Call Recording Overview

Recording calls lets you preserve important conversations, coach staff, review performance, and give agents concrete feedback. This page explains how recording behaves in Cloud Voice, what you can record, how to prompt callers for consent, and how recording files are managed over time.

Note

If the Recording configuration page shows a banner saying you do not have access to this feature, the capability has not been turned on for your account. Reach out to your service provider to have it enabled.

How recording works

Once a call connects, Cloud Voice begins recording the conversation on its own. While a recording is in progress, the person on the call can pause it and resume it again later, which is useful for keeping sensitive details out of the file. When the call finishes, the system saves the conversation as an audio file and applies a digital signature to it.

Note

The digital signature guarantees that the recording has not been tampered with after it was created.

For calls that need more detailed post-processing, Cloud Voice can record the receive track (RX) and transmit track (TX) of a one-to-one call as separate left and right channels, producing a stereo file. Splitting the two parties across channels makes each voice easy to isolate and speeds up later analysis. You can also pick whether recordings download as .wav or .mp3. See Enable Stereo-separated Recording for setup details.

What you can record

Recording is configured independently for each of the following, so you can be as broad or as targeted as you need.

• Extensions: Captures every call on the chosen extensions, both internal and external.
• Trunks: Captures every call on the chosen trunks, inbound and outbound alike. For example, if a team handles customer issues over one dedicated trunk, you can record only the calls that pass through it.
• Pagings/Intercoms: Captures the conversation between everyone taking part in a paging or intercom call.
• Conferences: Captures the conversation of everyone who joins the selected conference rooms.
• Queues: Captures calls for the queues you select. For instance, if an agent is logged in to both a Service queue and a Support queue and recording is enabled only for Service, the system records Service calls but leaves Support calls untouched.
• IVRs (Interactive Voice Response, the automated menu that callers navigate with their keypad): Captures calls for the IVRs you select.

Note

• Voicemail left on a recorded extension is not itself recorded.
• Queue and conference calls are recorded only when recording is turned on for the queue or conference itself. Enabling recording on an agent’s extension is not enough. For example, if extension 1000 is a queue agent and you enable recording on extension 1000 but not on the queue, a queue call that 1000 answers is not recorded.
• IVR calls are recorded only when recording is turned on for the IVR. If an outside caller reaches an IVR over a trunk and the IVR has no recording set, the call is not recorded. The one exception is the Record component in a call flow, which takes priority over this rule: if that component is enabled and the call is later handed to an IVR, the call is recorded even when the IVR has no recording of its own.

Consent prompts

Out of the box, Cloud Voice plays nothing to indicate that a call is being recorded.

To keep recordings compliant and make sure callers have agreed to be recorded, you can add your own recording prompt for internal calls, inbound calls, and outbound calls independently. When configured, the prompt plays before recording starts.

Caution

Recording laws vary by location, and some regions require that you notify callers, or obtain their agreement, before you record them. Confirm what applies where you and your callers are, then set these prompts up before you turn recording on.

Managing recordings

• Users can view and toggle the recording status of their calls from IP phones and the Cloud Voice App.
• Administrators can manage the stored recording files and grant access to them to other users.

Automatic cleanup

Each time a recording is produced, Cloud Voice writes a log entry for it and keeps the audio file in PBX local storage (storage on the PBX, or Private Branch Exchange, which is the phone system itself).

By default, once recording logs reach 1,000,000 entries, or once the total recording minutes are exhausted, the system starts removing the oldest logs or files first. You can raise or lower these limits, or switch to cleanup based on a retention period instead.

Caution

Automatic cleanup permanently deletes the oldest recordings when a limit is reached, and deleted files cannot be recovered. If you need to keep certain recordings long term, download them before they age out, or adjust the limits and retention period to fit how long you must retain them.

Tip

You can review your current recording capacity from the Dashboard.

For the full set of options, see Recording Auto Cleanup.