Search and Purge using Microsoft Graph eDiscovery API
Welcome back to the series of blogs covering search and purge in Microsoft Purview eDiscovery! If you are new to this series, please first visit the blog post in our series that you can find here: Search and Purge workflow in the new modern eDiscovery experience Also, please ensure you have fully read the Microsoft Learn documentation on this topic as I will not be covering some of the steps in full (permissions, releasing holds, all limitations): Find and delete Microsoft Teams chat messages in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn So as a reminder, for E5/G5 customers and cases with premium features enabled- you must use the Graph API to execute the purge operation. With the eDiscovery Graph API, you have the option to create the case, create a search, generate statistics, create an item report and issue the purge command all from the Graph API. It is also possible to use the Purview Portal to create the case, create the search, generate statistics/samples and generate the item report. However, the final validation of the items that would be purged by rerunning the statistics operation and issuing the purge command must be run via the Graph API. In this post, we will take a look at two examples, one involving an email message and one involving a Teams message. I will also look to show how to call the graph APIs. Purging email messages via the Graph API In this example, I want to purge the following email incorrectly sent to Debra Berger. I also want to remove it from the sender's mailbox as well. Let’s assume in this example I do not know exactly who sent and received the email, but I do know the subject and date it was sent on. In this example, I am going to use the Modern eDiscovery Purview experience to create a new case where I will undertake some initial searches to locate the item. Once the case is created, I will Create a search and give it a name. In this example, I do not know all the mailboxes where the email is present, so my initial search is going to be a tenant wide search of all Exchange mailboxes, using the subject and date range as conditions to see which locations have hits. Note: For scenarios where you know the location of the items there is no requirement to do a tenant wide search. You can target the search to the know locations instead. I will then select Run Query and trigger a Statistics job to see which locations in the tenant have hits. For our purposes, we do not need to select Include categories, Include query keywords report or Include partially indexed items. This will trigger a Generate statistics job and take you to the Statistics tab of the search. Once the job completes it will display information on the total matches and number of locations with hits. To find out exactly which locations have hits, I can use the improved process reports to review more granular detail on the locations with hits. The report for the Generate statistics job can be found by selecting Process manager and then selecting the job. Once displayed I can download the reports associated with this process by selecting Download report. Once we have downloaded the report for the process, we get a ZIP file containing four different reports, to understand where I had hits I can review the Locations report within the zip file. If I open the locations report and filter on the count column I can see in this instance I have two locations with hits, Admin and DebraB. I will use this to make my original search more targeted. It also gives me an opportunity to check that I am not going to exceed the limits on the number of items I can target for the purge per execution. Returning to our original search I will remove All people and groups from my Data Sources and replace it with the two locations I had hits from. I will re-run my Generate Statistics job to ensure I am still getting the expected results. As the numbers align and remain consistent, I will do a further check and generate samples from the search. This will allow me to review the items to confirm that they are the items I wish to purge. From the search query I select Run query and select Sample. This will trigger a Generate sample job and take you to the Sample tab of the search. Once complete, I can review samples of the items returned by the search to confirm if these items are the items I want to purge. Now that I have confirmed, based on the sampling, that I have the items I want to purge I want to generate a detailed item report of all items that are a match for my search. To do this I need to generate an export report for the search. Note: Sampling alone may not return all the results impacted by the search, it only returns a sample of the items that match the query. To determine the full set of items that will be targeted we need to generate the export report. From the Search I can select Export to perform a direct export without having to add the data to a review set (available when premium features are enabled). Ensure to configure the following options on the export: Indexed items that match your search query Unselect all the options under Messages and related items from mailboxes and Exchange Online Export Item report only If you want to manually review the items that would be impacted by the purge operation you can optionally export the items alongside the items report for further review. You can also add the search to a review set to review the items that you are targeting. The benefit of adding to the review set is that it enables to you review the items whilst still keeping the data within the M365 service boundary. Note: If you add to a review set, a copy of the items will remain in the review set until the case is deleted. I can review the progress of the export job and download the report via the Process Manager. Once I have downloaded the report, I can review the Items.csv file to check the items targeted by the search. It is at this stage I must switch to using the Graph APIs to validate the actions that will be taken by the purge command and to issue the purge command itself. Not undertaking these additional validation steps can result in un-intended purge of data. There are two approaches you can use to interact with the Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs: Via Graph Explorer Via the MS.Graph PS module For this example, I will show how to use the Graph Explorer to make the relevant Graph API calls. For the Teams example, I will use the MS.Graph PS Module. We are going to use the APIs to complete the following steps: Trigger a statistics job via the API and review the results Trigger the purge command The Graph Explorer can be accessed via the following link: Graph Explorer | Try Microsoft Graph APIs - Microsoft Graph To start using the Graph Explorer to work with Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs you first need to sign in with your admin account. You need to ensure that you consent to the required Microsoft Graph eDiscovery API permissions by selecting Consent to permissions. From the Permissions flyout search for eDiscovery and select Consent for eDiscovery.ReadWrite.All. When prompted to consent to the permissions for the Graph Explorer select Accept. Optionally you can consent on behalf of your organisation to suppress this step for others. Once complete we can start making calls to the APIs via Graph Explorer. To undertake the next steps we need to capture some additional information, specifically the Case ID and the Search ID. We can get the case ID from the Case Settings in the Purview Portal, recording the Id value shown on the Case details pane. If we return to the Graph Explorer we can use this CaseID to see all the searches within an eDiscovery case. The structure of the HTTPS call is as follows: GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/<caseID>/searches List searches - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn If we replace <caseID> with the Id we captured from the case settings we can issue the API call to see all the searches within the case to find the required search ID. When you issue the GET request in Graph Explorer you can review the Response preview to find the search ID we are looking for. Now that we have the case ID and the Search ID we can trigger an estimate by using the following Graph API call. POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/{ediscoveryCaseId}/searches/{ediscoverySearchId}/estimateStatistics ediscoverySearch: estimateStatistics - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Once you issue the POST command you will be returned with an Accepted – 202 message. Now I need to use the following REST API call to review the status of the Estimate Statistics job in Graph Explorer. GET https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/{ediscoveryCaseId}/searches/{ediscoverySearchId}/lastEstimateStatisticsOperation List lastEstimateStatisticsOperation - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn If the estimates job is not complete when you run the GET command the Response preview contents will show the status as running. If the estimates job is complete when you run the GET command the Response preview contents will show you the results of the estimates job. CRITICAL: Ensure that the indexedItemCount matches the items returned in the item report generated via the Portal. If this does not match do not proceed to issuing the purge command. Now that I have validated everything, I am ready to issue the purge command via the Graph API. I will use the following Graph API call. POST https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/{ediscoveryCaseId}/searches/{ediscoverySearchId}/purgeData ediscoverySearch: purgeData - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn With this POST command we also need to provide a Request Body to tell the API which areas we want to target (mailboxes or teamsMessages) and the purge type (recoverable, permantlyDelete). As we are targeting email items I will use mailboxes as the PurgeAreas option. As I only want to remove the item from the user’s mailbox view I am going to use recoverable as the PurgeType. { "purgeType": "recoverable", "purgeAreas": "mailboxes" } Once you issue the POST command you will be returned with an Accepted – 202 message. Once the command has been issued it will proceed to purge the items that match the search criteria from the locations targeted. If I go back to my original example, we can now see the item has been removed from the users mailbox. As it has been soft deleted I can review the recoverable items folder from Outlook on the Web where I will see that for the user, it has now been deleted pending clean-up from their mailbox. Purging Teams messages via the Graph API In this example, I want to purge the following Teams conversation between Debra, Adele and the admin (CDX) from all participants Teams client. I am going to reuse the “HK016 – Search and Purge” case to create a new search called “Teams conversation removal”. I add three participants of the chat as Data sources to the search, I am then going to use the KeyQL condition to target the items I want to remove. In this example I am using the following KeyQL. (Participants=AdeleV@M365x00001337.OnMicrosoft.com AND Participants=DebraB@M365x00001337.OnMicrosoft.com AND Participants=admin@M365x00001337.onmicrosoft.com) AND (Kind=im OR Kind=microsoftteams) AND (Date=2025-06-04) This is looking for all Teams messages that contain all three participants sent on the 4 th of June 2025. It is critical when targeting Teams messages that I ensure my query targets exactly the items that I want to purge. With Teams messages (opposed to email items) there are less options available that enable us to granularly target the team items for purging. Note: The use of the new Identifier condition is not supported for purge options. Use of this can lead to unintended data to be removed and should not be used as a condition in the search at this time. If I was to be looking for a very specific phrase, I could further refine the query by using the Keyword condition to look for that specific Teams message. Once I have created my search I am ready to generate both Statistics and Samples to enable me to validate I am targeting the right items for my search. My statistics job has returned 21 items, 7 from each location targeted. This aligns with the number of items within the Teams conversation. However, I am going to also validate that the samples I have generated match the content I want to purge, ensuring that I haven’t inadvertently returned additional items I was not expecting. Now that I have confirmed, based on the sampling, that the sample of items returned look to be correct I want to generate a detailed item report of all items that are a match for my search. To do this I need to generate an export report for the search. From the Search I can select Export to perform a direct export without having to add the data to a review set (available when premium features are enabled). Ensure to configure the following options on the export: Indexed items that match your search query Unselect all the options under Messages and related items from mailboxes and Exchange Online Export Item report only Once I select Export it will create a new export job, I can review the progress of the job and download the report via the Process Manager. Once I have downloaded the report, I can review the Items.csv file to check