Legal Hold

This article provides a guide for using Legal Hold in Verba.

Legal hold is a special property for labels. When Legal hold is enabled for a label, the conversations the label is applied to cannot be deleted by any user (even if they have the Delete conversation right) or automated process (data retention policy).
In addition, labels with legal hold enabled cannot be removed from conversations and cannot be deleted.

If legal hold has been activated for a label, it can only be deactivated (released) by at least two administrators or supervisors with the sufficient rights. One of them has to initiate the release of legal hold and the other has to approve it.

Enabling Legal Hold for labels

To make a label include legal hold, open the Verba web interface and select the Labels > Manage labels menu item, then click on the desired label in the list (or create a new one).

On the label management page, click the 'Enable Legal Hold' button. Optionally add a description to the Legal Hold Reference text field then click Save to confirm.

After saving, the legal hold will be applied to all conversations that are tagged with the associated label.

Releasing Legal Hold

To release legal hold, an administrator or supervisor with the sufficient right has to initiate the release. To do this go to the configuration page of the label by selecting it from the list of labels, the click the 'Initiate Release from Legal Hold' button.

This will place the legal hold in a state waiting for approval of release by another user with sufficient privileges. The other user will have to log into the web interface and go to the label's configuration page, then click the "Release Legal Hold' button.

Click Save to apply the changes. After this point all restrictions provided by Legal Hold will be removed from this label.

Listing legal holds

The Legal Hold menu in the web interface allows you to display lists of labels associated with legal holds.

The List Legal Holds option displays a list of labels that are currently under Legal Hold.

The Waiting for Approval option displays a list of labels where the release of Legal hold was requested and they are awaiting the approval of another user with sufficient rights.