Most people think of session recording as "for training." That\'s one use. The harder one — and the reason recording is a first-class Connect feature — is the audit that comes six months later.

The world where recording matters

A customer complains about a support interaction. A regulator asks about screen access patterns. A former employee files a wrongful-termination claim citing "invasive monitoring." In each case, someone will ask: "Show me exactly what happened."

Without recordings, you have logs. Logs say "at 3:12 PM Manager X viewed Employee Y\'s screen for 2 minutes 30 seconds." That\'s useful. It\'s not evidence.

With recordings, you have artifacts. You can show a specific frame at 3:13 PM and confirm what the manager did and didn\'t see. That IS evidence.

What Connect records

For every session where recording is enabled:

One audio track (the first speaking participant, or none for screen-only sessions)
One video track — the screen share if one exists, otherwise the first participant\'s camera
WebM container (VP8 + Opus)
Timestamps at the container level, seek-able in playback

Recording start and stop are logged with millisecond precision. If a session was auto-recorded (manager view), the log includes that fact.

What we don\'t record in v1

Multi-participant tiled composition. A group call of 5 people gets one audio track (mixed on the fly is v1.1) and one video track. Simpler pipeline, way less server load.
Text chat that happens during a call. Chat is separately audit-logged in ChatMessage rows — retention is separate.
Meeting metadata like reactions or hand raises. Not applicable to v1.

Consent moments in the recording

Every recording captures its own consent evidence. When a screen-view session starts, the approval modal on the employee\'s side isn\'t visible to the recording (because the recording starts AFTER the employee picked their screen). But:

The audit log has the timestamp of the employee\'s Approve click.
The recording starts within milliseconds of that click.
The persistent "Screen being viewed" pill is visible in the corner of the screen the employee shared — captured in the recording itself.

Combined: the audit log proves consent was obtained; the recording proves the consent indicator was continuously visible.

Playback: HTTP Range streaming

Recordings play back via /api/connect/recordings/[sessionId]/stream. HTTP Range headers are supported so browsers can seek to any point without downloading the whole file.

Native <video> element in modern browsers handles WebM playback and seek smoothly. No Flash plugin, no proprietary player, no HLS conversion pipeline.

Access control

Recording access is granted to:

Any participant of the recorded session
Any org admin (non-manager-scoped) in the same organization
Manager-scoped admins whose managed groups include at least one employee participant
DeskTrust super-admins

Everyone else — including managers who weren\'t involved — sees a 403.

Recording access itself isn\'t currently audit-logged. That\'s a v1.1 addition — high-frequency requests from customers.

Retention

Files older than connect_recording_retention_days (per-org Setting, default 30) are purged nightly by /api/cron/connect-cleanup. The CallSession row is retained forever (small metadata footprint); only the video file is deleted.

Playback URLs for expired recordings return "no recording file on disk" — you can still see the session happened, just not play it back.

For regulated customers with longer retention windows (60, 90, 365 days), set the value in Settings. For truly long-term archival, plan for S3 offload (v1.1).

Storage math

WebM at 15fps with Opus audio:

~300 MB per hour of screen-share recording
~200 MB per hour of camera-only recording
~100 MB per hour of audio-only session

100 recording-hours per month is about 30 GB. Fine on local disk for a while, but plan for S3 offload at scale.

What ADMINs should tell employees

Before enabling recording org-wide, tell your employees:

What situations will be recorded (manager-view sessions, or all calls if manual)
Who can play back their recorded sessions
How long recordings are kept
How to opt out of screen-view requests entirely (if that\'s available)

Recording without notice is a legal risk. Recording with notice is a normal management practice.

Session recording as compliance-grade evidence