Records Retention Policies

Overview

The act of creating video recordings, summaries and transcriptions of your Zoom meetings results in documents that may be subject to VCU's Records Management Policies. Below is an overview of requirements, tips and tricks for dealing with records created when using Zoom at VCU.

Requirements

Each user is responsible for managing their recorded videos and transcriptions in accordance with the university’s record management policy and procedures. If you are unsure how long data must be retained, please refer to the Records Management page and policy for information such as records retention periods, training material and the state-mandated records destruction approval process: https://go.vcu.edu/records-management

• A completed destruction approval request form (RM-3) must be submitted to and approved by the Records Management Office prior to destruction of official records.
• Convenience copies are not to be reported on the RM-3 and can be purged at any time if there are no holds, but should not outlive the official record. Records cannot be destroyed if there is an ongoing or pending audit, investigation, litigation, FERPA or FOIA request.
• Records cannot be destroyed until those retention requirements have been met if there are superseding authorities that dictate retention and recordkeeping practices e.g. accreditation, contract terms.

Tips and Tricks

• When selecting "Record to this computer," remember that the resulting recording will be the only copy of the file. You'll want to consider backing it up to a storage drive, shared departmental drive, Google Drive, Kaltura, YouTube or other host for long term retention.
• If your department has been assigned to the "HIPAA" sub-account (based on its potential for dealing with health care-related data), choosing the "Record to Cloud" option will save the file to Zooms' Cloud-based servers.  These files will exist for only 60 days, then are automatically purged. Where appropriate, you will want to download a copy to your computing device to facilitate long-term storage as detailed above.
• If your department is not assigned to the "HIPAA" sub-account, your Zoom Cloud Recordings are also saved for 60 days on Zoom's Cloud servers, but they are also automatically backed up to VCU's Kaltura server for long-term retention. You may access them at go.vcu.edu/video. Use caution when deleting the Kaltura files from your account. Keep in mind that by default, your videos will arrive at the server with their publishing status set to "private," meaning only you as the owner can see them.
• Meeting Summaries will be saved to Zoom's Cloud server for 60 days.  You can find them on your account page, where they can be downloaded to your PC within that time frame. Additionally you can opt to have the summaries emailed to you as soon as they're created, to be saved in your mail history and/or on an external drive for long-term storage.