the items targeted by the search and that would be purged when I issue the purge call. Now that I have confirmed that the search is targeting the items I want to purge it is at this stage I must switch to using the Graph APIs. As discussed, there are two approaches you can use to interact with the Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs: Using Graph Explorer Using the MS.Graph PS module For this example, I will show how to use the MS.Graph PS Module to make the relevant Graph API calls. To understand how to use the Graph Explorer to issue the purge command please refer to the previous example for purging email messages. We are going to use the APIs to complete the following steps: Trigger a statistics job via the API and review the results Trigger the purge command To install the MS.Graph PowerShell module please refer to the following article. Install the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK | Microsoft Learn To understand more about the MS.Graph PS module and how to get started you can review the following article. Get started with the Microsoft Graph PowerShell SDK | Microsoft Learn Once the PowerShell module is installed you can connect to the eDiscovery Graph APIs by running the following command. connect-mgGraph -Scopes "ediscovery.ReadWrite.All" You will be prompted to authenticate, once complete you will be presented with the following banner. To undertake the next steps we need to capture some additional information, specifically the Case ID and the Search ID. As before we can get the case ID from the Case Settings in the Purview Portal, recording the Id value shown on the Case details pane. Alternatively we can use the following PowerShell command to find a list of cases and their ID. get-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCase | ft displayname,id List ediscoveryCases - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Once we have the ID of the case we want to execute the purge command from, we can run the following command to find the IDs of all the search jobs in the case. Get-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearch -EdiscoveryCaseId <ediscoveryCaseId> | ft displayname,id,ContentQuery List searches - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Now that we have both the Case ID and the Search ID we can trigger the generate statistics job using the following command. Invoke-MgEstimateSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearchStatistics -EdiscoveryCaseId <ediscoveryCaseId> -EdiscoverySearchId <ediscoverySearchId> ediscoverySearch: estimateStatistics - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Now I need to use the following command to review the status of the Estimate Statistics job. Get-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearchLastEstimateStatisticsOperation -EdiscoveryCaseID <ediscoveryCaseId> -EdiscoverySearchId <ediscoverySearchId> List lastEstimateStatisticsOperation - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn If the estimates job is not complete when you run the command the status will show as running. If the estimates job is complete when you run the command status will show as succeeded and will also show the number of hits in the IndexItemCount. CRITICAL: Ensure that the indexedItemCount matches the items returned in the item report generated via the Portal. If this does not match do not proceed to issuing the purge command. Now that I have validated everything I am ready to issue the purge command via the Graph API. With this command we need to provide a Request Body to tell the API which areas we want to target (mailboxes or teamsMessages) and the purge type (recoverable, permantlyDelete). As we are targeting teams items I will use teamsMessages as the PurgeAreas option. Note: If you specify mailboxes then only the compliance copy stored in the user mailbox will be purged and not the item from the teams services itself. This will mean the item will remain visible to the user in Teams and can no longer be purged. When purgeType is set to either recoverable or permanentlyDelete and purgeAreas is set to teamsMessages, the Teams messages are permanently deleted. In other words either option will result in the permanent deletion of the items from Teams and they cannot be recovered. $params = @{ purgeType = "recoverable" purgeAreas = "teamsMessages" } Once I have prepared my request body I will issue the following command. Clear-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCaseSearchData -EdiscoveryCaseId $ediscoveryCaseId -EdiscoverySearchId $ediscoverySearchId -BodyParameter $params ediscoverySearch: purgeData - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Once the command has been issued it will proceed to purge the items that match the search criteria from the locations targeted. If I go back to my original example, we can now see the items has been removed from Teams. Congratulations, you have made it to the end of the blog post. Hopefully you found it useful and it assists you to build your own operational processes for using the Graph API to issue search and purge actions.Registration Open: Community-Led Purview Lightning Talks
Get ready for an electrifying event! The Microsoft Security Community proudly presents Purview Lightning Talks; an action-packed series featuring your fellow Microsoft users, partners and passionate Microsoft Security community members of all sorts. Each 3-12 minute talk cuts straight to the chase, delivering expert insights, real-world use cases, and even a few game-changing tips and tricks. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn, connect, and be inspired! Secure your spot now for the big day: April 30th at 8am Redmond Time. 💙 See agenda details below and follow this blog post (sign in and click the "follow" heart in the upper right) to receive notifications. We have more speaker details and community connection information coming soon! AGENDA The Day Offboarding Exposed Infinite Retention - Nikki Chapple nikkichapple A real-world discovery of orphaned OneDrives and retention debt caused by retain-only policies, and how Adaptive Scopes help prevent it. Topic: Data Lifecycle Management Securing Data in the Age of AI - Julio Cesar Goncalves Vasconcelos How Microsoft Purview enables organizations to accelerate AI adoption while maintaining security, compliance, and transparency. Topic: Purview for AI What’s In My Compliance Manager Toolbox - Jerrad Dahlager j-dahl7 A practical walkthrough of using Compliance Manager to map controls, track improvements, and simplify multi-framework compliance. Topic: Compliance Manager Why You Should Create Your Own Sensitive Information Types (SITs) - Niels Jakobsen Niels_Jakobsen An in-depth analysis of why built-in SITs are not one-size-fits-all, and how to tailor them for real enterprise needs. Topic: Information Protection Beyond eDiscovery – Purview DSI for Security Investigation - Susantha Silva How to turn DLP alerts and Insider Risk signals into structured data investigations without jumping between portals. Topic: Data Security (DSI) Four Labels Max for Daily Use: Which Ones & Why? - Romain Dalle Romain DALLE A minimalist sensitivity labeling baseline designed for real-world adoption and usability. Topic: Information Protection Elevating Purview DLP with a Real-World Use Case - Victor Wingsing vicwingsing Hardening Purview DLP beyond default configurations to close real-world data loss gaps. Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Stop, Think, Protect: Data Security in Real Life with Purview - Oliver Sahlmann Oliver Sahlmann A traffic-light approach showing how simple labels and DLP policies still deliver meaningful protection. Topic: Data Security The Purview Label Engine: Automated Classification & Documentation - Michael Kirst Neshva MichaelKirst1970 A scalable framework for rolling out Microsoft Purview labels across global, multilingual enterprises. Topic: Information Protection Data-Driven Endpoint DLP with Advanced Hunting - Tatu Seppälä tatuseppala Using KQL queries and usage patterns to refine endpoint DLP policies based on real behavior. Topic: Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Improving Discovery, Trust, and Reuse of Analytics with Purview Data Products - Craig Wyndowe CraigWyndowe How Purview Governance Domains and Data Products create a trusted, reusable analytics ecosystem. Topic: Data Governance From Zero to First Signal: Insider Risk Management Prerequisites That Matter - Sathish Veerapandian Sathish Veerapandian A focused look at the configurations required for Insider Risk Management to actually generate alerts. Topic: Insider Risk Management The Purview Hack No One Talks About: Container Sensitivity Labels - Nikki Chapple nikkichapple How container sensitivity labels instantly fix oversharing for Teams, Groups, and SharePoint sites. Topic: Information Protection Using Purview to Prevent Oversharing with AI Services - Viktor Hedberg headburgh How Information Protection and DLP prevent Copilot and AI services from exposing sensitive data. Topic: Information Protection & DLP How I Helped Customers Understand Their AI Usage (and Protect Data) - Bram de Jager Bram de Jager Exposing risky AI usage patterns and protecting sensitive data entered into public AI tools. Topic: Data Security Posture Management for AI Bulk Sensitivity Label Removal with Microsoft Purview Information Protection (MPIP) - Zak Hepler A practical demo on safely removing sensitivity labels at scale from SharePoint libraries. Topic: Information Protection Does M365 Support eDiscovery? (Mythbusting) - Julian Kusenberg Leprechaun91 A myth-busting session separating perception from reality in Microsoft 365 eDiscovery. Topic: eDiscoverySecurity as the core primitive - Securing AI agents and apps
This week at Microsoft Ignite, we shared our vision for Microsoft security -- In the agentic era, security must be ambient and autonomous, like the AI it protects. It must be woven into and around everything we build—from silicon to OS, to agents, apps, data, platforms, and clouds—and throughout everything we do. In this blog, we are going to dive deeper into many of the new innovations we are introducing this week to secure AI agents and apps. As I spend time with our customers and partners, there are four consistent themes that have emerged as core security challenges to secure AI workloads. These are: preventing agent sprawl and access to resources, protecting against data oversharing and data leaks, defending against new AI threats and vulnerabilities, and adhering to evolving regulations. Addressing these challenges holistically requires a coordinated effort across IT, developers, and security leaders, not just within security teams and to enable this, we are introducing several new innovations: Microsoft Agent 365 for IT, Foundry Control Plane in Microsoft Foundry for developers, and the Security Dashboard for AI for security leaders. In addition, we are releasing several new purpose-built capabilities to protect and govern AI apps and agents across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. Observability at every layer of the stack To facilitate the organization-wide effort that it takes to secure and govern AI agents and apps – IT, developers, and security leaders need observability (security, management, and monitoring) at every level. IT teams need to enable the development and deployment of any agent in their environment. To ensure the responsible and secure deployment of agents into an organization, IT needs a unified agent registry, the ability to assign an identity to every agent, manage the agent’s access to data and resources, and manage the agent’s entire lifecycle. In addition, IT needs to be able to assign access to common productivity and collaboration tools, such as email and file storage, and be able to observe their entire agent estate for risks such as over-permissioned agents. Development teams need to build and test agents, apply security and compliance controls by default, and ensure AI models are evaluated for safety guardrails and security vulnerabilities. Post deployment, development teams must observe agents to ensure they are staying on task, accessing applications and data sources appropriately, and operating within their cost and performance expectations. Security & compliance teams must ensure overall security of their AI estate, including their AI infrastructure, platforms, data, apps, and agents. They need comprehensive visibility into all their security risks- including agent sprawl and resource access, data oversharing and leaks, AI threats and vulnerabilities, and complying with global regulations. They want to address these risks by extending their existing security investments that they are already invested in and familiar with, rather than using siloed or bolt-on tools. These teams can be most effective in delivering trustworthy AI to their organizations if security is natively integrated into the tools and platforms that they use every day, and if those tools and platforms share consistent security primitives such as agent identities from Entra; data security and compliance controls from Purview; and security posture, detections, and protections from Defender. With the new capabilities being released today, we are delivering observability at every layer of the AI stack, meeting IT, developers, and security teams where they are in the tools they already use to innovate with confidence. For