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Guest access in eDiscovery (Premium)

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Tip

eDiscovery (preview) is now available in the new Microsoft Purview portal. To learn more about using the new eDiscovery experience, see Learn about eDiscovery (preview).

With guest access, you can provide access to an eDiscovery Premium case to people outside your organization. You can invite guests users to eDiscovery (Premium) cases just like you can invite guests into your Teams environment.

A guest is someone who doesn't have a work or school account with your organization. For example, guests may include external partners, vendors, suppliers, or consultants. Anyone who isn't part of your organization can be added as guest for an eDiscovery (Premium) case. This access means that anyone with a Microsoft Entra account or personal email account (Outlook, Gmail, or others) can participate as a guest in eDiscovery and have access to specific eDiscovery (Premium) cases.

Guest access in eDiscovery uses Azure B2B technology, which depends on an organization-wide Azure collaboration setting. When you invite a guest to eDiscovery, a guest account is created for them in Microsoft Entra ID. They're covered by the same compliance and auditing protection as other Microsoft 365 users. Guest access is subject to Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft 365 service limits.

Note

eDiscovery guests are currently limited to Reviewer role group permission only. For more information about the reviewer role, see Assign eDiscovery permissions in the Microsoft Purview compliance portal.

Set up guest access

Setting up guest access in eDiscovery requires configuring other settings in Microsoft Entra ID. To enable access to invite guests to eDiscovery cases, complete the following steps:

  1. Check the B2B external collaboration settings to ensure that collaboration with guests isn't blocked. If the Guest invite settings is set to No one in the organization can invite guest users including admins then inviting guest into eDiscovery won't work. Contact your system administrator to ensure this setting is properly configured. You can view and update the collaboration setting using the Authorization Policy API.

  2. Depending on the specific configuration in Step 1, eDiscovery administrators may or may not need additional roles to approval a guest access request submitted from the eDiscovery user.

    • If the Anyone in the organization can invite guest users including guests and non-admins (most inclusive) or Member users and users assigned to specific admin roles can invite guest users including guests with member permission options are selected, then eDiscovery administrators can approve invitation requests without additional roles.
    • If Only users assigned to specific admin roles can invite guest users is selected, then the eDiscovery administrator who would approve the invitation request requires the Invite guest role to approve and trigger the invitation email to the guest. See the Assign Microsoft Entra roles to users article for guidance on how to add the Guest Inviter role to users. If you prefer to use PowerShell to add this role, see Assign the Guest Inviter role to a user.

  3. To enable collaboration with guest reviewers from other Microsoft 365 cloud environments, including if you're a Microsoft Azure Government organization, both your organization and the guest user’s organization must enable specific connection settings. For detailed configuration guidance, see Collaborate with guests from other Microsoft 365 cloud environments.

Enable guest access in eDiscovery (Premium)

Note

For a limited time, this classic eDiscovery experience is also available in the new Microsoft Purview portal. Enable Compliance portal classic eDiscovery experience in eDiscovery (preview) experience settings to display the classic experience in the new Microsoft Purview portal.

eDiscovery admins must enable guest access in eDiscovery (Premium) before they can invite users as guests.

To enable guest access for guests in eDiscovery (Premium), complete the following steps:

  1. In the compliance portal, navigate to eDiscovery > Premium > eDiscovery (Premium) settings > Guest users.
  2. Toggle Guest access to On.

Now eDiscovery managers and admins can initiate the guest invitation process within any eDiscovery (Premium) case.

Invite guests to an eDiscovery (Premium) case

Note

For a limited time, this classic eDiscovery experience is also available in the new Microsoft Purview portal. Enable Compliance portal classic eDiscovery experience in eDiscovery (preview) experience settings to display the classic experience in the new Microsoft Purview portal.

To invite guests to an eDiscovery (Premium) case, complete the following steps:

  1. In the compliance portal, navigate to eDiscovery > Premium > eDiscovery (Premium) cases and select the case you want to invite guests to.

  2. In the selected case, select the Settings tab and then select Access & permissions.

  3. In the Guest users section, select Add.

  4. On the Invite guest flyout pane, complete the following fields:

    • Full name: Enter the full name of the guest you want to invite.
    • Email address: Enter the email address of the guest you want to invite.
    • Organization: Enter the organization of the guest you want to invite.
    • Guest role: Select the role you want to assign to the guest. The guest is currently limited to Reviewer role group permission only.
    • Justification: Explain why this person needs access to the case.

  5. Select Invite to submit the invitation request for review and approval by an eDiscovery admin.

Approve guest access requests

Note

For a limited time, this classic eDiscovery experience is also available in the new Microsoft Purview portal. Enable Compliance portal classic eDiscovery experience in eDiscovery (preview) experience settings to display the classic experience in the new Microsoft Purview portal.

After guest invitations are submitted, eDiscovery admins must approve the requests before the guest can access the case. To approve guest access requests, eDiscovery managers must complete the following steps:

  1. eDiscovery managers are notified of pending invitation requests on the Overview tab in eDiscovery (Premium).
  2. To review and approve or deny the request, navigate to eDiscovery > Premium > eDsicovery (Premium) settings > Guest users. Select the guest request and select Create account or Deny.
  3. If the guest is being added to the tenant for the first time, eDiscovery admins need to perform a two-step approval process. They first need to approve creation of an account, which may take up to 24 hours. After 24 hours, eDiscovery admins can approve guest access to the case. For future access requests for access to other cases for the same guest, only one-step approval is required.

In you encounter an error when approving the guest access to a case, check the following:

  • The guest's email isn't disabled, blocked or deleted by the tenant admin.
  • If there are any members in the Reviewer role group whose Microsoft Entra account has been deleted. Currently, an error occurs when adding a new member to a role group that has any deleted users. If the Reviewer role group has any deleted users, remove them from the role group and retry the guest approval.

Accepting guest invitations

After the request is approved by the eDiscovery admin, the guest receives a welcome email from Microsoft Invitations. This email contains information about the eDiscovery invitation and a link where the guest can accept the invite and sign in. The guest must select the unique link provided in the email or copy/paste the link in a browser to log into the specific eDiscovery organization.

Email invitation for guest access to an eDiscovery (Premium case).

Guests that have a work or school account in Microsoft Entra ID can accept the invitation and authenticate immediately. Other users are sent a one-time passcode to validate their identity. You must ensure that the one-time passcode setting is enabled in your organization.

Note

If the guest is logged into another eDiscovery organization in their browser, they need to sign out from the organization and and clear their browser cache before selecting the link in the invitation email.

After accepting the invitation and authenticating, the guest can participate in the eDiscovery case like an internal reviewer of the case and perform review activities such as querying, filtering, tagging, redaction, downloading single items for review, and more.

Removing guest access

Note

For a limited time, this classic eDiscovery experience is also available in the new Microsoft Purview portal. Enable Compliance portal classic eDiscovery experience in eDiscovery (preview) experience settings to display the classic experience in the new Microsoft Purview portal.

An eDiscovery admin can remove a guest’s access to a case from eDiscovery Premium settings page. To remove guest access for a user, eDiscovery admins must complete the following steps:

  1. To review and approve or deny the request, navigate to eDiscovery > Premium > eDsicovery (Premium) settings > Guest users.
  2. Select the guest and select Remove from the flyout pane.

The guest continues to have access to other cases that they have been added to. When a guest is removed from the last case they have access to, they're removed from the Reviewer role group and won't have access to any cases in eDiscovery (Premium).

The guest continues to have a Microsoft Entra guest account in the organization. A regular review and clean-up of guest accounts from Microsoft Entra ID is recommended.