archiving connectors that have been integrated explicitly for compliance.
In your setup, the graph connector is working correctly, indexing the file share and making the content searchable through Microsoft 365 search experiences. The missing piece is that Purview eDiscovery Premium does not extend to this connector content. Currently, the supported route for on-premises file shares is either to migrate or copy the data into a supported cloud repository (for example, SharePoint Online or OneDrive for Business), thereby bringing it under Purview eDiscovery, or to utilize third-party eDiscovery/archiving tools for hybrid coverage.
you haven’t misconfigured anything, the feature doesn’t exist yet. Suppose your compliance team needs those on-prem file shares included in Purview eDiscovery Premium. In that case, the practical solution is to plan a migration of that data into Microsoft 365 or use a supported ingestion path that Purview recognizes as an eDiscovery source.