IT Teams - Introducing Microsoft Agent 365, the control plane for agents, now in preview The best infrastructure for managing your agents is the one you already use to manage your users. With Agent 365, organizations can extend familiar tools and policies to confidently deploy and secure agents, without reinventing the wheel. By using the same trusted Microsoft 365 infrastructure, productivity apps, and protections, organizations can now apply consistent and familiar governance and security controls that are purpose-built to protect against agent-specific threats and risks. gement and governance of agents across organizations Microsoft Agent 365 delivers a unified agent Registry, Access Control, Visualization, Interoperability, and Security capabilities for your organization. These capabilities work together to help organizations manage agents and drive business value. The Registry powered by the Entra provides a complete and unified inventory of all the agents deployed and used in your organization including both Microsoft and third-party agents. Access Control allows you to limit the access privileges of your agents to only the resources that they need and protect their access to resources in real time. Visualization gives organizations the ability to see what matters most and gain insights through a unified dashboard, advanced analytics, and role-based reporting. Interop allows agents to access organizational data through Work IQ for added context, and to integrate with Microsoft 365 apps such as Outlook, Word, and Excel so they can create and collaborate alongside users. Security enables the proactive detection of vulnerabilities and misconfigurations, protects against common attacks such as prompt injections, prevents agents from processing or leaking sensitive data, and gives organizations the ability to audit agent interactions, assess compliance readiness and policy violations, and recommend controls for evolving regulatory requirements. Microsoft Agent 365 also includes the Agent 365 SDK, part of Microsoft Agent Framework, which empowers developers and ISVs to build agents on their own AI stack. The SDK enables agents to automatically inherit Microsoft's security and governance protections, such as identity controls, data security policies, and compliance capabilities, without the need for custom integration. For more details on Agent 365, read the blog here. For Developers - Introducing Microsoft Foundry Control Plane to observe, secure and manage agents, now in preview Developers are moving fast to bring agents into production, but operating them at scale introduces new challenges and responsibilities. Agents can access tools, take actions, and make decisions in real time, which means development teams must ensure that every agent behaves safely, securely, and consistently. Today, developers need to work across multiple disparate tools to get a holistic picture of the cybersecurity and safety risks that their agents may have. Once they understand the risk, they then need a unified and simplified way to monitor and manage their entire agent fleet and apply controls and guardrails as needed. Microsoft Foundry provides a unified platform for developers to build, evaluate and deploy AI apps and agents in a responsible way. Today we are excited to announce that Foundry Control Plane is available in preview. This enables developers to observe, secure, and manage their agent fleets with built-in security, and centralized governance controls. With this unified approach, developers can now identify risks and correlate disparate signals across their models, agents, and tools; enforce consistent policies and quality gates; and continuously monitor task adherence and runtime risks. Foundry Control Plane is deeply integrated with Microsoft’s security portfolio to provide a ‘secure by design’ foundation for developers. With Microsoft Entra, developers can ensure an agent identity (Agent ID) and access controls are built into every agent, mitigating the risk of unmanaged agents and over permissioned resources. With Microsoft Defender built in, developers gain contextualized alerts and posture recommendations for agents directly within the Foundry Control Plane. This integration proactively prevents configuration and access risks, while also defending agents from runtime threats in real time. Microsoft Purview’s native integration into Foundry Control Plane makes it easy to enable data security and compliance for every Foundry-built application or agent. This allows Purview to discover data security and compliance risks and apply policies to prevent user prompts and AI responses from safety and policy violations. In addition, agent interactions can be logged and searched for compliance and legal audits. This integration of the shared security capabilities, including identity and access, data security and compliance, and threat protection and posture ensures that security is not an afterthought; it’s embedded at every stage of the agent lifecycle, enabling you to start secure and stay secure. For more details, read the blog. For Security Teams - Introducing Security Dashboard for AI - unified risk visibility for CISOs and AI risk leaders, coming soon AI proliferation in the enterprise, combined with the emergence of AI governance committees and evolving AI regulations, leaves CISOs and AI risk leaders needing a clear view of their AI risks, such as data leaks, model vulnerabilities, misconfigurations, and unethical agent actions across their entire AI estate, spanning AI platforms, apps, and agents. 90% of security professionals, including CISOs, report that their responsibilities have expanded to include data governance and AI oversight within the past year. 1 At the same time, 86% of risk managers say disconnected data and systems lead to duplicated efforts and gaps in risk coverage. 2 To address these needs, we are excited to introduce the Security Dashboard for AI. This serves as a unified dashboard that aggregates posture and real-time risk signals from Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. This unified dashboard allows CISOs and AI risk leaders to discover agents and AI apps, track AI posture and drift, and correlate risk signals to investigate and act across their entire AI ecosystem. For example, you can see your full AI inventory and get visibility into a quarantined agent, flagged for high data risk due to oversharing sensitive information in Purview. The dashboard then correlates that signal with identity insights from Entra and threat protection alerts from Defender to provide a complete picture of exposure. From there, you can delegate tasks to the appropriate teams to enforce policies and remediate issues quickly. With the Security Dashboard for AI, CISOs and risk leaders gain a clear, consolidated view of AI risks across agents, apps, and platforms—eliminating fragmented visibility, disconnected posture insights, and governance gaps as AI adoption scales. Best of all, there’s nothing new to buy. If you’re already using Microsoft security products to secure AI, you’re already a Security Dashboard for AI customer. Figure 5: Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a unified view of their AI risk by bringing together their AI inventory, AI risk, and security recommendations to strengthen overall posture Together, these innovations deliver observability and security across IT, development, and security teams, powered by Microsoft’s shared security capabilities. With Microsoft Agent 365, IT teams can manage and secure agents alongside users. Foundry Control Plane gives developers unified governance and lifecycle controls for agent fleets. Security Dashboard for AI provides CISOs and AI risk leaders with a consolidated view of AI risks across platforms, apps, and agents. Added innovation to secure and govern your AI workloads In addition to the IT, developer, and security leader-focused innovations outlined above, we continue to accelerate our pace of innovation in Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, and Microsoft Defender to address the most pressing needs for securing and governing your AI workloads. These needs are: Manage agent sprawl and resource access e.g. managing agent identity, access to resources, and permissions lifecycle at scale Prevent data oversharing and leaks e.g. protecting sensitive information shared in prompts, responses, and agent interactions Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities e.g. managing unsanctioned applications, preventing prompt injection attacks, and detecting AI supply chain vulnerabilities Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance e.g. ensuring AI development, operations, and usage comply with evolving global regulations and frameworks Manage agent sprawl and resource access 76% of business leaders expect employees to manage agents within the next 2–3 years. 3 Widespread adoption of agents is driving the need for visibility and control, which includes the need for a unified registry, agent identities, lifecycle governance, and secure access to resources. Today, Microsoft Entra provides robust identity protection and secure access for applications and users. However, organizations lack a unified way to manage, govern, and protect agents in the same way they manage their users. Organizations need a purpose-built identity and access framework for agents. Introducing Microsoft Entra Agent ID, now in preview Microsoft Entra Agent ID offers enterprise-grade capabilities that enable organizations to prevent agent sprawl and protect agent identities and their access to resources. These new purpose-built capabilities enable organizations to: Register and manage agents: Get a complete inventory of the agent fleet and ensure all new agents are created with an identity built-in and are automatically protected by organization policies to accelerate adoption. Govern agent identities and lifecycle: Keep the agent fleet under control with lifecycle management and IT-defined guardrails for both agents and people who create and manage them. Protect agent access to resources: Reduce risk of breaches, block risky agents, and prevent agent access to malicious resources with conditional access and traffic inspection. Agents built in Microsoft Copilot Studio, Microsoft Foundry, and Security Copilot get an Entra Agent ID built-in at creation. Developers can also adopt Entra Agent ID for agents they build through Microsoft Agent Framework, Microsoft Agent 365 SDK, or Microsoft Entra Agent ID SDK. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. Prevent data oversharing and leaks Data security is more complex than ever. Information Security Media Group (ISMG) reports that 80% of leaders cite leakage of sensitive data as their top concern. 4 In addition to data security and compliance risks of generative AI (GenAI) apps, agents introduces new data risks such as unsupervised data access, highlighting the need to protect all types of corporate data, whether it is accessed by employees or agents. To mitigate these risks, we are introducing new Microsoft Purview data security and compliance capabilities for Microsoft 365 Copilot and for agents and AI apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, providing unified protection, visibility, and control for users, AI Apps, and Agents. New Microsoft Purview controls safeguard Microsoft 365 Copilot with real-time protection and bulk remediation of oversharing risks Microsoft Purview and Microsoft 365 Copilot deliver a fully integrated solution for protecting sensitive data in AI workflows. Based on ongoing customer feedback, we’re introducing new capabilities to deliver real-time protection for sensitive data in M365 Copilot and accelerated remediation of oversharing risks: Data risk assessments: Previously, admins could monitor oversharing risks such as SharePoint sites with unprotected sensitive data. Now, they can perform item-level investigations and bulk remediation for overshared files in SharePoint and OneDrive to quickly reduce oversharing exposure. