Category Archives: ESI

May 20, 2025 · 12:04 PM

Law Firms and Major Enterprises Are Rapidly Moving to X1 Search As Traditional Enterprise Search Becomes Obsolete

By John Patzakis and Chas Meier

Are you tired of wasting hours each week fruitlessly searching across emails, documents, cloud services, and local drives? You’re not alone. Law firms and major enterprises are increasingly recognizing the inherent limitations of legacy enterprise search solutions and turning decisively toward X1 Search.

X1 Search delivers a revolutionary user-based search experience that dramatically boosts productivity. Demand for X1 Search has skyrocketed this year—one major federal agency is expanding from 20,000 to over 40,000 licenses to equip every employee. Nearly half of AMLAW 100 firms now deploy or are actively considering X1. Why this rapid shift?

Traditional enterprise search solutions are fundamentally broken in today’s hybrid-cloud enterprise landscape. They rely heavily on outdated architectures that require mass data duplication and centralization—approaches rendered obsolete by remote work and distributed platforms such as Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace. Specifically, traditional tools face:

  1. Scalability Roadblocks: Centralizing terabytes of distributed unstructured data is now effectively impossible in the modern enterprise.
  2. Incompatibility with Modern Platforms: Legacy systems struggle to integrate effectively with platforms like Microsoft 365 due to restrictive APIs and loss of security permissions when the data is copied and exported en masse.
  3. Regulatory and Governance Challenges: Mass duplication of sensitive data violates critical data protection regulations and contradicts fundamental information governance principles. The GDPR specifically mandates data minimization, particularly when viable alternative technologies exist, as evaluated through a Data Privacy Impact Analysis (DPIA).

Employees in modern organizations effectively have two viable search options: the limited native Windows search or the robust, efficient capabilities of X1 Search. Microsoft Copilot itself recently highlighted X1 Search’s advantages:

“X1 Search offers advanced indexing, instant search-as-you-type capabilities, powerful filtering, keyword highlighting, and document/email previews, significantly surpassing standard Windows Search. Moreover, X1 seamlessly searches across emails, documents, cloud storage, archived data, and more—far beyond Windows Search capabilities.”

X1 Search introduces an entirely new, distributed search architecture uniquely suited to today’s enterprise environments:
• Distributed Micro-Indexing: Patented technology ensures secure, permission-aligned indexing, granting employees immediate, secure access to authorized data only.
• No Mass Data Duplication: Interact directly with original documents without unnecessary duplication, ensuring compliance and efficiency.
• True Federated Search: Search instantly and iteratively across M365, Google Workspace, Slack, and local data sources within a single unified search field—a capability unmatched by any other solution.

The latest X1 Search transcends desktop limitations, instantly searching Microsoft Email, Teams, Slack, OneDrive, SharePoint, local files, and now Google Drive and Gmail, all from one intuitive interface. This empowers users to reclaim hours each day, dramatically boosting productivity.

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Filed under Best Practices, Business Productivity Search, Cloud Data, Corporations, Data Audit, Desktop Search, eDiscovery, Enterprise Search, ESI, GDPR, Google Workspace, Hybrid Search, Information Governance, Information Management, m365, MS Teams, OneDrive, SharePoint

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January 22, 2025 · 10:34 AM

Inactive Mailboxes in M365 Present Significant Hidden Risks and Costs

By Chas Meier and John Patzakis

In our recent blog post, we outlined the challenges associated with inactive mailboxes in Microsoft 365. The response was very positive, and this post dives a bit deeper into the specific challenges with MS Purview in addressing inactive mailboxes, including some hidden pitfalls and risks that many enterprises may not be aware of.

Limited Visibility in Microsoft Purview
Microsoft Purview allows users with the eDiscovery Manager role (each provisioned with an E5 license) to search both active and inactive mailboxes to meet legal or regulatory requirements. However, one of the first hurdles administrators face is simply identifying which mailboxes are inactive. Inactive mailboxes do not appear in the standard active user lists and require additional steps to locate, whether through Purview or the Microsoft 365 admin center. An even bigger challenge is Purview’s limitation: when you query for inactive mailboxes, it will only display a maximum of 5,000—even if more exists. One of our customers, for example, discovered tens of thousands of additional inactive mailboxes using X1, far exceeding Purview’s 5,000 limit. Compounding this challenge, Purview cannot distinguish between an inactive mailbox placed on litigation hold versus one on a retention tag for other reasons, leaving organizations unable to quickly determine which mailboxes are truly subject to legal holds.

