The Purview connection is failing

The Microsoft Purview eDiscovery connection has stopped working. This article covers what usually causes it and who can fix it, which is often not you.

How to check the state

1. Go to Settings, then Integrations.
2. Open Microsoft Purview eDiscovery.
3. The screen shows the current connection state, and the reason where it has failed.

Failure is reported here rather than as empty search results, so an empty result means nothing matched rather than nothing ran.

The same screen reports every source your agency has connected. Troubleshooting source connections covers the others.

The three usual causes

Consent was withdrawn. The connection needs admin consent in your Microsoft 365 tenant, granted once at setup. It can be revoked on the Microsoft side without anything being changed in Govflo.

The license changed. Purview eDiscovery has to remain available on your tenant's license. A licensing change can remove it without anyone connecting the two events.

The tenant was reconfigured. Directory changes, conditional access policies and security tightening on your side can all invalidate a working connection.

Who fixes it

Reconnecting usually needs someone who can grant admin consent in Microsoft 365, which is normally a Microsoft 365 administrator rather than a records officer. If that is not you, the useful thing you can do is send them the state shown on the integration screen rather than "Govflo is broken".

What to do about work in flight

Any case that ran while the connection was down should be run again. Do not rely on an empty result from a period when the connection was failing.

If you have already told a requester there were no responsive records on the strength of such a search, treat that as something to correct rather than something to leave. The record of what you searched is discoverable, and a search that did not run is not a search.

Preventing the surprise

Check the connection before a large discovery run rather than after it. Finding out a search never ran is much cheaper before you have relied on the result.