Reactions, GIFs, and Emoticons are not just something kids are using anymore.  They have become a regular part of our corporate communication.  They can enhance or soften written communication, providing a wide range of communication tones in text, rather than the flat text of the past.  However, there are a lot of migration challenges with Emoticons, GIFs, and Reactions.  In turn, these challenges can create some issues as well as impact your e-discovery & retention goals.

This is my favorite GIF to use in teams.  I’ve used it for all sorts of reasons, with these being my favorite uses:

• Good morning!
• Are you coming to this meeting?
• Goodbye!
• Goodbye and good luck with that! Leave me out of it!

When it comes to reactions, a thumbs up isn’t exclusive to “I like this”.  Instead, it is commonly used for:

• Agreed
• Thank you
• Acknowledged
• Yes
• I saw this

I don’t think any of this is breaking news for active users of Teams and other apps.  However, as applications add these kinds of interactions, many do not thoroughly plan out the migration and record management aspects of Emoticons, GIFs, and Reactions.

The best evidence that non-text forms of communication are here to stay is that Microsoft recently launched into preview the expansion of 85 emoticons to 800.  No longer will everyone need to use a Simpson’s Yellow Thumbsup.  Instead, they can choose a thumb that matches their skin tone, as well as lots of other enhancements.  Tony Redmond does an outstanding job explaining this on Office365ITPros: https://office365itpros.com/2021/04/26/teams-800-emojis/

With this expansion, it is an excellent time to review the issues with migrating these communication options and the importance of preserving them in migration.

What is the message?

Above I listed all of the different messages I use that single GIF for.  My Pixar Bird’s use is highly reliant on the context of the message, and I use several others!  When we consider all the different users and styles in our company, understanding the message behind all these non-text communications is challenging.

In the Enron files, commonly used for e-discovery demo data, we find all over their docs were code words that instructed people to execute illegal activities.  With compliance algorithms being very aware of these issues, many can detect this kind of behavior for monitored persons.  However, different GIFs and Emoticons could be used to replace this message.  Add in a variety of bad actor scenarios, and dealing with this data becomes complicated.

Regardless of the migration method, it is clear that these forms of communication are here to stay.  As administrators, we need to maintain all these items, and their context, during a migration.

I hope I never have to give a deposition with my bluebird from Pixar above. However, this is happening in court cases and likely to increase.  As eDiscovery companies work to adapt, as migration administrators, we need to preserve these records to meet our record management requirements.

Migration & Record Preservation

Just because a company is acquired, it doesn’t mean legal liability for previous work goes away.  Who retains the liability isn’t part of this article.  The issue of preserving data is.  The extreme frustration for those of us who do migrations for Mergers, Acquisitions & Divestitures (MAD) is that the APIs do not keep up with new features.  As a result, it isn’t always possible to export and import all data.

Commonly, we want to migrate users off of the source and power down the old.  This will help our users be more productive, but also reduce costs by running only one system. However, for items being preserved for litigation, including all these side items, we need to either completely move them or maintain them.

What to do?

For firms in litigation, you may find that the migration tooling, mainly the import abilities into the target, may not support all these scenarios.  (Microsoft’s APIs in this space are getting better, but still have a way to go.)  This import issue is particularly true in retaining all the metadata in native format.

A good quality e-discovery tool can collect this data.  If you have heavy use of these types of communications, you may need to migrate and complete an e-discovery search.   This method would give the users basic access to the historical items, yet preserve these items, and their metadata, in a locked system should you need them.

This situation needs to be addressed as part of your migration planning and with a clear description to your legal and compliance offices.

Next Steps

As we get new functions, migration isn’t top of mind.  This is sadly often repeated.  Where MAD activity is a basic business event, this process does need to change.  For now, we must address the migration challenges With Emoticons, GIFs, and Reactions.  It will get better!

In a future article, I will review some of the specific challenges with animate GIFs, so stay tuned.