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Feedback?We’ve made considerable changes in how we retain user-generated data in Webex. This article explains whether these changes apply to your organization, what user experience (UX) differences you will encounter in Control Hub, and what retention period choices are now available.
About forthcoming data retention changes
Gradually, Webex is removing the option to retain messaging and meeting data for an indefinite time period. Prior to recent updates, there was no default retention period. This meant that if you had not set a retention policy, Webex retained your user-generated content indefinitely. Under the updated policy model:
- Newly provisioned organizations receive standardized retention defaults (as shown in the table below).
- Organizations created prior to these changes taking effect retain their existing retention options, unless administrators choose to update them.
This retention applies to new as well as historical data. For example, if the retention policy is set to 360 days and takes into effect from 31st Jan 2023, a meeting recording generated on or before 5th Feb 2022 gets deleted. Similarly, with the retention period set to 360 days, a meeting recording generated on 1st October 2022 is deleted by 26 September 2023.
By introducing a default retention period, we're helping you manage the lifecycle of your user-generated content, reduce your data footprint, and ensure you can meet compliance and regulatory standards.
This change applies to user-generated content and is made available to all enterprise Webex customers.
This change does not affect you if you already defined a retention policy. Your retention period stays the same.
Retention period changes and dates
|
Data type | Do you have Pro Pack? |
Current default retention period |
New default retention period |
Date of change |
|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Webex messages, files, whiteboards |
No |
Indefinite |
360 days |
8th March 2023 |
|
Yes |
Indefinite |
1095 days |
31st March 2023 |
|
|
Webex Meetings—Recordings, transcripts, saved in-meeting chats |
No |
Indefinite |
360 days |
8thMarch 2023 |
|
Yes |
Indefinite |
1095 days |
31st March 2023 |
*Webex customers onboarded prior to 2023 may still have "indefinite" retention period options unless administrators choose to update them.
The retention policy for in-meeting chats only applies to saved in-meeting chats. You can save in-meeting chats only if you're on the Webex Suite meeting platform.
The retention policy doesn’t cover the chats that occur in breakout sessions. You can use the Webex API to take offline copies of your chats.
New User Interface changes
We're progressively rolling out the new UI changes. Depending on when your organization was created and whether modern compliance policies have been enabled, administrators may see different configuration views in Control Hub. Partner administrators managing multiple customers may notice the modern retention dashboard in newer organizations, while older organizations still do not see the modern retention view.
| 1 |
Sign in to Control Hub. |
| 2 |
Go to . |
| 3 |
Scroll to the Retention policies section. |
| 4 |
Define a Messaging retention policy by clicking Update the policy. The minimum values are 1 day, 1 month, or 1 year. The maximum values are 360 days, 12 months, or 1 year. The values control how long Webex keeps user-generated messages, files, and whiteboards. You can set different or the same values for direct and group messages, respectively. |
| 5 |
Define a Meetings retention policy by clicking Update the policy. The minimum value is 7 days, and the maximum value is 360 days. The value controls how long Webex keeps recordings, transcripts, and highlights from your meetings. |
| 6 |
Define a Contact Center retention policy by clicking Update the policy, choose the Default or set a Custom retention period. |
| 7 |
Click Save. The default value is 1095 days. The minimum value is 1 day, and the maximum value is 3600 days. The value controls how long Webex keeps Contact Center voice recordings. Enabling AI features may limit access to voice transcripts, in addition to applying retention policies to Contact Center voice recordings. |
What you should do to prepare for this change
Review your organization's current retention settings in Control Hub. If you have not selected a specific retention policy, then your retention policy will remain indefinite, and no automatic changes will be made to your data.
If you don't want to keep user-generated data, or you don't care about how we handle this data, you don't need to do anything. We'll stop keeping the data indefinitely; instead, we'll purge it after the new default retention period takes effect for your organization.
If you want to control your user-generated Webex content, you have the following options:
-
Change your organization's retention period through Control Hub:
Table 2. Retention period choices Data type Do you have Pro Pack? Minimum Maximum Default Webex Space—Messages, files, whiteboards
No 1 day 360 days 360 days Yes 1 day 3600 days 1095 days Webex Meetings—Recordings, transcripts, in-meeting chats
No 7 days 360 days 360 days Yes 7 days 3600 days 1095 days - Consider upgrading to Pro Pack if you want to retain data for longer than the new limits.
- Consider using eDiscovery for managing data for compliance.
- Consider integrating with your data archiving tools if you want to take user-generated Webex content to an "offline" copy.
- Subscribe to our Data retention article to be notified when this change happens.
- Contact your Cisco account representative if necessary.
