Genesys Cloud provides three distinct recording categories—user recording, policy-based recording, and snippet recording—each designed to address specific contact center operational and compliance requirements. User recording allows individual Genesys Cloud Associate users to manually record Communicate calls one at a time, with recordings stored in the user's inbox and accessible only to that user, supervisors with appropriate permissions, and assigned evaluators. Policy-based recording serves as the primary systematic capture mechanism for contact centers and operates through two complementary methods: trunk-side recording, which captures end-to-end interactions from the external participant's perspective on the SIP trunk and is recommended as the default approach, and station-side recording, which captures interactions from the internal participant's perspective and is useful for recording internal calls otherwise unavailable through trunk-side methods.
Trunk-side recording automatically retains all external calls including inbound ACD calls, DID calls, IVR-only calls, outbound calls, transfers, and conferences, and serves as a prerequisite for transcription and speech/text analytics capabilities. Station-side recording, enabled on individual user stations, captures interactions from agent pickup through disconnection but does not record IVR-only calls, queue-abandoned calls, or internal calls unless both parties have station-side recording enabled. When both mechanisms are enabled simultaneously for the same user on external calls, duplicate recordings are generated; therefore, station-side recording should be enabled selectively to minimize storage usage and optimize data retention within Genesys Cloud media regions subject to fair use policies.
Recording policies define actions applicable to different interaction categories and apply only to future interactions, with configurable retention options to indefinitely retain, retain for a set period, or automatically delete recordings. Key policy capabilities include call recording suppression during IVR, hold, and queue wait times; call recording consent allowing inbound callers to opt out through Architect-configured actions; and the ability to continue recording during external transfers when enabled in external trunk settings. Trunk-side recording uniquely supports voice transcription, sensitive information redaction, AudioHook monitoring, and Genesys Agent Copilot integration, while station-side recording automatically captures IVR and queue-wait portions and continues through external transfers without additional configuration.
Both recording mechanisms support dual-channel audio, consent-based recording compliance, encryption with Recording Key Management options, Quality Management policies for retention and archiving, Recording Access Control, bulk action APIs, deletion protection, and audit event generation for compliance tracking. Snippet recording enables agents to manually capture specific call portions during ACD interactions for compliance or operational documentation purposes—such as mandatory disclosures, terms and conditions readouts, or documentation of notable behavior—with configurable retention periods and access limited to supervisors with permissions and agents reviewing their own snippets. All recordings transparently capture voice monitoring and coaching activities, with coaching audio included in station-side recordings and barge-in audio recorded in both mechanisms. Recording storage follows the local Genesys Cloud media region and counts toward fair use policies, with access to recordings granted to supervisors with appropriate permissions, assigned evaluators, and relevant agents based on recording type and configuration.
Depending on the features you enable for your organization, Genesys Cloud provides three basic categories of recording:
User recording: With Genesys Cloud Associate, users can record calls manually one at a time.
Policy-based recording: With Genesys Cloud Contact Center, managers can systematically enable recording and create policies that define the actions allowed on captured interactions.
Snippet recording: With Genesys Cloud Contact Center, agents can manually capture recordings for specific portions of the call.
User recordings vs policy-based recordings vs snippet recordings
The following table explains the difference between user recordings, policy-based recordings, and snippet recordings.
User recordings
Policy-based recordings
Snippet recordings
Who starts the recording?
A Genesys Cloud user starts the recording during an Associate call.
If you have enabled recording on the trunk, Genesys Cloud automatically records interactions. Depending on the recording policies that you have created, the retention period of a recording varies based on how Genesys Cloud retains or deletes a recording. Genesys Cloud performs one of the following:
retains a recording indefinitely
retains a recording for a set amount of time and then delete it
deletes the recording
An agent starts and stops the recording when they are handling an ACD call.
The default retention period of the snippet recording can be configured in the Recording Management user interface.
Who can listen to the recording?
The user who made the recording.
The following users:
Supervisors with the correct permissions.
Evaluators assigned to evaluate an interaction.
Agents reviewing an evaluation of themselves.
The following users:
Supervisors with the correct permissions.
Agents can review their own snippet recordings that they captured in a call.
Where is the recording located in the Genesys Cloud interface?
The inbox of the user who made the recording.
On the interaction’s detail page and on the page for an evaluation.
On the interaction’s detail page.
User recording
User recording is sometimes called “ad hoc recording.” When a user records an interaction, Genesys Cloud sends a recording to that user’s inbox, which is only available to that user. Users can make this kind of recording for interactions with both internal and external users in a Associate call. For more information, see Record a call.