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) for M365 Copilot: DLP previously excluded files with sensitivity labels from Copilot processing. Now in preview, DLP also prevents prompts that include sensitive data from being processed in M365 Copilot, Copilot Chat, and Copilot agents, and prevents Copilot from using sensitive data in prompts for web grounding. Priority cleanup for M365 Copilot assets: Many organizations have org-wide policies to retain or delete data. Priority cleanup, now generally available, lets admins delete assets that are frequently processed by Copilot, such as meeting transcripts and recordings, on an independent schedule from the org-wide policies while maintaining regulatory compliance. On-demand classification for meeting transcripts: Purview can now detect sensitive information in meeting transcripts on-demand. This enables data security admins to apply DLP policies and enforce Priority cleanup based on the sensitive information detected. & bulk remediation Read the full Data Security blog to learn more. Introducing new Microsoft Purview data security capabilities for agents and apps built with Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry, now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends the same data security and compliance for users and Copilots to agents and apps. These new capabilities are: Enhanced Data Security Posture Management: A centralized DSPM dashboard that provides observability, risk assessment, and guided remediation across users, AI apps, and agents. Insider Risk Management (IRM) for Agents: Uniquely designed for agents, using dedicated behavioral analytics, Purview dynamically assigns risk levels to agents based on their risky handing of sensitive data and enables admins to apply conditional policies based on that risk level. Sensitive data protection with Azure AI Search: Azure AI Search enables fast, AI-driven retrieval across large document collections, essential for building AI Apps. When apps or agents use Azure AI Search to index or retrieve data, Purview sensitivity labels are preserved in the search index, ensuring that any sensitive information remains protected under the organization’s data security & compliance policies. For more information on preventing data oversharing and data leaks - Learn how Purview protects and governs agents in the Data Security and Compliance for Agents blog. Defend against shadow AI, new threats, and vulnerabilities AI workloads are subject to new AI-specific threats like prompt injections attacks, model poisoning, and data exfiltration of AI generated content. Although security admins and SOC analysts have similar tasks when securing agents, the attack methods and surfaces differ significantly. To help customers defend against these novel attacks, we are introducing new capabilities in Microsoft Defender that deliver end-to-end protection, from security posture management to runtime defense. Introducing Security Posture Management for agents, now in preview As organizations adopt AI agents to automate critical workflows, they become high-value targets and potential points of compromise, creating a critical need to ensure agents are hardened, compliant, and resilient by preventing misconfigurations and safeguarding against adversarial manipulation. Security Posture Management for agents in Microsoft Defender now provides an agent inventory for security teams across Microsoft Foundry and Copilot Studio agents. Here, analysts can assess the overall security posture of an agent, easily implement security recommendations, and identify vulnerabilities such as misconfigurations and excessive permissions, all aligned to the MITRE ATT&CK framework. Additionally, the new agent attack path analysis visualizes how an agent’s weak security posture can create broader organizational risk, so you can quickly limit exposure and prevent lateral movement. Introducing Threat Protection for agents, now in preview Attack techniques and attack surfaces for agents are fundamentally different from other assets in your environment. That’s why Defender is delivering purpose-built protections and detections to help defend against them. Defender is introducing runtime protection for Copilot Studio agents that automatically block prompt injection attacks in real time. In addition, we are announcing agent-specific threat detections for Copilot Studio and Microsoft Foundry agents coming soon. Defender automatically correlates these alerts with Microsoft’s industry-leading threat intelligence and cross-domain security signals to deliver richer, contextualized alerts and security incident views for the SOC analyst. Defender’s risk and threat signals are natively integrated into the new Microsoft Foundry Control Plane, giving development teams full observability and the ability to act directly from within their familiar environment. Finally, security analysts will be able to hunt across all agent telemetry in the Advanced Hunting experience in Defender, and the new Agent 365 SDK extends Defender’s visibility and hunting capabilities to third-party agents, starting with Genspark and Kasisto, giving security teams even more coverage across their AI landscape. To learn more about how you can harden the security posture of your agents and defend against threats, read the Microsoft Defender blog. Enable AI governance for regulatory compliance Global AI regulations like the EU AI Act and NIST AI RMF are evolving rapidly; yet, according to ISMG, 55% of leaders report lacking clarity on current and future AI regulatory requirements. 5 As enterprises adopt AI, they must ensure that their AI innovation aligns with global regulations and standards to avoid costly compliance gaps. Introducing new Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager capabilities to stay ahead of evolving AI regulations, now in preview Today, Purview Compliance Manager provides over 300 pre-built assessments for common industry, regional, and global standards and regulations. However, the pace of change for new AI regulations requires controls to be continuously re-evaluated and updated so that organizations can adapt to ongoing changes in regulations and stay compliant. To address this need, Compliance Manager now includes AI-powered regulatory templates. AI-powered regulatory templates enable real-time ingestion and analysis of global regulatory documents, allowing compliance teams to quickly adapt to changes as they happen. As regulations evolve, the updated regulatory documents can be uploaded to Compliance Manager, and the new requirements are automatically mapped to applicable recommended actions to implement controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, Microsoft Purview, Microsoft 365, and Microsoft Foundry. Automated actions by Compliance Manager further streamline governance, reduce manual workload, and strengthen regulatory accountability. Introducing expanded Microsoft Purview compliance capabilities for agents and AI apps now in preview Microsoft Purview now extends its compliance capabilities across agent-generated interactions, ensuring responsible use and regulatory alignment as AI becomes deeply embedded across business processes. New capabilities include expanded coverage for: Audit: Surface agent interactions, lifecycle events, and data usage with Purview Audit. Unified audit logs across user and agent activities, paired with traceability for every agent using an Entra Agent ID, support investigation, anomaly detection, and regulatory reporting. Communication Compliance: Detect prompts sent to agents and agent-generated responses containing inappropriate, unethical, or risky language, including attempts to manipulate agents into bypassing policies, generating risky content, or producing noncompliant outputs. When issues arise, data security admins get full context, including the prompt, the agent’s output, and relevant metadata, so they can investigate and take corrective action Data Lifecycle Management: Apply retention and deletion policies to agent-generated content and communication flows to automate lifecycle controls and reduce regulatory risk. Read about Microsoft Purview data security for agents to learn more. Finally, we are extending our data security, threat protection, and identity access capabilities to third-party apps and agents via the network. Advancing Microsoft Entra Internet Access Secure Web + AI Gateway - extend runtime protections to the network, now in preview Microsoft Entra Internet Access, part of the Microsoft Entra Suite, has new capabilities to secure access to and usage of GenAI at the network level, marking a transition from Secure Web Gateway to Secure Web and AI Gateway. Enterprises can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, empowering employees to experiment with new AI tools safely. The new capabilities include: Prompt injection protection which blocks malicious prompts in real time by extending Azure AI Prompt Shields to the network layer. Network file filtering which extends Microsoft Purview to inspect files in transit and prevents regulated or confidential data from being uploaded to unsanctioned AI services. Shadow AI Detection that provides visibility into unsanctioned AI applications through Cloud Application Analytics and Defender for Cloud Apps risk scoring, empowering security teams to monitor usage trends, apply Conditional Access, or block high-risk apps instantly. Unsanctioned MCP server blocking prevents access to MCP servers from unauthorized agents. With these controls, you can accelerate GenAI adoption while maintaining compliance and reducing risk, so employees can experiment with new AI tools safely. Read the Microsoft Entra blog to learn more. As AI transforms the enterprise, security must evolve to meet new challenges—spanning agent sprawl, data protection, emerging threats, and regulatory compliance. Our approach is to empower IT, developers, and security leaders with purpose-built innovations like Agent 365, Foundry Control Plane, and the Security Dashboard for AI. These solutions bring observability, governance, and protection to every layer of the AI stack, leveraging familiar tools and integrated controls across Microsoft Defender, Microsoft Entra, and Microsoft Purview. The future of security is ambient, autonomous, and deeply woven into the fabric of how we build, deploy, and govern AI systems. Explore additional resources Learn more about Security for AI solutions on our webpage Learn more about Microsoft Agent 365 Learn more about Microsoft Entra Agent ID Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot Get started with Microsoft Copilot Studio Get started with Microsoft Foundry Get started with Microsoft Defender for Cloud Get started with Microsoft Entra Get started with Microsoft Purview Get started with Microsoft Purview Compliance Manager Sign up for a free Microsoft 365 E5 Security Trial and Microsoft Purview Trial 1 Bedrock Security, 2025 Data Security Confidence Index, published Mar 17, 2025. 2 AuditBoard & Ascend2, Connected Risk Report 2024; as cited by MIT Sloan Management Review, Spring 2025. 3 KPMG AI Quarterly Pulse Survey | Q3 2025. September 2025. n= 130 U.S.-based C-suite and business leaders representing organizations with annual revenue of $1 billion or more 4 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, , Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400 5 First Annual Generative AI study: Business Rewards vs. Security Risks, Q3 2023, ISMG, N=400
Building Secure, Enterprise Ready AI Agents with Purview SDK and Agent Framework
At Microsoft Ignite, we announced the public preview of Purview integration with the Agent Framework SDK—making it easier to build AI agents that are secure, compliant, and enterprise‑ready from day one. AI agents are quickly moving from demos to production. They reason over enterprise data, collaborate with other agents, and take real actions. As that happens, one thing becomes non‑negotiable: Governance has to be built in. That’s where Purview SDK comes in. Agentic AI Changes the Security Model Traditional apps expose risks at the UI or API layer. AI agents are different. Agents can: Process sensitive enterprise data in prompts and responses Collaborate with other agents across workflows Act autonomously on behalf of users Without built‑in controls, even a well‑designed agent can create compliance gaps. Purview SDK brings Microsoft’s enterprise data security and compliance directly into the agent runtime, so governance travels with the agent—not after it. What You Get with Purview SDK + Agent Framework This integration delivers a few key things developers and enterprises care about most: Inline Data Protection Evaluate prompts and responses against Data Loss Prevention (DLP) policies in real time. Content can be allowed or blocked automatically. Built‑In Governance Send AI interactions to Purview for audit, eDiscovery, communication compliance, and lifecycle management—without custom plumbing. Enterprise‑Ready by Design Ship agents that meet enterprise security expectations from the start, not as a follow‑up project. All of this is done natively through Agent Framework middleware, so governance feels like part of the platform—not an add‑on. How Enforcement Works (Quickly) When an agent runs: Prompts and responses flow through the Agent Framework pipeline Purview SDK evaluates content against configured policies A decision is returned: allow, redact, or block Governance signals are logged for audit and compliance This same model works for: User‑to‑agent interactions Agent‑to‑agent communication Multi‑agent workflows Try It: Add Purview SDK in Minutes Here’s a minimal Python example using Agent Framework: That’s it! From that point on: Prompts and responses are evaluated against Purview policies setup within the enterprise tenant Sensitive data can be automatically blocked Interactions are logged for governance and audit Designed for Real Agent Systems Most production AI apps aren’t single‑agent systems. Purview SDK supports: Agent‑level enforcement for fine‑grained control Workflow‑level enforcement across orchestration steps Agent‑to‑agent governance to protect data as agents collaborate This makes it a natural fit for enterprise‑scale, multi‑agent architectures. Get Started Today You can start experimenting right away: Try the Purview SDK with Agent Framework Follow the Microsoft Learn docs to configure Purview SDK with Agent Framework. Explore the GitHub samples See examples of policy‑enforced agents in Python and .NET. Secure AI, Without Slowing It Down AI agents are quickly becoming production systems—not experiments. By integrating Purview SDK directly into the Agent Framework, Microsoft is making governance a default capability, not a deployment blocker. Build intelligent agents. Protect sensitive data. Scale with confidence.