How Inactive Mailboxes Are Created
This problem partly stems from Microsoft 365’s process for creating inactive users. Under pressure to free up M365 licenses for new employees, administrators might place holds or retention tags on a departing user’s account “just to be safe” until they know how to manage that user’s data. Once the license is removed, a grace period begins; after it expires, the mailbox is moved into the inactive mailbox collection, ensuring its contents remain discoverable for eDiscovery and compliance purposes.

However, there is no built-in mechanism to automatically remove these holds once they are no longer needed, so IT and legal teams must manually intervene. As a result, organizations with high turnover often retain far more inactive mailboxes than necessary. This not only increases legal exposure but will also incur additional costs when Microsoft begins charging storage fees on January 27, 2025 for inactive M365 accounts on retention and legal holds. (Manage unlicensed OneDrive user accounts – SharePoint in Microsoft 365 | Microsoft Learn)

X1 Enterprise 5.3: A Streamlined Approach
With X1 Enterprise 5.3, legal and compliance professionals can now process inactive mailboxes directly within the platform using only a single E5 license and are not subject to Purview’s listing limit of 5,000 inactive mailboxes. This direct integration ensures that all preserved mailboxes are accessible and actionable.

Even better, many of our customers employ X1 Enterprise to proactively perform targeted preservation collections on M365 accounts and other sources such as laptops for departing employees, a streamlined process that significantly reduces both cost and risk.

Please contact us at the link below if you have any additional questions about inactive mailboxes in M365 and would like to inquire about a free “health check” assessment of the scope of your inactive mailboxes.

Ready to Learn More?
The X1 Enterprise Platform is available now from X1 and its global channel network in the cloud, on-premises, and with our services available on-demand. For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/solutions/x1-enterprise-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, law firm, m365

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December 17, 2024 · 11:06 AM

Inactive Mailboxes, Unlocked: How X1 Enterprise Transforms M365 Data Discovery and Compliance

By Chas Meier and John Patzakis

In today’s compliance-driven environment, organizations must retain, discover, and manage large volumes of email data—even when the employees who once owned that data have long since departed. In Microsoft 365 (M365), this is managed through the concept of “inactive mailboxes.” An inactive mailbox is a mailbox that remains accessible for legal, regulatory, or compliance reasons, but no longer corresponds to an active user. While these preserved data stores are critical for eDiscovery, compliance, and investigations, they can pose significant challenges when it comes to efficiently locating, searching, and collecting the information they contain.

Fortunately, the latest innovations from X1 Enterprise are transforming how organizations handle these inactive mailboxes, making it easier and more streamlined than ever to discover and collect critical information—no matter where it resides.

What Are Inactive Mailboxes in M365?
Inactive mailboxes are mailboxes retained after a user leaves an organization, even after their license is removed. By placing a mailbox on legal hold or under a retention policy before deprovisioning the user, you can preserve it indefinitely without incurring licensing costs. This ensures the data remains accessible for compliance and eDiscovery. Best practices include applying holds before removing accounts, treating inactive mailboxes as part of ongoing governance efforts, and lifting holds once no longer needed.

The Process of Searching Inactive Mailboxes in Purview
In Microsoft Purview (the compliance and security center for Microsoft 365), users granted the eDiscovery manager role and each provisioned with an E5 license can search across both active and inactive mailboxes to fulfill legal or regulatory requirements. Generally, the process involves:

  1. Identifying the Inactive Mailboxes: Administrators must first know which mailboxes are inactive. Inactive mailboxes do not appear in the standard active user lists and often require additional steps to locate—either through the Purview interface, the Microsoft 365 admin center, or by running PowerShell scripts.
  2. Setting Up Permissions and Scope: The person performing the search needs appropriate eDiscovery roles in Purview. Once permissions are granted, they create a new content search or eDiscovery case and include the specific inactive mailboxes in the scope.
  3. Applying Search Criteria: Administrators can filter the search by date, keywords, sender/recipient, or other criteria. After running the search, Purview indexes the content and returns results for review and export.

Why Users Find It Challenging
Users face significant challenges when searching inactive mailboxes due to limited visibility—these mailboxes do not appear with active ones, requiring extra effort to locate and include them. Additionally, complex eDiscovery and compliance roles can be difficult to manage, particularly in organizations with large teams or complicated approval processes. A lack of a unified interface means working across multiple portals, tools, or scripts, leading to a fragmented and easily mismanaged workflow. Finally, without an intuitive, consolidated process, adding inactive mailboxes into search scopes, running queries, and ensuring data completeness is time-consuming and more prone to errors.

