OpenText Legal Hold - OpenText Product Traceability Integration and Automation

Common Integration Use Cases Between OpenText Legal Hold and OpenText Product Traceability

1. Preserve product genealogy records when litigation or regulatory investigations are initiated

Data flow: OpenText Legal Hold - OpenText Product Traceability

When a product complaint, safety incident, or regulatory inquiry escalates into a legal matter, Legal Hold can trigger preservation of relevant traceability records such as batch history, component lineage, supplier lots, and distribution records. This prevents deletion or alteration of evidence needed to prove where a product was made, which materials were used, and where it was shipped.

• Legal teams identify the matter and define the hold scope
• Product Traceability receives the hold criteria for affected products, lots, or time periods
• Relevant genealogy and traceability data is locked for retention
• Teams can later retrieve a defensible record set for counsel or regulators

2. Automatically place holds on affected suppliers, batches, and distribution records

Data flow: OpenText Product Traceability - OpenText Legal Hold

When Product Traceability detects a quality deviation, recall, contamination event, or nonconformance, it can send the impacted batch numbers, supplier IDs, and shipment references to Legal Hold. Legal Hold then creates a targeted preservation action for all related records, reducing the risk of losing evidence during root cause analysis or litigation preparation.

• Traceability identifies the impacted product scope
• Hold requests are created for associated records and custodians
• Legal and quality teams receive a consistent preservation workflow
• Evidence remains intact while investigations proceed

3. Align custodian holds with operational owners of traceability data

Data flow: Bi-directional

Legal Hold can maintain the list of custodians responsible for product development, manufacturing, quality, supply chain, and distribution records, while Product Traceability provides the business context for which teams own the relevant data. This helps legal teams issue holds to the right operational owners and ensures traceability data is preserved across departments.

• Product Traceability identifies business owners for affected records
• Legal Hold maps those owners to custodians and preservation obligations
• Notifications are routed to the correct teams
• Hold compliance is tracked across legal, quality, and supply chain functions

4. Support recall readiness by preserving historical traceability evidence

Data flow: OpenText Product Traceability - OpenText Legal Hold

In industries such as life sciences, food and beverage, and manufacturing, recalls often lead to legal exposure. Product Traceability can feed historical product lineage and shipment data into Legal Hold so that the organization preserves the exact records needed to defend recall decisions, demonstrate due diligence, and respond to claims.

• Recall candidates are identified in Product Traceability
• Associated historical records are placed on hold
• Legal teams retain proof of sourcing, processing, and distribution
• Audit-ready evidence is available for regulators and insurers

5. Preserve supplier and component evidence during product liability cases

Data flow: OpenText Legal Hold - OpenText Product Traceability

When a product liability claim is filed, Legal Hold can direct Product Traceability to preserve records tied to specific suppliers, components, and manufacturing runs. This is especially useful when the organization must prove whether a defect originated from a supplier part, a process deviation, or downstream handling.

• Legal matter details define the preservation scope
• Traceability records for supplier lots and component genealogy are retained
• Potentially relevant records are protected from routine purge cycles
• Investigation teams can reconstruct the full chain of custody

6. Create a defensible audit trail for regulatory inspections and discovery requests

Data flow: Bi-directional

Legal Hold can record when holds were issued, modified, or released, while Product Traceability can provide the underlying product record context. Together they create a defensible audit trail showing what was preserved, why it was preserved, and which product records were in scope for a given matter or inspection.

• Product Traceability supplies the affected product and lot context
• Legal Hold stores the preservation decision and timeline
• Compliance teams can demonstrate control over evidence retention
• Discovery requests are answered faster with less manual reconciliation

7. Release holds in sync with matter closure and product lifecycle milestones

Data flow: OpenText Legal Hold - OpenText Product Traceability

Once a legal matter, recall, or investigation is closed, Legal Hold can notify Product Traceability to release preservation restrictions for the affected records, provided retention rules allow it. This prevents unnecessary storage growth and reduces operational burden while maintaining compliance with retention policies.

• Matter closure in Legal Hold triggers release review
• Product Traceability resumes normal lifecycle management for eligible records
• Records remain protected if other retention obligations still apply
• Storage and administrative overhead are reduced

8. Improve cross-functional response to quality events with shared status visibility

Data flow: Bi-directional

Legal, quality, manufacturing, and supply chain teams often work from different systems during a product incident. Integrating Legal Hold with Product Traceability allows both platforms to share hold status, affected product scope, and preservation progress so teams can coordinate faster and avoid conflicting actions such as deleting records that are under hold.

• Traceability identifies the impacted products and records
• Legal Hold shows whether preservation is active and for which matters
• Operational teams can see what is restricted before taking action
• Response times improve and compliance gaps are reduced