When it comes to ediscovery and compliance, APIs can give users the ability to use 3rd party solutions to preserve, collect, and even cull data housed in a SaaS application; however, functionality is still limited to what the API is built to communicate. 

Even if an application has an API available, its design is often focused on the modification of objects and data rather than the creation of a consumable, universal format expected by legal and compliance teams. 

It may also only capture text-based information and may lack some of the visual and dynamic features of the original interface, which can be quite important when it comes to understanding and contextualizing the data.