As organizations scale and accumulate thousands of these mailboxes, these difficulties multiply. Managing a vast, growing inventory of inactive mailboxes transforms a cumbersome task into a formidable burden, slowing down investigations, audits, and regulatory responses, and increasing the risk of overlooking critical data.

Many organizations resort to re-hydrating inactive mailboxes by applying an active M365 license to each one (“throwing licensing”), copying all M365 mailboxes of departed employees in a separate non-Microsoft archive (“throwing archiving”), or bringing inactive mailboxes into the litigation workflow (“throwing services”) to address the problem when faced with eDiscovery requests. Each of these approaches is extremely expensive, burdensome, and fraught with risk.

Driving the Transformation of Inactive Mailboxes through New Capabilities
X1 Enterprise has long been a trusted solution for comprehensive and targeted search across M365 data sources, file servers, and endpoints. With the new release of X1 Enterprise version 5.3, X1 is taking an industry-leading step forward in how organizations manage and leverage their inactive mailboxes.

How X1 Enterprise Revolutionizes Inactive Mailbox Management:

  • Unified Discovery Experience: With X1 Enterprise 5.3, legal and compliance professionals can now select inactive mailboxes directly within the platform. Instead of treating inactive mailboxes as separate or isolated repositories, X1 provides a consistent, familiar interface—just like working with active mailboxes.
  • Centralized Indexing and Search: Once selected, inactive mailboxes can be staged, indexed, searched, and collected using the same intuitive workflows. This streamlines eDiscovery, ensures rapid insights, and reduces the administrative burden on IT and compliance teams.
  • Seamless Integration with Microsoft Purview: X1 Enterprise automatically discovers and presents your full list of inactive mailboxes stored in Microsoft Purview (formerly Office 365 Security & Compliance Center) using only a single E5 license. This direct integration ensures that all preserved mailboxes are readily visible and actionable.
  • Consistent Identification and Collection Workflows: By applying the same workflows to both active and inactive mailboxes, X1 Enterprise eliminates confusion and complexity. The result is a more efficient and effective approach to responding to legal requests, regulatory audits, and internal investigations.

Benefits of the New Approach:

  1. Faster Response Times: Legal and compliance teams can rapidly identify and collect relevant information from inactive mailboxes without reinventing the wheel for each scenario.
  2. Improved Efficiency: In-place indexing and targeted searching with X1 Enterprise reduces administrative overhead and streamlines processes without the need to “boil the ocean,” thereby vastly reducing licensing costs with no need for 3rd party services or archiving platforms.
  3. Reduced Risk: Consistent workflows lower the chance of missing critical data or mismanaging preserved mailboxes.
  4. Enhanced Transparency: Having a clear, uniform process for both active and inactive mailboxes bolsters your overall information governance framework.

In Conclusion: Embrace the Future of Inactive Mailbox Management
Inactive mailboxes are here to stay, as legal and regulatory requirements continue to mandate the preservation of key business communications. Instead of viewing these repositories as a burden, forward-thinking organizations can leverage advanced technologies like X1 Enterprise 5.3 to take control of their compliance landscape.

Ready to Learn More?
The X1 Enterprise Platform is available now from X1 and its global channel network in the cloud, on-premises, and with our services available on-demand. For a demonstration of the X1 Enterprise Platform, contact us at sales@x1.com. For more details on this innovative solution, please visit www.x1.com/solutions/x1-enterprise-platform.

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Filed under Best Practices, Cloud Data, Corporations, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, Information Governance, Information Management, m365, Preservation & Collection

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November 19, 2024 · 11:47 AM

Industry Experts Address Information Governance Challenges in Microsoft 365

By John Patzakis

Successful information governance in a Microsoft 365 environment can be extremely challenging. Organizations require ways to operationalize their compliance processes, in order to effectively address their information governance use cases, such as PCI compliance, ROT, Data separation, and GDPR. However, Microsoft’s Purview eDiscovery platform is a very expensive add-on to M365 that does not scale to the data throughput requirements of a typical information governance project.

This is because M365 is a massive data ocean that is not purpose-built for compliance and eDiscovery, and so a new “compliance index” must be created with data carved out of the M365 ocean to initiate an eDiscovery or compliance case in Purview eDiscovery to ensure proper and complete content indexing. As a result of this disjointed two-step process, users are encountering significant problems with low throughput and defensibility. Many customers report to us that Microsoft Purview Premium’s documented inability  to handle anything other than small matters due to their 2GB per hour throughput limit. A matter involving 100 custodians at 10GB of M365 data would take several weeks to complete with Microsoft Purview Premium.