eDiscovery - Issues exploring groups & users related to a hybrid data source
Hi all, first time posting - unusually I could find nothing out there that helped. I work in an organisation has an on-premises domain which syncs to our tenant. I don't manage the domain or the sync, but I'm assured that the settings are vanilla and there are no errors being logged. 99% of our users are hybrid. The tenant is shared across multiple legal entities, so I'm using eDiscovery to fulfil our GDPR subject access requests The issue I am hitting is straightforward. in eDiscovery searches with hybrid users as the data source, I cannot add related objects (manager, direct reports, groups the user is in). The properties are present in Entra, but not visible to Purview, so I'm not investigating sync errors at the moment. For cloud objects, I can see manager, teams, etc. and it works fine. Does anyone have any insights they can share on the "explore and add" mechanics in eDiscovery search data sources? I'm drawing a complete blank on this one. Where should I be looking?Introducing eDiscovery Graph API Standard and Enhancements to Premium APIs
We have been busy working to enable organisations that leverage the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Graph APIs to benefit from the enhancements in the new modern experience for eDiscovery. I am pleased to share that APIs have now been updated with additional parameters to enable organisations to now benefit from the following features already present in the modern experience within the Purview Portal: Ability to control the export package structure and item naming convention Trigger advanced indexing as part of the Statistics, Add to Review and Export jobs Enables for the first time the ability to trigger HTML transcription of Teams, Viva and Copilot interaction when adding to a review set Benefit from the new statistic options such as Include Categories and Include Keyword Report More granular control of the number of versions collected of modern attachments and documents collected directly collected from OneDrive and SharePoint These changes were communicated as part of the M365 Message Center Post MC1115305. This change involved the beta version of the API calls being promoted into the V1.0 endpoint of the Graph API. The following v1.0 API calls were updated as part of this work: Search Estimate Statistics – ediscoverySearch: estimateStatistics Search Export Report - ediscoverySearch: exportReport Search Export Result - ediscoverySearch: exportResult Search Add to ReviewSet – ediscoveryReviewSet: addToReviewSet ReviewSet Export - ediscoveryReviewSet: export The majority of this blog post is intended to walk through the updates to each of these APIs and provide understanding on how to update your calls to these APIs to maintain a consistent outcome (and benefit from the new functionality). If you are new to the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery APIs you can refer to my previous blog post on how to get started with them. Getting started with the eDiscovery APIs | Microsoft Community Hub First up though, availability of the Graph API for E3 customers We are excited to announce that starting September 9, 2025, Microsoft will launch the eDiscovery Graph API Standard, a new offering designed to empower Microsoft 365 E3 customers with secure, automated data export capabilities. The new eDiscovery Graph API offers scalable, automated exports with secure credential management, improved performance and reliability for Microsoft 365 E3 customers. The new API enables automation of the search, collect, hold, and export flow from Microsoft Purview eDiscovery. While it doesn’t include premium features like Teams/Yammer conversations or advanced indexing (available only with the Premium Graph APIs), it delivers meaningful value for Microsoft 365 E3 customers needing to automate structured legal exports. Key capabilities: Export from Exchange, SharePoint, Teams, Viva Engage and OneDrive for Business Case, search, hold and export management Integration with partner/vendor workflows Support automation that takes advantage of new features within the modern user experience Pricing & Access Microsoft will offer 50 GB of included export volume per tenant per month, with additional usage billed at $10/GB—a price point that balances customer value, sustainability, and market competitiveness. The Graph API Standard will be available in public preview starting September 9. For more details on pay-as-you-go features in eDiscovery and Purview refer to the following links. Billing in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn Enable Microsoft Purview pay-as-you-go features via subscription | Microsoft Learn Wait, but what about the custodian and noncustodial locations workflow in eDiscovery Classic (Premium)? As you are probably aware, in the modern user experience for eDiscovery there have been some changes to the Data Sources tab and how it is used in the workflow. Typically, organisations leveraging the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery APIs previously would have used the custodian and noncustodial data sources APIs to add the relevant data sources to the case using the following APIs. ediscoveryCustodian resource type - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn ediscoveryNoncustodialDataSource resource type - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Once added via the API calls, when creating a search these locations would be bound to a search. This workflow in the API remains supported for backwards compatibility. This includes the creation of system generated case hold policies when applying holds to the locations via these APIs. Organisations can continue to use this approach with the APIs. However, to simplify your code and workflow in the APIs consider using the following API call to add additional sources directly to the search. Add additional sources - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Some key things to note if you continue to use the custodian and noncustodial data sources APIs in your automation workflow. This will not populate the new data sources tab in the modern experience for eDiscovery They can continue to be queried via the API calls Advanced indexing triggered via these APIs will have no influence on if advanced indexing is used in jobs triggered from a search Make sure you use the new parameters to trigger advanced indexing on the job when running the Statistics, Add to Review Set and Direct Export jobs Generating Search Statistics ediscoverySearch: estimateStatistics In eDiscovery Premium (Classic) and the previous version of the APIs, generating statistics was a mandatory step before you could progress to either adding the search to a review set or triggering a direct export. With the new modern experience for eDiscovery, this step is completely optional and is not mandatory. For organizations that previously generated search statistics but never checked or used the results before moving to adding the search to a review set or triggering a direct export job, they can now skip this step. If organizations do want to continue to generate statistics, then calling the updated API with the same parameters call will continue to generate statistics for the search. An example of a previous call would look as follows: POST /security/cases/ediscoveryCases/{ediscoveryCaseId}/searches/{ediscoverySearchId}/estimateStatistics Historically this API didn’t require a request body. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery; the API call now supports a request body, enabling you to benefit from the new statistic options. Details on these new options can be found in the links below. Create a search for a case in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn Evaluate and refine search results in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn If a search is run without a request body it will still generate the following information: Total matches and volume Number of locations searched and the number of locations with hits Number of data sources searched and the number of data sources with hits The top five data sources that make up the most search hits matching your query Hit count by location type (mailbox versus site) As the API is now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery you can optionally include a request body to pass the statisticOptions parameter in the POST API call. With the changes to how Advanced Indexing works within the new UX and the additional reporting categories available, you can use the statisticsOptions parameter to trigger the generate statistic job with the additional options within the modern experience for the modern UX. The values you can include are detailed in the table below. Property Option from Portal includeRefiners Include categories: Refine your view to include people, sensitive information types, item types, and errors. includeQueryStats Include query keywords report: Assess keyword relevance for different parts of your search query. includeUnindexedStats Include partially indexed items: We'll provide details about items that weren't fully indexed. These partially indexed items might be unsearchable or partially searchable advancedIndexing Perform advanced indexing on partially indexed items: We'll try to reindex a sample of partially indexed items to determine whether they match your query. After running the query, check the Statistics page to review information about partially indexed items. Note: Can only be used if includeUnindexedStats is also included. locationsWithoutHits Exclude partially indexed items in locations without search hits: Ignore partially indexed items in locations with no matches to the search query. Checking this setting will only return partially indexed items in locations where there is already at least one hit. Note: Can only be used if includeUnindexedStats is also included. In eDiscovery Premium (Classic) the advanced indexing took place when a custodian or non-custodial data location was added to the Data Sources tab. This means that when you triggered the estimate statistics call on the search it would include results from both the native Exchange and SharePoint index as well as the Advanced Index. In the modern experience for eDiscovery, the advanced indexing runs as part of the job. However, this must be selected as an option on the job. Note that not all searches will benefit from advanced indexing, one example would be a simple date range search on a mailbox or SPO site as this will still have hits on the partially indexed items (even partial indexed email and SPO file items have date metadata in the native indexes). The following example using PowerShell and the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module and passes the new StatisticsOptions parameter to the POST call and selects all available options. # Generate estimates for the newly created search $statParams = @{ statisticsOptions = "includeRefiners,includeQueryStats,includeUnindexedStats,advancedIndexing,locationsWithoutHits" } $params = $statParams | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 $uri = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/$caseID/searches/$searchID/estimateStatistics" Invoke-MgGraphRequest -Method Post -Uri $uri -Body $params Write-Host "Estimate statistics generation triggered for search ID: $searchID" Once run, it will create a generated statistic job with the additional options selected. Direct Export - Report ediscoverySearch: exportReport This API enables you to generate an item report directly form a search without taking the data into a review set or exporting the items that match the search. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery, new parameters have been added to the request body as well as new values available for existing parameters. The new parameters are as follows: cloudAttachmentVersion: The versions of cloud attachments to include in messages ( e.g. latest, latest 10, latest 100 or All). This controls how many versions of a file that is collected when a cloud attachment is contained within a email, teams or viva engage messages. If version shared is configured this is also always returned. documentVersion: The versions of files in SharePoint to include (e.g. latest, latest 10, latest 100 or All). This controls how many versions of a file that is collected when targeting a SharePoint or OneDrive site directly in the search. These new parameters reflect the changes made in the modern experience for eDiscovery that provides more granular control for eDiscovery managers to apply different collection options based on where the SPO item was collected from (e.g. directly from a SPO site vs a cloud attachment link included in an email). Within eDiscovery Premium (Classic) the All Document Versions option applied to both SharePoint and OneDrive files collected directly from SharePoint and any cloud attachments contained within email, teams and viva engage messages. Historically for this API, within the additionalOptions parameter you could include the allDocumentVersions value to trigger the collection of all versions of any file stored in SharePoint and OneDrive. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery, the allDocumentVersions value can still be included in the additionalOptions parameter but it will only apply to files collected directly from a SharePoint or OneDrive site. It will not influence any cloud attachments included in email, teams and viva engage messages. To collect additional versions of cloud attachments use the cloudAttachmentVersion parameter to control the number of versions that are included. Also consider moving from using the allDocumentVersions value in the additionalOptions parameter and switch to using the new documentVersion parameter. As described earlier, to benefit from advanced indexing in the modern experience for eDiscovery, you must trigger advanced indexing as part of the direct export job. Within the portal to include partially indexed items and run advanced indexing you would make the following selections. To achieve this via the API call we need to ensure we include the following parameters and values into the request body of the API call. Parameter Value Option from the portal additionalOptions advancedIndexing Perform advanced indexing on partially indexed items exportCriteria searchHits, partiallyIndexed Indexed items that match your search query and partially indexed items exportLocation responsiveLocations, nonresponsiveLocations Exclude partially indexed items in locations without search hits. Finally, in the new modern experience for eDiscovery more granular control has been introduced to enable organisations to independently choose to convert Teams, Viva Engage and Copilot interactions into HTML transcripts and the ability to collect up to 12 hours of related conversations when a message matches a search. This is reflected in the job settings by the following options: Organize conversations into HTML transcripts Include Teams and Viva Engage conversations In the classic experience this was a single option titled Teams and Yammer Conversations that did both actions and was controlled by including the teamsAndYammerConversations value in the additionalOptions parameter. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery, the teamsAndYammerConversations value can still be included in the additionalOptions parameter but it will only trigger the collection of up to 12 hours of related conversations when a message matches a search without converting the items into HTML transcripts. To do this we need to include the new value of htmlTranscripts in the additionalOptions parameter. As an example, lets look at the following direct export report job from the portal and use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module to call the exportReport API call with the updated request body. $exportName = "New UX - Direct Export Report" $exportParams = @{ displayName = $exportName description = "Direct export report from the search" additionalOptions = "teamsAndYammerConversations,cloudAttachments,htmlTranscripts,advancedIndexing" exportCriteria = "searchHits,partiallyIndexed" documentVersion = "recent10" cloudAttachmentVersion = "recent10" exportLocation = "responsiveLocations" } $params = $exportParams | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 $uri = https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/$caseID/searches/$searchID/exportReport" $exportResponse = Invoke-MgGraphRequest -Method Post -Uri $uri -Body $params Direct Export - Results ediscoverySearch: exportResult - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn This API call enables you to export the items from a search without taking the data into a review set. All the information from the above section on the changes to the exportReport API also applies to this API call. However with this API call we will actually be exporting the items from the search and not just the report. As such we need to pass in the request body information on how we want the export package to look. Previously with direct export for eDiscovery Premium (Classic) you had a three options in the UX and in the API to define the export format. Option Exchange Export Structure SharePoint / OneDrive Export Structure Individual PST files for each mailbox PST created for each mailbox. The structure of each PST is reflective of the folders within the mailbox with emails stored based on their original location in the mailbox. Emails named based on their subject. Folder for each mailbox site. Within each folder, the structure is reflective of the SharePoint/OneDrive site with documents stored based on their original location in the site. Documents are named based on their document name. Individual .msg files for each message Folder created for each mailbox. Within each folder the file structure within is reflective of the folders within the mailbox with emails stored as .msg files based on their original location in the mailbox. Emails named based on their subject. As above. Individual .eml files for each message Folder created for each mailbox. Within each folder the file structure within is reflective of the folder within the mailbox with emails stored as .eml files based on their original location in the mailbox. Emails named based on their subject As above. Historically with this API, the exportFormat parameter was used to control the desired export format. Three values could be used and they were pst, msg and eml. This parameter is still relevant but only controls how email items will be saved, either in a PST file, as individual .msg files or as individual .eml files. Note: The eml export format option is depreciated in the new UX. Going forward you should use either pst or msg. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery; we need to account for the additional flexibility customers have to control the structure of their export package. An example of the options available in the direct export job can be seen below. More information on the export package options and what they control can be found in the following link. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-gb/purview/edisc-search-export#export-package-options To support this, new values have been added to the additionalOptions parameter for this API call, these must be included in the request body otherwise the export structure will be as follows. exportFormat value Exchange Export Structure SharePoint / OneDrive Export Structure pst PST files created that containing data from multiple mailboxes. All emails contained within a single folder within the PST. Emails named a based on an assigned unique identifier (GUID) One folder for all documents. All documents contained within a single folder. Documents are named based on an assigned unique identifier (GUID) msg Folder created containing data from all mailboxes. All emails contained within a single folder stored as .msg files. Emails named a based on an assigned unique identifier (GUID) As above. The new values added to the additionalOptions parameters are as follows. They control the export package structure for both Exchange and SharePoint/OneDrive items. Property Option from Portal splitSource Organize data from different locations into separate folders or PSTs includeFolderAndPath Include folder and path of the source condensePaths Condense paths to fit within 259 characters limit friendlyName Give each item a friendly name Organizations are free to mix and match which export options they include in the request body to meet their own organizational requirements. To receive a similar output structure when previously using the pst or msg values in the exportFormat parameter I would include all of the above values in the additionalOptions parameter. For example, to generate a direct export where the email items are stored in separate PSTs per mailbox, the structure of the PST files reflects the mailbox and each items is named as per the subject of the email; I would use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module to call the exportResults API call with the updated request body. $exportName = "New UX - DirectExportJob - PST" $exportParams = @{ displayName = $exportName description = "Direct export of items from the search" additionalOptions = "teamsAndYammerConversations,cloudAttachments,htmlTranscripts,advancedIndexing,includeFolderAndPath,splitSource,condensePaths,friendlyName" exportCriteria = "searchHits,partiallyIndexed" documentVersion = "recent10" cloudAttachmentVersion = "recent10" exportLocation = "responsiveLocations" exportFormat = "pst" } $params = $exportParams | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 $uri = “https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/$caseID/searches/$searchID/exportResult" $exportResponse = Invoke-MgGraphRequest -Method Post -Uri $uri -Body $params If I want to export the email items as individual .msg files instead of storing them in PST files; I would use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module to call the exportResults API call with the updated request body. $exportName = "New UX - DirectExportJob - MSG" $exportParams = @{ displayName = $exportName description = "Direct export of items from the search" additionalOptions = "teamsAndYammerConversations,cloudAttachments,htmlTranscripts,advancedIndexing,includeFolderAndPath,splitSource,condensePaths,friendlyName" exportCriteria = "searchHits,partiallyIndexed" documentVersion = "recent10" cloudAttachmentVersion = "recent10" exportLocation = "responsiveLocations" exportFormat = "msg" } $params = $exportParams | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 $uri = " https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/$caseID/searches/$searchID/exportResult" Add to Review Set ediscoveryReviewSet: addToReviewSet This API call enables you to commit the items that match the search to a Review Set within an eDiscovery case. This enables you to review, tag, redact and filter the items that match the search without exporting the data from the M365 service boundary. Historically with this API call it was more limited compared to triggering the job via the eDiscovery Premium (Classic) UI. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery organizations can make use of the enhancements made within the modern UX and have greater flexibility in selecting the options that are relevant for your requirements. There is a lot of overlap with previous sections, specifically the “Direct Export – Report” section on what updates are required to benefit from updated API. They are as follows: Controlling the number of versions of SPO and OneDrive documents added to the review set via the new cloudAttachmentVersion and documentVersion parameters Enabling organizations to trigger the advanced indexing of partial indexed items during the add to review set job via new values added to existing parameters However there are some nuances to the parameter names and the values for this specific API call compared to the exportReport API call. For example, with this API call we use the additionalDataOptions parameter opposed to the additionalOptions parameter. As with the exportReport and exportResult APIs, there are new parameters to control the number of versions of SPO and OneDrive documents added to the review set are as follows: cloudAttachmentVersion: The versions of cloud attachments to include in messages ( e.g. latest, latest 10, latest 100 or All). This controls how many versions of a file that is collected when a cloud attachment is contained within a email, teams or viva engage messages. If version shared is configured this is also always returned. documentVersion: The versions of files in SharePoint to include (e.g. latest, latest 10, latest 100 or All). This controls how many versions of a file that is collected when targeting a SharePoint or OneDrive site directly in the search. Historically for this API call, within the additionalDataOptions parameter you could include the allVersions value to trigger the collection of all versions of any file stored in SharePoint and OneDrive. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery, the allVersions value can still be included in the additionalDataOptions parameter but it will only apply to files collected directly from a SharePoint or OneDrive site. It will not influence any cloud attachments included in email, teams and viva engage messages. To collect additional versions of cloud attachments use the cloudAttachmentVersion parameter to control the number of versions that are included. Also consider moving from using the allDocumentVersions value in the additionalDataOptions parameter and switch to using the new documentVersion parameter. To benefit from advanced indexing in the modern experience for eDiscovery, you must trigger advanced indexing as part of the add to review set job. Within the portal to include partially indexed items and run advanced indexing you would make the following selections. To achieve this via the API call we need to ensure we include the following parameters and values into the request body of the API call. Parameter Value Option from the portal additionalDataOptions advancedIndexing Perform advanced indexing on partially indexed items itemsToInclude searchHits, partiallyIndexed Indexed items that match your search query and partially indexed items additionalDataOptions locationsWithoutHits Exclude partially indexed items in locations without search hits. Historically the API call didn’t support the add to review set job options to convert Teams, Viva Engage and Copilot interactions into HTML transcripts and collect up to 12 hours of related conversations when a message matches a search. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery this is now possible by adding support for the htmlTranscripts and messageConversationExpansion values to the addtionalDataOptions parameter. As an example, let’s look at the following add to review set job from the portal and use the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module to invoke the addToReviewSet API call with the updated request body. $commitParams = @{ search = @{ id = $searchID } additionalDataOptions = "linkedFiles,advancedIndexing,htmlTranscripts,messageConversationExpansion,locationsWithoutHits" cloudAttachmentVersion = "latest" documentVersion = "latest" itemsToInclude = "searchHits,partiallyIndexed" } $params = $commitParams | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 $uri = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/$caseID/reviewSets/$reviewSetID/addToReviewSet" Invoke-MgGraphRequest -Method Post -Uri $uri -Body $params Export from Review Set ediscoveryReviewSet: export This API call enables you to export items from a Review Set within an eDiscovery case. Historically with this API, the exportStructure parameter was used to control the desired export format. Two values could be used and they were directory and pst. This parameter has had been updated to include a new value of msg. Note: The directory value is depreciated in the new UX but remains available in v1.0 of the API call for backwards compatibility. Going forward you should use msg alongside the new exportOptions values. The exportStructure parameter will only control how email items are saved, either within PST files or as individual .msg files. With the APIs now natively working with the modern experience for eDiscovery; we need to account for the additional flexibility customers have to control the structure of their export package. An example of the options available in the direct export job can be seen below. As with the exportResults API call for direct export, new values have been added to the exportOptions parameter for this API call. The new values added to the exportOptions parameters are as follows. They control the export package structure for both Exchange and SharePoint/OneDrive items. Property Option from Portal splitSource Organize data from different locations into separate folders or PSTs includeFolderAndPath Include folder and path of the source condensePaths Condense paths to fit within 259 characters limit friendlyName Give each item a friendly name Organizations are free to mix and match which export options they include in the request body to meet their own organizational requirements. To receive an equivalent output structure when previously using the pst value in the exportStructure parameter I would include all of the above values in the exportOptions parameter within the request body. An example using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module can be found below. $exportName = "ReviewSetExport - PST" $exportParams = @{ outputName = $exportName description = "Exporting all items from the review set" exportOptions = "originalFiles,includeFolderAndPath,splitSource,condensePaths,friendlyName" exportStructure = "pst" } $params = $exportParams | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 $uri = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/$caseID/reviewSets/$reviewSetID/export" Invoke-MgGraphRequest -Method Post -Uri $uri -Body $params To receive an equivalent output structure when previously using the directory value in the exportStructure parameter I would instead use the msg value within the request body. As the condensed directory structure format export all items into a single folder, all named based on uniquely assigned identifier I do not need to include the new values added to the exportOptions parameter. An example using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module can be found below. An example using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module can be found below. $exportName = "ReviewSetExport - MSG" $exportParams = @{ outputName = $exportName description = "Exporting all items from the review set" exportOptions = "originalFiles" exportStructure = "msg" } $params = $exportParams | ConvertTo-Json -Depth 10 $uri = "https://graph.microsoft.com/v1.0/security/cases/ediscoveryCases/$caseID/reviewSets/$reviewSetID/export" Invoke-MgGraphRequest -Method Post -Uri $uri -Body $params Continuing to use the directory value in exportStructure will produce the same output as if msg was used. Wrap Up Thank you for your time reading through this post. Hopefully you are now equipped with the information needed to make the most of the new modern experience for eDiscovery when making your Graph API calls.General Availability of Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Graph API for E3 Customers
As of December 1 st , 2025, the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Graph API Standard hit General Availability (GA). It provides a programmatic way to manage eDiscovery cases, searches, holds, and exports for organizations that have only M365 E3 licenses. It extends capabilities that were previously exclusive to eDiscovery Premium customers with M365 E5 (or equivalent add-on SKU) licenses. With the eDiscovery Graph APIs, organisations can realise efficiency savings by interacting programmatically with the following elements of their eDiscovery workflow: Case management – create new cases, list or get case details, update cases, and close or reopen cases. Hold management – place content locations on hold (or remove holds) within a case and list hold policies. Search management – create new searches, list existing searches, update search parameters, delete searches, and run a statistics job on a search. View progress of eDiscovery jobs – view lists of all jobs run in the case, including their status and run times. Export operations – trigger an export job from a search, generate an export report, and download the export packages programmatically. Execute Search and Purge operations - ability to purge email messages from mailboxes identified in a modern UX search. For existing customers utilizing the legacy eDiscovery PowerShell cmdlets it presents an opportunity to enrich and enhance any existing script based processes. eDiscovery Investigators, and teams supporting them, can benefit from the Microsoft Graph-based PowerShell cmdlets to also realize efficiency savings without implementing full end-to-end automation. Why use Graph APIs instead of eDiscovery PowerShell cmdlets? Moving from the old Exchange/Compliance PowerShell cmdlets to Graph API might seem like a significant change. The Graph API is aligned with the latest Purview eDiscovery (modern) experience, unlocking organizations to scale their workflows to benefit fully from its new features and improvements. Searches created and run through the APIs can be viewed and managed from the Purview Portal. Microsoft continues to update and enhance the Graph APIs as Microsoft Purview eDiscovery continues to evolve Where as the legacy Cmdlets are tied to the older eDiscovery (Classic) model with limitations in the eDiscovery activities you can perform. There are no new capabilities or enhancements to the legacy cmdlets planned. What do I need to do to start using the APIs? For customers with only E3 licenses in their tenant, before you can start using the APIs you must enable Microsoft Purview pay-as-you-go features as per the following article: Enable Microsoft Purview pay-as-you-go features via subscription | Microsoft Learn If today, your eDiscovery Investigators and supporting operational teams are connecting to Security & Compliance PowerShell using the Exchange Online PowerShell module and are authenticating as themselves then the delegated permission model would be the equivalent model with the APIs. Investigators using the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module eDiscovery cmdlets: Can only work with cases they have created or have been granted access to Limits their actions based on the eDiscovery Purview roles assigned to them To enable investigators to authenticate and use the eDiscovery cmdlets from the Microsoft Graph API PowerShell module; the Microsoft Graph Command Line Tools enterprise app must be added to Entra ID and the appropriate Graph API permissions consented to. There are two eDiscovery related Microsoft Graph Permissions and organizations should select the appropriate permissions based on their requirements. They are as follows: eDiscovery.Read.All: Allows the app to read eDiscovery objects such as cases, searches, holds and other related objects (link) eDiscovery.ReadWrite.All: Allows the app to read and write eDiscovery objects such as cases, searches, holds and other related objects (link) You can check if these permissions are already granted to the Microsoft Graph Command Line Tools by searching for and reviewing the enterprise app in Microsoft Entra. If they have not been granted then an administrator with either the Application Administrator, Cloud Application Administrator or Privileged Role Administrator Entra roles assign can use the following steps to grant the permissions and provide admin consent for all users in the tenant. As delegate permissions are being used in this scenario, even though the consent applies to all users. The signed in user must also be assigned the relevant eDiscovery Purview Roles to make use of the APIs. Install the Microsoft Graph PowerShell Module (link) Connect to Microsoft Graph using the following PowerShell cmdlet Connect-MgGraph -scopes "eDiscovery.ReadWrite.All" -TenantId "<tenant id>" On the permissions screen select “Consent on behalf of your organization” and select accept Now that this has been configured, eDiscovery Investigators will require the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module to connect and make use of the Microsoft Graph PowerShell modules eDiscovery cmdlets. Frequently asked questions Where can I find details on what APIs are available and what they can do? Documentation for the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Graph APIs can be found here: Use the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery API in Microsoft Graph - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn The documentation provides information on what the API call does, what properties are supported and examples of the request and responses. Is there costs associated with using the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Graph API Standard? Currently, usage of all APIs except the Export API does not contribute towards billing. ediscoverySearch: exportResult - Microsoft Graph v1.0 | Microsoft Learn Usage of the Export API is billed based on the volume of data exported. Each organization receives an included amount of free storage per month (50GB), with additional usage billed at a set price per GB ($10). More information can be found here: Billing in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn What happens if I have a mix of E3 and E5 licenses? When triggering an export using the Export API for a Microsoft Purview eDiscovery case with the premium features enabled, no costs will be incurred. When triggering an export using the Export API for a Microsoft Purview eDiscovery case with the premium features disabled, it will contribute towards billing. Can I still use PowerShell to work with eDiscovery Cases? Yes, you can use PowerShell cmdlets to work with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery via the APIs. Within the Microsoft Graph PowerShell module there are eDiscovery cmdlets available. When reviewing the API documentation the appropriate PowerShell cmdlets are listed within the examples section. Take, for instance, creating a new case, when reviewing the documentation (link), we can see the New-MgSecurityCaseEdiscoveryCase is available. Can I integrate the APIs into a custom-developed application? Yes, you can install the Microsoft Graph SDK and it is available for the following languages: .NET Go Java JavaScript PHP PowerShell Python More information on installing the Microsoft Graph SDK can be found here: Install a Microsoft Graph SDK - Microsoft Graph | Microsoft Learn Can I use Microsoft Graph application permissions if I am an E3 customers? For E3 customers you can only make use of Microsoft Graph delegate permissions when working with eDiscovery cases without Premium features. The use of application permissions requires E5 licenses and eDiscovery Premium cases. Do third-party applications integrate with the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery APIs? Please check with your third-party vendor for their support for the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery APIs. Is this available in GCC, GCC High, and DoD tenants? Yes, it is available across these environments. Is there any scenario-based guidance for me with examples on how to use the Graph API? There will be soon! We will be releasing further scenario-based guidance to help both Microsoft 365 E3 and E5 organizations adopt and benefit from the Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Graph APIs.Teams Private Channels Reengineered: Compliance & Data Security Actions Needed by Sept 20, 2025
