Retention, Zero Data Retention and Legal Hold
Delete company recordings or their audio automatically, remove deleted recordings within a minute, and keep recordings for a lawsuit with a legal hold.
By default, a recording stays until someone deletes it. On its own, Kalima only deletes empty sessions with no content. In the console you can add rules that delete recordings or their audio after a period, remove deleted recordings faster, and keep recordings for a lawsuit or an audit.
The deletion rules are in Policies, section Deleting. Only owners and admins change them, and the console asks for your second factor again if your last confirmation is older than 15 minutes. Custom roles and the admin API never change them.
Delete recordings automatically
Choose Never, or After 30 days, After 90 days, After 180 days or After 365 days. Every night, Kalima then deletes the company accounts' recordings that ended more than that many days ago.
- The period counts from the end of a recording. Editing, moving or sharing a recording does not extend it.
- A stricter period starts 7 days after you save it. Until then the previous rule applies, and you can take the change back. Before you confirm with Set period, the console shows how many recordings the first night would take.
- Deleted recordings go to the trash and are removed for good after 30 days, or within a minute if zero data retention is on.
- Recordings and transcriptions in progress are left alone. Private accounts are never affected.
Delete audio separately
Delete audio separately removes only the audio after 30, 90, 180 or 365 days. The transcript and summary stay. The default is With the recording: the audio stays as long as the recording exists.
- The same 7-day start and the same counting apply as above.
- The app deletes a copy of the audio on a device the next time the recording is opened there.
- Recordings under a legal hold keep their audio.
- Kalima removes the audio for good; it cannot be restored.
Zero data retention
Without zero data retention, Kalima keeps deleted recordings for another 30 days and then removes them for good. With Zero data retention switched on, Kalima removes deleted recordings for good within a minute: audio, transcript, summaries and search index. If a transcription is still running, right after it ends. They can no longer be restored.
When you switch it on (Turn on), whatever was deleted in the last 30 days is removed for good as well, within a few hours. Database backups are overwritten after 7 days at the latest.
Switching zero data retention on needs a running Enterprise plan. Switching it off is always possible, and it stays on if the plan ends or changes.
Legal hold (Enterprise)
A legal hold keeps recordings for a lawsuit or an audit. While it applies, Kalima does not permanently delete the recordings it covers: not after a retention period, not from the trash and not with zero data retention. Their audio stays too.
Place a legal hold
What a legal hold does
- If someone deletes a covered recording, it disappears for them and everyone else as usual. Kalima keeps it until the legal hold is released.
- If a person a legal hold names, or whose recordings it covers, asks for their account to be erased, the erasure waits until the hold is released. The company cannot be deleted while any legal hold applies.
- A recording stays covered if it is moved or its project is deleted.
What a legal hold never does
A legal hold never moves, hands over or shows a recording, not even to you. The people affected get no message.
Who can place and release it
Only owners place and release a legal hold, and the console asks for the second factor if the last confirmation is more than 15 minutes old. Both appear in the audit log. Placing a legal hold needs the Enterprise plan; releasing an existing one is always possible. After Release, the normal rules apply again, and what a period, the trash or zero data retention would have deleted in the meantime is deleted on Kalima's next run.