Major feature for eDiscovery professionals! Admins in Google Vault can now export hyperlinked Google Drive content from Gmail messages!

In this Google Workspace update from December 5 (Admins in Google Vault can now export hyperlinked Google Drive content from Gmail messages, available here), admins can now export Drive files hyperlinked in Gmail messages directly in Google Vault. When admins select “export linked Drive files”, Vault will look for Drive hyperlinks in the body of the emails being exported from Gmail. If Drive hyperlinks are found, a separate export of Drive files will also be created.

Admins will be able to find their exported hyperlinked Drive content nested under the corresponding Gmail export in the “Export” tab. Vault admins can find the association between the Gmail export and Drive link export in the export file names and metadata.

What they don’t say is whether that metadata matches the individual Drive files to the emails that link to them. I hope it does – if so, that would be a way of automatically identifying the hyperlinked files (which would need to be produced as well, of course) within emails so that the receiving party could at least find them. They wouldn’t be “modern attachments” exactly, but at least the information would exist for receiving parties to see what files were being sent as part of the message.

Of course, I know some of you are saying: “But the file pulled from Google Drive may be a different version than the one that was sent!”. Certainly true, but let’s try to climb one mountain at a time, shall we? 😉

I don’t have Vault, so I can’t test it out. Perhaps one of you do and could report back? I’d be happy to address in a follow-up post!

Regarding the hyperlinked files as modern attachments issue, I expect the continued evolution of the technology will change the considerations associated with it. What may not be possible (or at least easily done) today could be highly possible in the future.

I wanted to publish at least one more post in the hyperlinked files as modern attachments series (other posts are here, here, here and here) before the end of the year. Still hope to publish one more yet but needed to cover this as a seemingly important breakthrough on the Gmail side. Hat tip to Kayann Fitzgerald for the heads up!

So, what do you think? Are you excited that admins in Google Vault can now export hyperlinked Google Drive content from Gmails? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

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