Last week X1 hosted a webinar with industry leaders Randy Kahn and Chas Meier to discuss information governance challenges in an M365 environment. Kahn outlined information governance principles and priorities in general and then emphasized how technical automation is essential to enforce and execute on any implemented information governance policies and procedures.

Kahn’s overview segued into Meier’s discussion and demonstration on how the X1 Enterprise Platform is the best solution available for managing M365 data sources as well as on-premises sources like laptops and file shares. Meier highlighted recent case studies involving large-scale projects where X1 was able to search and analyze terabytes of M365 information very accurately and in a fraction of the time required for other means, including Microsoft Purview.

Meier explained how the X1 Enterprise platform’s unique architecture allows it to index nearly ten times the daily volume compared to Purview or other competitive “connector” technologies. X1’s patented distributed micro-index-in-place architecture, combined with horizontal scaling, makes X1 the only solution capable of handling rapid indexing, identification, searching, and remediation of massive data sets in the terabytes across M365 sources, including modern attachments and inactive mailboxes. Additionally, X1 effectively addresses both cloud and on-premises data sources in a unified manner, including distributed endpoints, network file shares, and multiple M365 services like Mail, OneDrive, Teams, and SharePoint.

A copy of the webinar recording can be accessed HERE.

For companies navigating complex information governance and eDiscovery requirements, including those involving M365, the  X1 Enterprise Platform ensures compliance while protecting privacy. By implementing X1 Enterprise, organizations can not only reduce costs and save valuable time but also gain a strategic advantage in managing their information governance needs. We invite you to explore how X1 can transform your data management processes and help you stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital landscape.

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Filed under Best Practices, Corporations, ECA, eDiscovery, eDiscovery & Compliance, Enterprise eDiscovery, ESI, GDPR, Information Governance, m365, Preservation & Collection

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October 29, 2024 · 10:54 AM

Microsoft Copilot Explains Why X1 Search is Far Better than Windows Search

By Chas Meier

We’ve been hearing a lot of good things about Copilot, Microsoft’s generative AI chat bot. So, we asked Copilot the following prompt:

“Is X1 Search better than the standard Windows Search?

Here is Copilot’s reply in full:

“Yes, X1 Search offers many advantages over standard Windows Search, especially if you’re dealing with large volumes of documents and emails. It integrates with multiple data sources, provides faster and more efficient searches, and offers advanced filtering and preview options that standard Windows Search lacks. For someone in your line of work, X1 Search could be a real game-changer.”

Intrigued, we explored further:

“What are the advantages of X1 search over standard Windows search?

Copilot:

“Great question! Here are some key advantages of X1 Search over standard Windows Search:

  1. Unified Search Across Multiple Data Sources: X1 Search can search across emails, documents, local files, cloud storage (like Google Drive, OneDrive, Box), and even archived emails. Windows Search, on the other hand, is limited to your local files and doesn’t integrate as seamlessly with cloud services.
  2. Speed and Efficiency: X1 Search uses advanced indexing and fast-as-you-type search capabilities, allowing you to find information almost instantly. Windows Search can be slower, especially when dealing with large volumes of data.
  3. Advanced Filtering and Preview Options: X1 Search offers powerful filtering options, keyword highlighting, and full fidelity previews of documents and emails without needing to open them fully. This makes it easier to quickly identify relevant information. Windows Search lacks these advanced features.
  4. Integration with Email and Collaboration Tools: X1 Search integrates deeply with email clients like Outlook and Microsoft Teams, allowing you to search through emails, attachments, chats, and more. Windows Search doesn’t offer this level of integration.
  5. Cloud Data Search: X1 Search can index and search data stored in cloud repositories like Google Drive, OneDrive, and Box, which Windows Search doesn’t support.
  6. User Friendly Interface: X1 Search provides a simple, unified interface with over 50 refine columns, making it easy to navigate and find exactly what you need. Windows Search’s interface is more basic and less intuitive.

Does this help clarify the advantages for you?”

Yes, it does! Thank you, Microsoft Copilot! We could not have said it any better.

X1 Search is available for individual purchase on the X1 website and large volume, enterprise purchase by contacting X1 at sales@x1.com. To learn more about X1 Search visit  www.x1.com/solutions/x1-search.

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Filed under Best Practices, Business Productivity Search, Cloud Data, Corporations, Desktop Search, eDiscovery, Enterprise eDiscovery, Enterprise Search, ESI, Google Workspace, Hybrid Search, Information Access, Information Management, m365, MS Teams, OneDrive, productivity, SharePoint, X1 Search 9

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