SharePoint - OpenText Legal Hold Integration and Automation

Common Integration Use Cases Between SharePoint and OpenText Legal Hold

SharePoint and OpenText Legal Hold complement each other well in organizations that need to preserve business content during litigation, investigations, audits, or regulatory reviews. SharePoint serves as the primary collaboration and document repository, while OpenText Legal Hold manages preservation obligations, custodian tracking, and legal hold workflows. Integrating the two helps legal, compliance, and IT teams reduce risk, avoid spoliation, and maintain controlled access to relevant content.

• Automated legal hold on SharePoint sites and document libraries

  When a litigation matter or investigation is opened in OpenText Legal Hold, the system can trigger preservation actions for specific SharePoint sites, libraries, folders, or documents. This prevents deletion or modification of relevant content and ensures that business users continue working without accidentally destroying evidence. The integration reduces manual intervention and shortens the time needed to place content under hold.

• Custodian identification and SharePoint content mapping

  OpenText Legal Hold can use employee and team data to identify custodians whose work is stored in SharePoint. The integration can map each custodian to their SharePoint sites, OneDrive-linked content, or team collaboration areas, giving legal teams a clearer view of where potentially relevant information resides. This improves defensibility and helps legal teams scope holds more accurately.

• Preservation of collaboration content for investigations

  SharePoint is often used for project sites, shared working documents, and departmental records that may become relevant in disputes. By integrating with OpenText Legal Hold, organizations can preserve version history, metadata, and document activity from SharePoint when an investigation begins. This is especially valuable for regulated industries where document lineage and auditability matter.

• Hold notification workflow for SharePoint site owners and content managers

  OpenText Legal Hold can send hold notices to SharePoint site owners, records managers, or department leads when content under their control is subject to preservation. These stakeholders can then help identify additional relevant libraries, confirm ownership, and support compliance with the hold. This creates a structured workflow between legal and business teams instead of relying on ad hoc email coordination.

• Exception handling for business-critical SharePoint content under hold

  Some SharePoint content may still need to be accessed or updated for operational reasons even while under legal hold. The integration can support controlled exception workflows where legal approves limited access while preserving the original content state in OpenText Legal Hold. This helps balance compliance obligations with ongoing business operations.

• Audit trail synchronization for defensible preservation

  OpenText Legal Hold can maintain a record of when holds were issued, which SharePoint locations were preserved, who was notified, and when acknowledgments were received. Linking this with SharePoint activity and metadata provides a defensible audit trail for legal review and regulatory inquiries. It also helps organizations demonstrate consistent preservation practices during discovery.

• Release of legal hold and controlled content disposition

  When a matter closes, OpenText Legal Hold can notify SharePoint administrators that the hold has been released for specific sites or libraries. SharePoint retention and disposition processes can then resume according to policy, allowing content to be archived or deleted appropriately. This prevents unnecessary long-term retention and reduces storage and compliance overhead.

These integrations are most valuable when SharePoint is the main collaboration repository and OpenText Legal Hold is the system of record for preservation and matter management. Together, they help organizations respond faster to legal events, reduce risk of accidental deletion, and improve coordination between legal, compliance, records management, and IT teams.