Policy-based recording
Policy-based recording is the primary means to systematically capture recordings in a contact center setting. Recordings are required either for quality management purposes, for enabling speech and text analytics, or for compliance or regulatory purposes in your organization.
The main mechanism to capture policy-based recordings in Genesys Cloud is by enabling the trunk-side recording, which is also known as line recording. If you enable recording on the SIP trunk, then Genesys Cloud retains recordings of all external calls by default, even without any defined policies.
Note: Call recording requires that recording is enabled on the SIP trunk. Your telephony administrator can enable the SIP trunk recording by referring to the Enable policy-based recording procedure.
A secondary mechanism to capture policy-based recordings in Genesys Cloud is by enabling the station-side recordings. If you enable recording on the user’s station, then Genesys Cloud retains recordings of all interactions handled by that user. This method of recording is useful when it is necessary to capture the recording of internal calls for this user, which is otherwise not possible with the trunk-side recordings.
For both trunk-side recordings and station-side recordings policies, define the actions that can be performed with different categories of interactions. For example, you can use policies to assign an evaluation to certain interactions, or to delete recordings of some interactions after an amount of time. Policies run against any interactions that occur after you publish the policy: you cannot run them retroactively on interactions that exist. For example, you cannot create a policy to delete existing recordings. For more information, see Create a recording policy.
Call recording suppression during IVR, hold, and queue wait
Note: If suppression is enabled for IVR, hold, or queue wait times, transcripts are not generated for these segments. As a result, summaries do not include any content from these segments.
You can choose not to capture trunk-side recording when the call is at IVR and / or at queue-wait. To suppress recording at IVR, edit the corresponding flow in Architect, and choose Suppress recording for the entire flow in Recording and Speech Recognition settings. To suppress recording when the caller is waiting in queue, disable Continue Voice Recording during Queue Wait in the Voice tab of the Queue configuration. To suppress recording when the call is on hold, disable Holds in the Optional Recording subsection under the Media tab in the External Trunk settings. Enabling recording suppression on these portions of the call can help achieve privacy-related compliance goals, and also reduce your data storage usage under Genesys Cloud fair use policy. It can also improve supervisors’ quality management review efficiency, as the interaction’s recording playback typically begins at when the agent picks up the ACD call.
Call recording consent
If you configure call recording in Architect, call recording consent creates an exception to the default trunk-side recording behavior. This option allows you to create an action in Architect that asks inbound callers whether they consent to being recorded. If the user says no, then the Genesys Cloud media layer does not record at all. If the user says yes, then the Genesys Cloud media layer starts capturing recordings as normal, and the interaction is processed as usual according to policies. For more information, see Enable Participant Recording action.
Continue on external transfer
By default, Genesys Cloud does not continue recording after an external transfer that results in an external to external connected call. However, you can enable this behavior in the external trunk settings under Media.
Trunk-side recording vs station-side recording
Trunk-side recordings provide an end-to-end recording from the external participant’s perspective, for example, the customer is an external participant. Genesys recommends enabling trunk-side recording by default for recording interactions. Also, recording interactions from trunk-side is a pre-requisite for enabling transcription and other speech and text analytics capabilities.
Note: Transcription is not provided for station-side recordings.
If necessary, you can also enable station-side recordings for a select set of users. In this case, when these users handle external calls, with both trunk-side recordings and station-side recordings enabled, duplicate recordings are generated for the conversation. There is no mechanism in the quality management policy that conditionally retains the station-side recordings for only internal calls. Therefore, to minimize duplicated recordings and data storage, enable station-side recording for users only when recording of internal calls is essential.
The following table provides a detailed side-by-side comparison of the trunk-side and station-side recording capabilities.
Recording capability
Trunk-side recording
Station-side recording
How to enable recording?
Trunk settings
Phone Settings of user; can be configured to many users via the base settings of phone configuration.
Choice in audio format
Yes
Yes
Dual channel support
Yes
Yes
Beep tone support
Yes
No
Recording only by consent
Configurable at trunk
Comply with consent status, if the corresponding trunk has enabled consent recording. If trunk-side recording is not enabled, consent recording is not supported.
Recording suppression on IVR
Configurable, at flow
Not applicable *. IVR portion of the call is not captured.
Recording suppression at queue-wait
Configurable, at queue
Not applicable *. Queue-wait portion of the call is not captured.
