Call recording: what is recorded, how long it is kept, who notifies the caller

Call recording helps settle disputes and train new staff, but it is also your customer’s voice sitting somewhere on a disk. Here is what exactly gets recorded, how to switch recording off, how to set a retention term, and what that term does NOT delete. And, most importantly, whose duty it is to warn the caller that the conversation is being recorded.

What you need to know

The settings live in Telephony → Settings → "What we record". A company administrator can change them — the same access the rest of the telephony settings need.
Call recording is on by default, and the default retention term is "Never delete": until you pick a term, nothing is deleted on its own.
Retention deletion is irreversible. A deleted recording or transcript cannot be restored, neither from the cabinet nor through support.

What is recorded and what is not

Recorded: conversations on your landline number (SIP telephony) and WhatsApp calls, both inbound and outbound.
Not recorded: internal calls between employees of the company.
Voicemail is always recorded — even when the "Record calls" switch is off. It is not a conversation but a message the caller deliberately left instead of one, and the recording switch does not silence it.
A missed call never has a recording: there was no conversation.

Who warns the caller about recording

Notifying the caller that the conversation is being recorded is your company’s obligation. AISAR plays no automatic warning.

The greeting in a call route is an audio file you uploaded yourself: if it does not mention recording, nobody will hear that it happens. Outbound calls have no greeting at all, so the only way to warn there is to say it out loud at the start of the conversation. Recording a voice is processing the caller’s personal data, and it is your company that holds that data — AISAR is only the technical platform.

That is why AISAR asks for a one-off confirmation when you switch recording on: you accept that warning the caller is your company’s duty. The confirmation is stored in the action log, together with who gave it and when. Switching recording off needs no confirmation.

Switching recording off or on

Open Telephony → Settings and pick the "What we record" subsection.
Toggle the "Record calls" row. Switching it off takes effect immediately and covers every recording path, outbound calls included.
When switching it on, confirm the duty to warn the caller — without that the setting will not be saved.

Switching recording off does not delete what is already recorded: existing recordings stay in the archive until the retention term removes them. These are two separate settings.

How long to keep recordings

The "How long to keep" row sets the lifetime of recordings and transcripts. Anything older than the term is deleted automatically and cannot be restored.

Term	What happens
Never delete	The default state. The archive is kept with no time limit and nothing is deleted automatically.
3 months	The shortest term. Suits a team that only needs recordings to review recent enquiries.
6 months	A middle ground between settling disputes and the size of the archive.
A year	The longest term. Suits a business where disputes surface months later.

Pick a term in the "How long to keep" row.
Read the calculation in the dialog that opens: how many recordings fall under the deletion, how much space it frees, how many transcripts will be blanked, the date of the oldest affected recording, and when the first deletion happens.
Confirm. Without a confirmation the term is not saved — and that includes moving from "Never delete" to any term at all, because that move schedules the largest deletion of them all.

A week to change your mind

Any change of term starts a waiting week: for the first seven days nothing is deleted and the term can be reverted with no consequences. The date of the first deletion is shown both in the confirmation dialog and afterwards in the subsection itself. If retention is paused right now — the waiting week is running, or the company’s subscription is inactive — the subsection says so instead of staying silent.

Deletion runs once a night and is capped at a number of recordings per run. A large archive shrinks over several nights rather than vanishing at once — which leaves time to notice a mistake while it can still be corrected.

Who learns about a change

Switching recording on or off, and enabling or shortening the retention term, send a notification to every administrator of the company in the cabinet. It is not duplicated by e-mail.
The subsection shows who changed the settings last and when — even if that employee has since been removed from the company.
Every change and every confirmation is written to the action log.

What the retention term does NOT delete

The retention term frees the archive inside the AISAR cabinet. It is not a complete destruction of the recording everywhere it has already travelled.

The copy in Bitrix24. A recording file already handed to your portal stays there forever — the AISAR retention term does not touch it. Such copies have to be removed by the portal’s own tools.
The link in amoCRM. What goes there is not the file but a link to ours: it lives for 30 days and stops working the moment the recording is deleted under the term.
The working files on the telephony servers. They live separately from the cabinet archive and are not swept by the retention term today.
A transcript of a call whose recording was never stored never falls under retention: transcripts are only blanked together with a recording. For a company that records nothing, that means all of its transcripts.
A voicemail message is recorded and still reaches a connected CRM even when call recording is switched off.

The archive after a deletion

The call itself does not disappear from history: the card with the contact, the time and the channel stays, only the player is gone and a caption "Recording deleted under the retention term" takes its place. The transcript and the summary of that conversation are blanked together with the recording. The archive size at the top of the subsection is a nightly snapshot with the date it was measured, not a live count: after the night’s sweep the figure gets smaller.

Common questions

Question	Answer
We picked a term but the archive is not shrinking	Most likely the waiting week is still running — nothing is deleted until it ends. The subsection shows the date of the first deletion and the reason for the pause. Note also that the size is refreshed by a nightly measurement, not instantly.
We switched recording off but voicemail is still recorded	That is by design: a voicemail is a message the caller left deliberately. It is always recorded and still reaches a connected CRM. If you do not need voicemail, remove its node from the call route.
We need a recording gone right now, not at the end of the term	There is no per-recording delete in the cabinet: only the retention term. The shortest term is 3 months.
An employee shortened the term by mistake	While the waiting week is running, set the previous term back, or "Never delete" — nothing has been deleted yet. Every administrator received the notification, and the subsection shows who made the change.
A customer demands their recording be deleted	Remember the copies: the file may already have travelled to your Bitrix24 and will remain there after it is deleted on our side. Check the portal separately.