You may have missed this critical update, as it was published only on the Microsoft Teams blog and flagged as a Teams change in the Message Center under MC1134737. However, it represents a complete reengineering of how private channel data is stored and managed, with direct implications for Microsoft Purview compliance policies, including eDiscovery, Legal Hold, Data Loss Prevention (DLP), and Retention. 🔗 Read the official blog post here New enhancements in Private Channels in Microsoft Teams unlock their full potential | Microsoft Community Hub What’s Changing? A Shift from User to Group Mailboxes Historically, private channel data was stored in individual user mailboxes, requiring compliance and security policies to be scoped at the user level. Starting September 20, 2025, Microsoft is reengineering this model: Private channels will now use dedicated group mailboxes tied to the team’s Microsoft 365 group. Compliance and security policies must be applied to the team’s Microsoft 365 group, not just individual users. Existing user-level policies will not govern new private channel data post-migration. This change aligns private channels with how shared channels are managed, streamlining policy enforcement but requiring manual updates to ensure coverage. Why This Matters for Data Security and Compliance Admins If your organization uses Microsoft Purview for: eDiscovery Legal Hold Data Loss Prevention (DLP) Retention Policies You must review and update your Purview eDiscovery and legal holds, DLP, and retention policies. Without action, new private channel data may fall outside existing policy coverage, especially if your current policies are not already scoped to the team’s group. This could lead to significant data security, governance and legal risks. Action Required by September 20, 2025 Before migration begins: Review all Purview policies related to private channels. Apply policies to the team’s Microsoft 365 group to ensure continuity. Update eDiscovery searches to include both user and group mailboxes. Modify DLP scopes to include the team’s group. Align retention policies with the team’s group settings. Migration will begin in late September and continue through December 2025. A PowerShell command will be released to help track migration progress per tenant. Migration Timeline Migration begins September 20, 2025, and continues through December 2025. Migration timing may vary by tenant. A PowerShell command will be released to help track migration status. I recommend keeping track of any additional announcements in the message center.Search and Purge workflow in the new modern eDiscovery experience
With the retirement of Content Search (Classic) and eDiscovery Standard (Classic) in May, and alongside the future retirement of eDiscovery Premium (Classic) in August, organizations may be wondering how this will impact their existing search and purge workflow. The good news is that it will not impact your organizations ability to search for and purge email, Teams and M365 Copilot messages; however there are some additional points to be careful about when working with purge with cmdlet and Graph alongside of the modern eDiscovery experience. We have made some recent updates to our documentation regarding this topic to reflect the changes in the new modern eDiscovery experience. These can be found below and you should ensure that you read them in full as they are packed with important information on the process. Find and delete email messages in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn Find and delete Microsoft Teams chat messages in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn Search for and delete Copilot data in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn The intention of this first blog post in the series is to cover the high-level points including some best practices when it comes to running search and purge operations using Microsoft Purview eDiscovery. Please stay tuned for further blog posts intended to provide more detailed step-by-step of the following search and purge scenarios: Search and Purge email and Teams messages using Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs Search and Purge email messages using the Security and Compliance PowerShell cmdlets I will update this blog post with the subsequent links to the follow-on posts in this series. So let’s start by looking at the two methods available to issue a purge command with Microsoft Purview eDiscovery, they are the Microsoft Graph eDiscovery APIs or the Security and Compliance PowerShell cmdlets. What licenses you have dictates which options are available to you and what type of items you can be purge from Microsoft 365 workloads. For E3/G3 customers and cases which have the premium features disabled You can only use the PowerShell cmdlets to issue the purge command You should only purge email items from mailboxes and not Teams messages You are limited to deleting 10 items per location with a purge command For E5/G5 customers and cases which have the premium features enabled You can only use the Graph API to issue the purge command You can purge email items and Teams messages You can delete up to 100 items per location with a purge command To undertake a search and then purge you must have the correct permissions assigned to your account. There are two key Purview Roles that you must be assigned, they are: Compliance Search: This role lets users run the Content Search tool in the Microsoft Purview portal to search mailboxes and public folders, SharePoint Online sites, OneDrive for Business sites, Skype for Business conversations, Microsoft 365 groups, and Microsoft Teams, and Viva Engage groups. This role allows a user to get an estimate of the search results and create export reports, but other roles are needed to initiate content search actions such as previewing, exporting, or deleting search results. Search and Purge: This role lets users perform bulk removal of data matching the criteria of a search. To learn more about permissions in eDiscovery, along with the different eDiscovery Purview Roles, please refer to the following Microsoft Learn article: Assign permissions in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn By default, eDiscovery Manager and eDiscovery Administrators have the “Compliance Search” role assigned. For search and purge, only the Organization Management Purview Role group has the role assigned by default. However, this is a highly privileged Purview Role group and customers should considering using a custom role group to assign the Search and Purge Purview role to authorised administrators. Details on how to create a custom role group in Purview can be found in the following article. Permissions in the Microsoft Purview portal | Microsoft Learn It is also important to consider the impact of any retention policies or legal holds will have when attempting to purge email items from a mailbox where you want to hard delete the items and remove it completely from the mailbox. When a retention policy or legal hold is applied to a mailbox, email items that are hard deleted via the purge process are moved and retained in the Recoverable Items folder of the mailbox. There purged items will be retained until such time as all holds are lifted and until the retention period defined in the retention policy has expired. It is important to note that items retained in the Recoverable Items folder are not visible to users but are returned in eDiscovery searches. For some search and purge use cases this is not a concern; if the primary goal is to remove the item from the user’s view then additional steps are required. However if the goal is to completely remove the email item from the mailbox in Exchange Online so it doesn't appear in the user’s view and is not returned by future eDiscovery searches then additional steps are required. They are: Disable client access to the mailbox Modify retention settings on the mailbox Disable the Exchange Online Managed Folder Assistant for the mailbox Remove all legal holds and retention policies from the mailbox Perform the search and purge operation Revert the mailbox to its previous state These steps should be carefully followed as any mistake could result in additional data that is being retained being permanently deleted from the service. The full detailed steps can be found in the following article. Delete items in the Recoverable Items folder mailboxes on hold in eDiscovery | Microsoft Learn Now for some best practice when running search and purge operations: Where possible target the specific locations containing the items you wish to purge and avoid tenant wide searches where possible If a tenant wide search is used to initially locate the items, once the locations containing the items are known modify the search to target the specific locations and rerun the steps Always validate the item report against the statistics prior to issuing the purge command to ensure you are only purging items you intend to remove If the item counts do not align then do not proceed with the purge command Ensure admins undertaking search and purge operations are appropriately trained and equipped with up-to-date guidance/process on how to safely execute the purge process The search conditions Identifier, Sensitivity Label and Sensitive Information Type do not support purge operations and if used can cause un-intended results Organizations with E5/G5 licenses should also take this opportunity to review if other Microsoft Purview and Defender offerings can help them achieve the same outcomes. When considering the right approach/tool to meet your desired outcomes you should become familiar with the following additional options for removing email items: Priority Clean-up (link): Use the Priority cleanup feature under Data Lifecycle Management in Microsoft Purview when you need to expedite the permanent deletion of sensitive content from Exchange mailboxes, overriding any existing retention settings or eDiscovery holds. This process might be implemented for security or privacy in response to an incident, or for compliance with regulatory requirements. Threat Explorer (link): Threat Explorer in Microsoft Defender for Office 365 is a powerful tool that enables security teams to investigate and remediate malicious emails in near real-time. It allows users to search for and filter email messages based on various criteria - such as sender, recipient, subject, or threat type - and take direct actions like soft delete, hard delete, or moving messages to junk or deleted folders. For manual remediation, Threat Explorer supports actions on emails delivered within the past 30 days In my next posts I will be delving further into how to use both the Graph APIs and the Security and Compliance PowerShell module to safely execute your purge commands.