Recording suppression on hold
Configurable at trunk
Not supported. Recording doesn’t capture what the agent speaks into the microphone when the call is on hold.
Recording continuation on external bridged transfer
Configurable at trunk
Not applicable. Station-side recording always continues when the call is transferred to an external participant.
Consult recording
Configurable at trunk
Consult portion of the call is inherently captured by either party’s station-side recording.
Secure pause
Stops capturing during a secure pause.
Stops capturing during a secure pause.
QM Policy – recording retention
Applicable
Applicable
QM Policy – recording archiving
Applicable
Applicable
QM Policy – recording exporting
Applicable
Applicable
Encryption with all options in Recording Key Management supported
Yes
Yes
Data storage usage counts towards fair use policy
Yes
Yes
Local regional storage in Global Media fabric
Supported – recording storage follows the local Genesys Cloud media region of the trunk.
Supported – recording storage follows the local Genesys Cloud media region of the station.
Support voice transcription
Yes
No
Support redaction of sensitive information
Yes
No
Support AudioHook monitor
Yes
No
Support Genesys Agent Copilot
Yes
No
Support in ‘Recorded’ Filter in interactions view
Yes
Yes
Support Recording Access Control (with permission Recording > Recording > View)
Yes
Yes
Support Recording Segment Access Control (with permission Recording > RecordingSegment > View)
Yes
Yes, with each station-side recording considered as one recording segment.
Support Recording Bulk Action API (Delete / Archive / Export)
Yes
Yes
Support protect from deletion
Yes
Yes
Audit event generated
Yes
Yes
Note: * Recording suppression is not usually applicable. However, the only exception is when the customer is the internal user with station-side recording enabled. For example, the internal user (with station-side recording enabled) calls corporate IT helpdesk as an internal ACD call. In this case, suppression settings on the queue or flow are applied to the station-side recording of the user.
Station-side recordings provide recordings from the internal participant’s perspective, for example, the agent is an internal participant. This contrasts with the trunk-side recording where the system records based on the external participant’s perspective. While it is possible to only enable station-side recording and not trunk-side recording for your organization, there are limitations when relying on only station-side recordings for your quality management and compliance objectives. Review the differences in recording outcome across various call scenarios between the two recording mechanisms that are detailed in the following table:
Recording capability
Trunk-side recording
Station-side recording
Inbound ACD interaction (for example, IVR Flow to Queue to Agent)
One end-to-end recording in the customer’s perspective.
One recording in the agent’s perspective, starting from agent’s pick up to the agent’s disconnection.
Inbound DID calls from an external participant
One recording in a customer’s perspective.
One recording in the agent’s perspective.
Inbound IVR-only call, or queue-abandoned call
One end-to-end recording in the customer’s perspective. *
No recording.
Internal call
No recording.
One recording in the agent’s perspective.
If the other party also has station-side recording enabled, two recordings (one from each party).
Outbound call to an external participant
One end-to-end recording in the customer’s perspective.
One recording in the agent’s perspective.
Blind transfer
One end-to-end recording in the customer’s perspective.
Two recordings (if both agents have station-side recordings enabled):
One recording in the first agent’s perspective.
One recording in the second agent’s perspective.
Consult transfer
Two recordings (when consult recording is enabled):
One end-to-end recording in a customer’s perspective.
One consult recording capturing the private conversation between the first agent and second agent during consultation.
Two recordings:
One recording in the first agent’s perspective.
One recording in the second agent’s perspective.
ACD conference
One end-to-end recording in the customer’s perspective.
Multiple recordings, each based on each agent’s perspective.
Voice monitoring
Transparent in recording.
Transparent in recording.
Voice coaching
Transparent in recording.
Coaching audio is recorded.
Voice barge-in
Barge-in audio is recorded.
Barge-in audio is recorded.
Note: * If recording suppression is enabled, the trunk-side recording has no content.
Snippet recording
Snippet recording is an on-demand recording mechanism in the contact center setting. The agent can manually start and stop snippet recordings to capture the most important parts of an ACD call, rather than the entire conversation. Use snippet recordings when you want to capture multiple snippets within the same conversation for scenarios such as capturing a short, specific segment for compliance, legal, or operational reasons.
For example,
Reading Mini-Miranda or other mandatory disclosures.
Readout of terms and conditions for sales completion, and customer’s verbal agreement.
Recording abusive, threatening, or otherwise notable behavior.
Once captured, the snippet recording becomes available in the Interaction Details view of an interaction, similar to policy-based recordings.