WSU Zoom recordings stored in the cloud will be deleted if they are more than six months old.

Prior to this new policy, Zoom recordings were deleted after nine months, said Corey Oglesby, communications specialist, trainer for WSU Information Technology Services. The new policy went into effect Dec. 8.

Oglesby said the six-month timeline was necessary to help decrease the number of Zoom recordings stored in the WSU cloud storage space. The university was approaching the maximum number of recordings that can be stored in the cloud.

“Zoom recordings dramatically increased in response to COVID-19, when we all went online in March,” he said. 

In March, the number of newly registered WSU Zoom users increased from 2,500 to 31,000, Oglesby said.

“That’s a crazy overnight increase,” he said. “Suddenly there were 30-40,000 meetings taking place every week, and a lot of times there were more than 600 meetings happening at the same time.”

Oglesby said after recordings are deleted, they are moved to the user’s trash bin in their Zoom account. Users then have 30 days to retrieve and download those recordings to their computers before they are permanently deleted.

Users can turn on a setting in Zoom that will notify them seven days before their cloud recordings are deleted from the trash bin, he said.  

Zoom users can choose to be notified in the Email Notifications section in the settings for meetings, according to the WSU Zoom support team’s self-help article.