Wednesday, September 30, 2020

Important Information About Zoom Cloud Storage

Although UCT is excited to see how Zoom's adoption and utilization continues to expand, we do need to provide some information to users to address some "housekeeping" issues, especially regarding meeting/webinar recordings. The following information is intended for all users who have been storing meetings/webinars online in Zoom's cloud storage. Zoom cloud storage is not intended for long-term/permanent data retention and we have begun monthly processes to purge Zoom cloud recordings older than 90 days from the system. If a user expects a recording to be used for months or years to come, they should plan to transfer the recording from Zoom to a long-term storage solution, such as YouTube, UHCL's media server, or Echo360.

To ensure that Zoom continues to function smoothly, we are requesting that Zoom users who have been saving recordings within Zoom act upon the following recommendations. Please regularly check your list of recordings in Zoom and "clean house" to control that inventory:

  1. Recordings no longer needed/relevant should be deleted from Zoom;
  2. Recordings that need to be archived/saved indefinitely should be downloaded and saved to your own, or a departmental, computer/storage device. The recording, once downloaded, should be deleted from Zoom;
  3. Recordings that will need to be accessed repeatedly, and over a significant period of time (e.g., within Blackboard, on UHCL's web site), should be downloaded, saved to a long-term storage area (e.g., YouTube, Echo360, UHCL streaming media server), and then deleted from Zoom; and 
  4. Zoom recordings needed in the short term (not exceeding 90 days) can be retained in Zoom and should be deleted once they are no longer needed.

The following resources are designed to assist users with some of these recommendations:

For more information about saving and using Zoom recordings for instruction, faculty are encouraged to contact the Support Center so that a member of the Instructional Design and Technology team can meet with you to discuss and assist with options that are most suitable for teaching/learning.