Question with Configuring Call Recording Archiving and How Old Recordings are Handled

[Ed Wheeler]

We are planning on going from current premise install to hosted. In preparation of this we wanted to configure archiving of recorded calls to Google Storage to reduce the size of the instance/backup. My question is when the archiving is configured, say to archive everything older that 1 day. Does that mean it will archive anything older than 1 day starting from that point and leave all the old recordings alone or go through all the existing recordings and check what is older than 1 day and archive those too? There is a lot of old recordings and need to know how those will be handled. Thanks, Ed.

 

[TheodorosG_3CX]

Yes this will archive all recordings in the PBX older than 1 day.
Depending on the size of the recordings this might require resources and it is advised to be done Out Of Office hours.

 

[NateDoc]

Hi Theodoros,

I've been manually archiving recordings for a while for a client because your literature says that archiving can't be set to archive old recordings past a certain age and instead when it's enable it archives everything. How would one set up archiving by age as you're suggesting? Is it different from v18 to v20? I'm really curious as this would save me a ton of time on the archive day every couple of weeks.

 

[VoIPTools]

We took a slightly different approach than 3CX. We allow you to keep the original recording in place AND archive instantly at the same time. We also provide separate retention policies for the original recordings, and archives. For example, you could keep the original recordings on the 3CX server for a couple of weeks, and keep archives for a couple of years. You decide the retention periods. I encourage you to take a look at our 3CX Recording Manager.

I will also take this opportunity to offer a sneak-peak into what is coming in our next version -- full AI-based highly accurate transcriptions, summaries, task identification, appointment recognition, key-points, scoring, sentiment analysis, and more. The integration with AI is done and we are now finishing up the new UI elements into the application. Oh, and visual representation of the audio while you scrub/listen to the recordings.

 

[NateDoc]

Hi Matthew,

Not sure how many of us still run 3CX on Windows, but I don't, so your offering isn't helpful here. Thanks though!

 

[NicholasP_3CX]

Hi Theodoros,

I've been manually archiving recordings for a while for a client because your literature says that archiving can't be set to archive old recordings past a certain age and instead when it's enable it archives everything. How would one set up archiving by age as you're suggesting? Is it different from v18 to v20? I'm really curious as this would save me a ton of time on the archive day every couple of weeks.

Please note that even the archived recordings are available n the clients for download and listening. In version 20 we can even archive recordings as soon as the call is completed, so we don't take up any space on the server disk, or the backup.

 

[VoIPTools]

Hi Matthew,

Not sure how many of us still run 3CX on Windows, but I don't, so your offering isn't helpful here. Thanks though!

We support both the Windows and Linux versions of 3CX and have for many years.

 

[NateDoc]

Please note that even the archived recordings are available n the clients for download and listening. In version 20 we can even archive recordings as soon as the call is completed, so we don't take up any space on the server disk, or the backup.

Since I've heard of reported issues with the archive potentially failing the upload then being deleted, I've been snapshotting the instance periodically to have a second backup of the recordings. As such, doing a full backup or as recorded backup wouldn't work for this specific workflow - having an aged-out method is highly preferable. Also, once a recording is archived, it's no longer playable on the system, which the client uses for recent recordings.

 

[NateDoc]

We support both the Windows and Linux versions of 3CX and have for many years.

The target server yes, but according to your website your tools require a Windows install correct? If so, that's not workable with our current infrastructure.

 

[NicholasP_3CX]

Since I've heard of reported issues with the archive potentially failing the upload then being deleted, I've been snapshotting the instance periodically to have a second backup of the recordings. As such, doing a full backup or as recorded backup wouldn't work for this specific workflow - having an aged-out method is highly preferable. Also, once a recording is archived, it's no longer playable on the system, which the client uses for recent recordings.

Backups can now be done on an hourly basis.

An archived recording cannot be played back, as the PBX no longer controls this. We can only play back a recording on the server itself. However, they are still visible and able to be downloaded and played back on the media player of the computer.

 

[VoIPTools]

The target server yes, but according to your website your tools require a Windows install correct? If so, that's not workable with our current infrastructure.

Today, we work with both the Windows and Linux versions of 3CX, but yes Recording Manager is a Windows application. That is changing very soon. We are currently rewriting our tool as a .NET Core application that will run on Linux as well as Windows. As part of this rewrite effort, we are modernizing the UI, optimizing performance when dealing with millions of recordings, and we are adding AI features including:

• Amazingly accurate full voice-to-text transcriptions
• Sentiment Analysis
• Conversation summary
• Appointment recognition
• Key Points
• Action Items
• Agent Scoring

The AI functionality has already been completed and we are currently working on the UI changes. I would start watching for the new version in about a month. It is not an overstatement to say "this is going to be amazing". AI is changing the world, and we are doing our best to keep up.

 

[NateDoc]

Matthew - that's great to hear! I'll be on the look out for that release.

 

[tronic]

When auto archiving off the system, what is the correct process then to prune old data.

Say you wanted only to keep 7 years of recordings.

We use Google storage buckets for archiving, and you can set up any object older than 7 years gets deleted.

But would this cause issues on the 3CX database as it still has this file as a recording, or does it not mater?

How does the 3CX then know a group of files have been deleted from the remote archive location?

 

[VoIPTools]

3CX will not know the files have been deleted. It will have a link to the recording, but when you click on the link it will say "file not found".