Text message archiving for businesses

April 15, 2014 11:54 AM

Is there an all in one solution that will archive text message conversations for multiple styles of phones? Even more caveats inside...

It has been recommended our operation start archiving text messages (we already archive email). I have no idea where to start on this. The majority of our employees use iPhones. Some have older flip-style phones with texting ability. Our carrier is a regional one (not one of the big 3, not even big 10).

Is this even possible? As I understand it from my limited reading, Apple has not opened the iPhone API up to allow for apps to access text message conversations to allow for archiving. Is this the case? What to do?

Any help appreciated!

posted by dukes909 to Technology (5 answers total)

Well here's the expensive option, anyway: Cellebrite. Forensic-level data extraction from just about any phone you care to throw at it. It's one of those "if you have to ask you can't afford it" kind of services, but it'll definitely do the job.
posted by valkyryn at 12:40 PM on April 15, 2014

There's a few things that I've used on Android to archive text messages to a GMail account, but if you've still got employees using flip-phones I think you're going to have a pretty hard time - feature phones varied widely on how SMS storage worked and whether you could export them.

It's not really clear from your question whether the phones your employees are using are company-issued, but I think something like this can only really come into play once a) all your employees have company-issued business phones and b) you can standardise them all on at least a small selection of different handsets.
posted by spielzebub at 12:42 PM on April 15, 2014

Response by poster: They are company issued phones.
posted by dukes909 at 1:02 PM on April 15, 2014

Response by poster: Cellebrite looks interesting but unless I'm missing something, it also looks like it requires the phone in order to extract data. We need the ability to archive conversations, which means 5 years down the road most employees won't have the same phone. Others may get lost, broken etc.
posted by dukes909 at 1:07 PM on April 15, 2014

Response by poster: Ok, no update in a day. Let's say they are all iPhones - is there a solution for that?
posted by dukes909 at 5:04 AM on April 16, 2014