Zoom Recording Retention Policy Takes Effect May 1

The College of Charleston is instituting a 120-day retention policy for Zoom cloud recordings, effective May 1, 2021. From that point forward, Zoom recordings older than 120 days will be placed in the meeting host’s Trash for 30 days before being permanently deleted. This means that, anything recorded prior to January 1, 2021, will be moved to the meeting host’s Trash on Saturday, May 1. The system will perform daily checks and move anything older than 120 days from there on out.

Zoom cloud storage is intended for temporary, non-archival storage purposes. Meeting owners are expected to assess their recordings on a regular basis and, if long-term storage is necessary, to download and transfer Zoom cloud recordings to another College–approved storage solution. Downloading and deleting recordings in Zoom is a quick few-step process; visit the Division of Information Technology (IT) Knowledge Base article for helpful instructions.

Suggested institutional alternative storage locations include:

Kaltura (for sharing)

Microsoft Stream (for sharing)

Microsoft OneDrive (for archival purposes)

Zoom recordings may also be transferred to YouTube and then inserted into OAKS. For instructions on how to establish a YouTube account/channel, upload a Zoom recording to YouTube, edit the video’s closed captions and insert the video into OAKS, check out this video created by the College’s Teaching and Learning Team (TLT).

Please note that the above-described Zoom retention schedule applies only to Zoom meeting recordings hosted on cofc.zoom.us – not to recordings stored locally on one’s computer or to those recordings that have been moved to another storage location. Recordings of individual student or group assessments follow institutional and state retention schedules, as they are part of the academic record and should be retained outside of the central recording system.

Further retention policy details and downloading/deleting guidance are available on the IT website. Faculty and staff who have questions may contact the IT Service Desk by chat, email or phone: 843.953.3375.