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Due to an unprecedented use of Zoom and exponential growth of cloud recording storage, St. Thomas will be instituting a one year Zoom Cloud Storage retention period starting September 1, 2021. This policy is similar to policies instituted at many other universities, and is approved by STELAR, Information Security and university leadership.
All Zoom cloud recordings will be retained for 365 days in the Zoom cloud. After 365 days, recordings will be placed in the meeting host's Trash for an additional 30 days. Once the 30-day Trash countdown expires, the recordings will be deleted permanently. Therefore, permanent deletion will happen after 395 days (365+30 days). This policy applies to both recordings scheduled in the main Zoom portal, stthomas.zoom.us, and also scheduled through Canvas > Zoom Pro. One week prior to permanent deletion the host will start receiving emails notifying them of impending permanent deletion.
This retention period will ensure that enough cloud storage remains available to our community during an active academic term and promote the proper stewardship of University data and resources by encouraging the transfer of any meeting or lecture recordings that may be needed for longer-term access to one of the University's central storage locations. This ensures that students enrolled within the last year are able to access recordings needed to complete coursework for incompletes.
What You Need To Do
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Be Ready for the Change: Know about the retention period so you can plan accordingly for past and future recordings. Starting September 1, 2021, Zoom cloud recordings will only be retained for one year. This means that recordings made prior to September 1st, 2020, will move into Trash and you will have 30 days to restore those recordings. (Approximately September 30th, they will be permanently deleted and no longer recoverable.)
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Review Your Older Recordings
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Before September 1, 2021: Review any of your old Zoom cloud recordings:
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Go to stthomas.zoom.us and sign in. On the left, click Recordings to view all your recordings.
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If you wish to download a recording for archival, follow the instructions here. Once downloaded, you can upload the file(s) to Panopto to continue making them available for viewing online. Instructions to upload files to Panopto can be found here.
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If you wish to request to opt in to having ALL future Zoom recordings automatically copied to Panopto to be available beyond 365 days, place a service request here. Note that this copies NEW Zoom recordings to Panopto going forward. It doesn't apply to previous recordings.
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On (or after) September 1, 2021: Maintain your recordings in an ongoing manner. Once the retention period is applied, go to stthomas.zoom.us> Recordings. A new column will be visible titled Auto Delete In -- This is the countdown timer showing how long before each recording will be moved into the Zoom Trash for an additional 30 days before permanent deletion, after which the recording will not be recoverable by any means. Review your older recordings, especially those that will soon be deleted, and take the appropriate action (e.g. download, allow auto-deletion, or manually delete unnecessary recordings immediately).
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Review Zoom recording links
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When your Zoom recording is deleted, the Zoom recording link to view that recording will no longer work. If it is a recording you would like to keep sharing, please replace the Zoom recording link with a Panopto link. If you need help identifying dead links please contact ITS.
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While Panopto is the best option for recordings that are to be kept available for viewing online long-term, it is possible to exempt individual Zoom recordings from the 365-day retention policy and automatic deletion, which keeps them available streaming from Zoom, with the original links. This option to opt out individual recordings from automatic deletion may not be permanently available, but will be available at least through the end of fall term, 2021.
How to exempt an individual Zoom recording from the 365-day retention policy.