Younger Generation Not Using Outlook to Communicate at Work

A study by a consulting firm named Creative Strategies shows that younger workers under the age of 30 have shifted away from using email to communicate for business and toward using cloud based office software, particularly that offered in the Google Docs editors suite. While more than a third of those over 30 surveyed made use of Outlook frequently to communicate with business colleagues:

. . . only 13% of workers under 30 listed Outlook as a tool they used to collaborate at work:

The younger generation is shifting away from email focused communications and relying more on video conferencing software and text messaging.

Finding Edits to SLACK Messages in JSON Files

A recent webinar by Casey Sullivan of Logikull, The Lawyer’s Guide to Discovery and Investigations in Slack, pointed out how complex and difficult to review data exported from SLACK in JSON files is. The data in a JSON file will be in the below format, as shown in this posted on the SLACK help center,

It's important to note that a SLACK message can be edited. If a message has been edited, the exported JSON data will show the name of the user that edited a message, and the time the editing took place in the 'ts' field. See the bold-faced lines in the below example.

{

"type": "message",

"user": "UTXHL6F8A",

"upload": false,

"ts": "1590101612.000000",

"text": "Hello, this is the message after it was edited.",

"previous": {

"text": "Hello, this is the original message.",

"blocks": [

{

"type": "rich_text",

"block_id": "Bts",

"elements": [

{

"type": "rich_text_section",

"elements": [

{

"type": "text",

"text": "Hello, this is the original message."

}

]

}

]

}

]

},

"original_ts": "1590101603.000300",

"subtype": "message_changed",

"editor_id": "UTXHL6F8A",

"blocks": [

{

"type": "rich_text",

"block_id": "O+PJ",

"elements": [

{

"type": "rich_text_section",

"elements": [

{

"type": "text",

"text": "Hello, this is the message after it was edited."

}

]

}

]

}

]

}

Relativity Short Message Format

Relativity has a short message format which should be used for messages exported from Slack, Skype, Instant Bloomberg chat, or standard mobile phone SMS messages. A .rsmf file should include a .zip file attachment, that cannot be encrypted. A manifest file inside the zip file should have a JSON file at its root. These individual JSON files will include the names of participants in messages, and the titles of their conversations - a new and valuable source of metadata. The JSON files will also record events, and can show if a message was deleted. The format appears this way:

Relativity Short Message Viewer is used to display the messages in a workspace. A version of the message is recreated in html. Slightly different styles will be used for different message types. Slack messages look like this:

. . . and Bloomberg chats look like this:

The viewer includes a timeline that you can use to restrict a review to a particular date range.

Hovering over an icon will give you a summary of the number of participants, message total, and date range of a conversation.