Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Premium Implementation (2026)
Case roles, holds, review sets, analytics and export validation in the Microsoft Purview portal. Fixed-fee deployment tiers.
Last updated by Errin O'Connor, Founder & Chief AI Architect, EPC Group
eDiscovery in the Microsoft Purview portal holds, searches, reviews and exports Microsoft 365 content. Microsoft retired the classic eDiscovery (Premium) experience on August 31, 2025; its premium features (review sets, advanced indexing, analytics, predictive coding models, decryption) are now part of the one eDiscovery experience and need E5, or E1/E3 plus Microsoft Purview Suite or the eDiscovery and Audit add-on, for the people whose data is analyzed. A hold preserves content; it does not stop owners editing or deleting the originals. Search export packages are deleted 14 days after the export is created. EPC Group delivers a fixed-fee assessment and a Foundation implementation (8-12 weeks, quoted after discovery), and publishes a synthetic case runbook for roles, holds, search, review and export validation.
Key Facts
- Classic eDiscovery (Premium) was retired on August 31, 2025; premium features now sit inside eDiscovery in the Purview portal
- Premium features: E5, or E1/E3 plus Microsoft Purview Suite or the eDiscovery and Audit add-on, for people whose data is analyzed
- A hold preserves content; owners can still edit or delete the originals
- Only eDiscovery Administrators see every case, and only they can remove case members
- Search export packages are deleted 14 days after the export is created
- EPC Group Foundation: fixed fee quoted after discovery, 8-12 weeks
Run one synthetic case end to end before the first real matter
A practice case run on test mailboxes shows, before any real matter depends on it, whether export packages get downloaded before they expire, whether item counts reconcile, and whether reviewers can open rights-protected email. Check these five points on it:
- Each person runs the eDiscovery RBAC Check diagnostic and holds only the Compliance Search, Preview, Export, Review or RMS Decrypt roles their task needs.
- The hold lists every location in scope before anyone is notified.
- Search statistics, including partially indexed items, are recorded before the export.
- Every export package is downloaded within 14 days, and the Items.csv report is reconciled against the statistics with each difference explained.
- The export reaches outside counsel through an access-controlled channel, never as a forwarded download link.
Download the eDiscovery case runbook (CSV): 18 steps from license check to case close, each with the role group and roles it needs, the evidence to keep, a validation check and the Microsoft Learn article it follows. The example rows are a synthetic matter, not client data. Sources: Microsoft Learn, Assign permissions in eDiscovery and Export search results in eDiscovery (accessed 2026-10-28).
Purview eDiscovery Premium FAQ
What is Microsoft Purview eDiscovery Premium?
eDiscovery in the Microsoft Purview portal identifies, holds, searches, reviews and exports content from Exchange Online, Microsoft Teams, Microsoft 365 Groups, OneDrive, SharePoint and Viva Engage. Microsoft retired the classic Content Search, eDiscovery (Standard) and eDiscovery (Premium) experiences on August 31, 2025. "Premium" now means the premium features inside the one eDiscovery experience: review sets, advanced indexing, optical character recognition, conversation threading, decryption, tagging, analytics (near-duplicate detection, email threading, themes), predictive coding models and import of non-Microsoft 365 data into review sets. The people whose data is analyzed with premium features need Office 365 E5 or Microsoft 365 E5, or E1/E3 plus Microsoft Purview Suite (formerly Microsoft 365 E5 Compliance) or the Microsoft 365 eDiscovery and Audit add-on. Case members who collect, view and analyze data do not need an E5 license (Microsoft Learn, Assign permissions in eDiscovery).
How does Purview eDiscovery Premium compare to Relativity?
Purview eDiscovery works inside Microsoft 365: it holds and collects content where it lives, and its review sets, analytics and predictive coding run on that content without moving it to another platform. Relativity is a separate review platform that loads data from many sources, including Microsoft 365 exports. A practical rule: decide per matter whether review stays in Purview or moves to a review platform, based on data volume, the share of non-Microsoft sources and the tools outside counsel already uses. Price both against your own volumes; this page quotes neither vendor’s prices.
How do holds and data sources work in Purview eDiscovery?
A hold preserves content in the mailboxes, sites, Teams and Microsoft 365 Groups added to a case. It does not freeze the originals: "content owners can still modify or delete the original content, but the content is preserved until the hold is removed or until the hold duration expires" (Microsoft Learn, Hold role). In the current experience the case is the organizing unit: you add people, groups and data sources to it, place holds on those locations and run searches against them. Hold notices to custodians are a legal process: record who received the notice, when, and who acknowledged it, whichever tool sends it. Release a hold only on counsel’s written instruction when the matter ends.
Does Purview eDiscovery do technology-assisted review (TAR)?
Technology-assisted review uses reviewer decisions on a sample to rank the rest of a document set by likely relevance. In Purview this is predictive coding models in review sets: you train a model on items reviewers have labeled, the system applies a prediction score to every item in the review set, and reviewers filter by that score to see the most relevant (or least relevant) items first. This page quotes no reviewer-hours saving: the result depends on the matter. Whether a predictive coding protocol is acceptable for a production is a question for counsel and, where it is disputed, the court.
How do I implement Purview eDiscovery Premium?
EPC Group runs it in six phases: (1) Discovery — legal and IT agree the matter types, roles and current process. (2) Configuration — role groups, a short list of eDiscovery Administrators, case conventions, export settings and a license check for the people in scope. (3) Hold and search — data source mapping, hold steps, KeyQL query patterns and statistics before every export. (4) Review and export — review set defaults, tags, decryption access, export options and the export validation steps. (5) Training — hands-on sessions for legal, case managers and IT. (6) Pilot matter and runbook — one matter run end to end, then a written runbook. The timeline is set in the assessment. The synthetic case runbook on this page lists each step, the role it needs and the evidence it should leave.
Does Purview eDiscovery make an organization compliant with FRCP or HIPAA?
No tool does. Purview eDiscovery gives legal teams the means — holds, searches, review sets, tags, process reports and export reports — and counsel decides whether the process meets the obligations in a given matter: preservation and production under FRCP 26 and 37(e), privilege protection under FRE 502 and the equivalent state rules. Access to protected health information or other regulated data inside a case is controlled by case roles: keep eDiscovery Administrators few, give RMS Decrypt only to people who must read protected content, and keep Search And Purge away from the investigation team. Recordkeeping obligations such as SEC Rule 17a-4 are retention questions, not eDiscovery ones.
How does EPC Group price eDiscovery implementations?
EPC Group eDiscovery portfolio: (1) eDiscovery Premium Assessment (fixed fee, 3 weeks) — current-state process + gap analysis + implementation roadmap. (2) eDiscovery Premium Foundation (8-12 weeks, fixed fee quoted after discovery) — configuration + role setup + custodian data sources + export settings + predictive coding setup + legal + IT training. (3) eDiscovery Managed Service (monthly retainer, quoted after discovery) — ongoing eDiscovery matter support, custodian management, review support, quarterly compliance review. (4) Custom eDiscovery Program (fixed fee, scoped after discovery) — full custom implementation for regulated industries or complex custodian environments. All led by senior compliance architect with legal-team engagement.
eDiscovery Premium Assessment
3-week fixed fee: current-state + implementation roadmap. Call (888) 381-9725.
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