Zoom Recording Retention Policy

  • Faculty & Staff
  • Students & Alumni

Effective January 20, 2021, recordings in the upenn.zoom account (the Zoom account used by most faculty, students and staff) will be subject to a 120 day retention  policy.


Contact instructional-support@sas.upenn.edu or your IT support provider for guidance on how best to manage your Zoom recordings.


What will be impacted by this new policy?

  • Any recording in Zoom Cloud storage will be automatically moved to the owner’s Trash folder 120 days after the recording date.
  • On 1/20/21, recordings made on or before 9/22/20 will be moved to the Trash folder in the owner’s Zoom account. From that point forward, recordings will be moved to Trash once they are over 120 days old
  • Recordings that were made in Zoom but moved to the Panopto system via the Canvas integration will NOT be impacted.   Recordings in Panopto will remain available.

How can I keep my recordings for longer than 120 days?

  • Recordings that need to be retained for over 120 days should be downloaded from Zoom and uploaded to other systems.  Here’s what we recommend:
    • Recordings used for teaching should be moved to the Panopto video system and made available to students through Canvas
    • Recordings that need to be shared with specific collaborators can be uploaded to PennBox, Google Drive, DropBox or other file sharing systems
    • Recordings intended for public viewing can be posted to YouTube, Vimeo or other video services intended for broad audiences
  • All instructors are encouraged to use the Zoom integration in Canvas.  The integration will automatically transfer your Zoom recordings to Canvas so they will be available to students and not subject to the 120 day retention limit.
  • When selecting a service for long term storage or sharing, be mindful of privacy concerns.  Class recordings should typically only be available to people who were enrolled in the class.  For any recordings shared with the general public through YouTube or other services, you will likely need to have permission from everyone who is included in the recording
  • Additional details about how to download recordings from Zoom are available here: https://www.isc.upenn.edu/how-to/pennzoom-cloud-recording-management

How can I recover a recording that has been deleted?

  • Recordings older than 120 days will be moved to the Trash folder of the owner’s Zoom account, and remain in Trash for 30 days.  During this period you can recover recordings from the Trash and download them. 
  • After 30 days in Trash, recordings will be permanently deleted.
  • Penn will be making a backup of all recordings stored in the Zoom cloud prior to 1/20/21 and will be able to assist with recovering any recordings from prior to 1/20/21.

Why is this policy being implemented?

  • Zoom is primarily a tool for live meetings.  Zoom cloud recording is a convenient way to record meetings, but is not intended to be a long-term solution for storing or sharing recordings.
  • Zoom storage is quite expensive compared to other services.  In order to keep Penn’s cost as low as possible, we need to limit the amount of Zoom storage we consume.
  • Zoom has limited options for secure sharing of recordings.  Canvas, PennBox and other services offer much better controls for managing access to recordings.