On Nov. 24, the University of Oregon will start more actively managing its Zoom storage by automatically deleting recordings and transcripts that are more than 90 days old.  

This practice will greatly reduce UO’s spending on expensive Zoom cloud storage. The UO has waited longer than many universities to introduce such auto-deletion.  

"During the pandemic, we provided extra Zoom storage to support instructors during those challenging times," said Abhijit Pandit, vice president and chief information officer. "Now, as good stewards of UO resources, it’s our duty to reduce Zoom cloud usage and shift funds to services that provide greater value and meet critical needs for research, scholarship and administration."  

All Zoom cloud recordings and transcripts more than 90 days old will move to the Zoom trash for 30 days, where they can be recovered. After that, they’ll be permanently deleted.  

To ease the transition, Information Services will create a one-time "dark archive" of all Zoom files on Nov. 24, taking responsibility for stewarding them through their respective retention schedules. That archive will be accessible for institutional recordkeeping purposes only.  

If faculty and staff want to keep any of those older recordings and transcripts for their own use — such as for teaching or departmental operations — they must download the files from Zoom and save them elsewhere.  

Many Zoom recordings don’t need to be saved and should be deleted to save space.  

"It was common to record remote classes during the pandemic but most of those videos aren’t suitable for reuse," Pandit said. "Many of them shouldn’t be saved anywhere in UO storage. We don’t want to move the problem around."  

New recordings and transcripts will follow the same auto-deletion process on a rolling basis after the new setting takes effect in November. Information Services encourages faculty and staff to develop new habits of promptly downloading any Zoom recordings or transcripts they plan to keep.  

All UO employees, in coordination with their home departments, are responsible for keeping records for the appropriate amount of time, with the exception of the one-time dark archive of Zoom files. University Records Management provides guidance about best practices for managing video recordings as records.  

"Zoom cloud storage is intended for short-term storage and sharing," Pandit said. "For longer-term data storage, we offer other services that are more robust, feature-rich and cost-effective."  

Students will be unaffected by the new auto-deletion setting. They can save Zoom recordings only to computers, not to the Zoom cloud.  

The new Zoom setting is part of UO’s data storage transformation, designed to make storage at the UO more effective and efficient. Through this comprehensive storage optimization and data management effort — which also includes the recently announced Dropbox renewal and large-scale research storage — Information Services seeks to better meet UO’s needs now and in the future.  

In the coming months, staff will continue making adjustments to diverse platforms — such as Canvas, Panopto and Microsoft OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams — based on analysis of storage usage and costs.  

Details about Zoom recording and transcript auto-deletion are available in the UO Service Portal.  

People concerned about removing recordings from Zoom are encouraged to fill out the Zoom recordings questionnaire to help UO IT staff provide personalized support.   

Other questions about Zoom can be directed to UO Zoom support, the IT staff who support your unit or the Technology Service Desk.  

Questions about records management can be directed to your unit’s records steward or to University Records Management at records@uoregon.edu.   

—By Nancy Novitski, University Communications  

Reminders about employee data-handling responsibilities 

• UO employees are responsible for being aware of the sensitivity of the data they handle, for using approved storage locations that support that policy, and for following other controls associated with different classes of data. The Information Security Office can help identify secure and compliant solutions. (Some cybersecurity-related resources require a Duck ID login for access.) 
• Before deleting files or other data, or moving them out of UO systems, employees should be aware of their recordkeeping responsibilities as explained in the short video Records and Our Shared Responsibilities from University Records Management.