3 Solutions for Sharing and Managing Your Zoom Recordings

Recorded a Zoom meeting, now what? How do I efficiently share it with people around my organization? How do I restrict access to such a recording? I want my marketing team to only view this recording so how do I segregate access?

This article answers these questions by informing you about 3 different ways in which you can organize your recorded zoom meetings; the pros and cons of each.

The first method is simple and obvious, which is to use the basic features offered in Zoom for content sharing.

If you are using a free Zoom account, then you can only download the video to your local drive. Sharing is now a hassle as you will have to upload the recording to an online drive such as Google Drive, Dropbox etc., and then share your recording with your intended audience.

If you have a Zoom business or education subscription, you have the option to skip past the downloading and uploading part. Zoom meetings are automatically saved on the Zoom cloud and you can directly share it with your audience by generating a sharable link.

The downside of using Zoom to share recordings is that you’ll have to share the link with every person that you want to watch the video. The process isn’t automated and requires leg work.

The bigger problem is that the link can also be further shared ahead, and you can’t keep track of who has access to your recordings. This is an issue if you are in the EU as Article 15 under GDPR law requires you to inform data subjects as to how their data is being used. Zoom does not have the capabilities to provide you with a log as to how the recorded meeting is being used.

The more effective method is to integrate your Zoom account with your cloud storage applications such as Dropbox, OneDrive, SharePoint, Google Drive etc. If you visit Zoom’s website, you can find different ways to integrate with these applications. Certain integrations are available as applications on the Zoom marketplace as well.

Google Drive for Zoom is an application listed on the Zoom marketplace and this automatically syncs your recordings to your Google Drive. A better application is the SyncRecord application on the Zoom marketplace. SyncRecord supports auto synchronization with Dropbox, Google Drive, and Microsoft OneDrive, along with a couple of other features.

The benefit of syncing your recorded zoom meetings to your cloud storage is that now you not only can generate sharable links, but can also create a library of meetings and organize them into folders. For certain cloud storage providers, you can restrict access based on departments. For example, in SharePoint you can create teams and allow them access to meetings within their team only.

When it comes to compliances, major cloud providers such as AWS, Microsoft and Google, cover a wide range of regional and industrial compliances. These include GDPR, HIPPA, PCI-DSS, FedRamp etc. This way you can ensure that storage and processing of data for your Zoom meetings is done in a compliant manner.

Moreover, apps like SharePoint provide you with detailed reports as to who accessed these recordings, how these were edited and much more. This is needed for GDPR compliance.

The issue with cloud storage is that these aren’t designed for video storage and playback. Every time you need to watch a recorded meeting, you’ll have to download it. Certain cloud storage applications such as SharePoint do have a built-in player but it will not play videos of all renditions and formats.

Moreover, the processing of video files isn’t effective in cloud storage applications. For example, if you need to add subtitles to a video meeting, add annotations, insert quizzes etc. Search features of such applications is also not powerful enough to search inside videos for spoken words.

The final option is to create a private YouTube-like library of your recorded Zoom meetings. This can be done through video content management systems. These are cloud solutions that are designed specifically for video streaming and management. Examples of leading platforms range from enterprise level platforms such as Kaltura, VIDIZMO, Panopto, and simpler ones such as Vimeo.

Enterprise Level video content management systems automatically ingest your Zoom recordings and make them available as video on-demand in a YouTube type library. Panopto, VIDIZMO, and Kaltura are available as applications on the Zoom marketplace and easily integrate with your Zoom app.

There are certain benefits of using such systems. Firstly, these systems can be deployed on your existing Zoom, Azure, and AWS cloud subscriptions and you do not need to purchase additional cloud storage. Moreover, as these solutions are hosted on leading cloud providers, you do not need to worry about data compliance and security requirements.

Videos can be automatically played on any device under any bandwidth condition, just like YouTube. Moreover, in VIDIZMO and Panopto, you can segregate access to content based on departments. For instance, for each individual recorded meeting, you can decide the different departments that have access to it. Link sharing and password protection are other features offered. VIDIZMO even offers you the feature to expire a link after a certain time and limit viewing frequency. For external anonymous viewing, you can create a public-facing video library as well.

For GDPR purposes, VIDIZMO and Kaltura provide you with an audit trail for each individual meeting. This allows you to track all the relevant activity for any meeting file. Kaltura offers an API to develop the audit trail feature, whereas VIDIZMO offers this feature as default. Panopto will provide you with such details, but you will need to contact their support.

Video content management systems also provide you with numerous other features such as automatic transcription of Zoom meetings, searching inside videos, facial recognition through AI, annotations and much more.

How to efficiently share Zoom meeting recordings? There are three ways, through Zoom, integration with cloud applications, and video content management systems. The ultimate and most effective solution is through video content management systems for sharing recorded Zoom meetings. However, depending on budget, organization size and personal use, video content management systems may not be cost-effective and other options would be recommended.