Removal of old recordings in Collaborate
Removal of recordings in Collaborate prior to the 21/22 AY
Over the past few years, we have spoken about how we will be removing older recordings. This is for two main reasons – the first and most timely is that we need to reduce our overall storage footprint. The second is to set up and implement a regular retention policy for videos held in Collaborate and YuJa.
As a first step toward adopting a standard retention policy, we are going to remove all recordings in Collaborate that have been created on July 31st 2021 or earlier. This is roughly 4 TB of data, so this will be a big step forward in reducing our storage.
This will also become part of an annual process of removing old content, much in the same way that archiving old modules is now a typical process.
What is happening?
- All recordings made in Collaborate before 1 August 2021 will be deleted on 13 February 2023.
- You will have four weeks from this announcement (11 January) to download and save any videos.
- We will keep an archive of the videos for two weeks (until 27 February 2023). After this date, the videos will be permanently deleted from the archive storage meaning that they will no longer be retrievable.
Will this affect me?
We expect that the majority of videos recorded before August 1, 2021 in Collaborate that have not already been migrated to YuJa will not be required to be kept. However, there may be cases where these videos were not reused as video assets, but still need to be kept.
If this applies to you, then you will need to go back into the module where the video was created and download the video(s) you will need to keep. You can read our guidance on this process for information on how to do this.
What if something is missing that I need?
Will be keeping an archive of the videos for two weeks (until 27 February 2023 ) after the files are deleted from My Dundee. If you spot that there is a video missing that you need after 13 February but before 27 February, you can contact Help4U with the subject line “FAO CTIL – Collaborate Storage” and include as many details as possible.
Why is this being done?
This is being actioned due to storage costs that must be kept under control and to begin the move to a consistent storage policy for teaching assets.
Annual process
This data archival and removal work is part of an on-going annual process. We will update the university community of any changes, but you can expect this process to happen yearly although we will provide more details once details of this annual process have been finalised.
If you have any questions about this process, please contact Help4U with the subject line “FAO CTIL – Collaborate Storage”.
4TB ? You can buy a drive that size for £80. Are you sure you have the right amount there?
For some staff this backtracking might be a lot of work (and stress) … does anybody consider the cost in ‘worktime’ for doing this?
Hi Rich.
Thanks for your comment. Let me assure you that this action has been thought through, looking at the implications on cost and resource, and is part of a long term strategy for our video services.
Without going into detail, the provision of storage to support a SaaS application is significantly more complicated and expensive than purchasing a hard drive for personal use, and for good reason. However, the key factor here is less about costing and more about unifying our video storage onto a single platform. We are working towards having a unified video storage solution so we can both consolidate costs and develop automated data retention, archiving and deletion policies that we are required to both by law and by university policy. Doing this work across two platforms would double the workload, aside from the fact that the Collaborate platform is not technically able to support the kind of management that is required.
I do understand that moving content you wish to retain to the YuJa platform is an extra piece of work you didn’t need, but i assure that it is part of a wider plan to improve our services and balance user-needs with the requirements of managing a service like this.
I hope this helps.