Extract from Ellen OLeary’s article “4 Ways to Navigate Data Collection Challenges in Slack”
Today we have more ways to communicate within the workplace than ever before. According to a recent industry survey, 51% of workers prefer real-time messaging apps over email. While email still accounts for the lion’s share of employee communications, cloud-based platforms such as Slack have increasingly become an important nexus for worker collaboration.
Slack is compelling for users with its ability to have threaded discussions between multiple individuals who can join or leave a given channel at any time. These threads are often conversational in nature and will typically include links to external sites, embedded documents, multimedia files, abbreviations, slang, emojis, and even reactions. While a boon to employee productivity, the dynamic and integrated nature of Slack presents a host of challenges to corporate legal departments that must quickly identify and retain information that might be relevant to a legal action.
Common ChallengesÂ
Preserving relevant data on Slack isn’t as straightforward as one might think. First, you need to account for the nuances of Slack’s conversational format. Access controls are also important because the Slack administrator for a given workspace might not possess the administrative privileges for all the relevant data required to meet a legal hold request. And because Slack makes it easy to embed files from other third-party cloud services such as Box, Dropbox, or Google, you’ll need to consider the access controls and role-based permissions for each connected service.
