Every two-way conversation your agents and team have — a chat session, a call, a text thread, an email thread, an imported meeting — is stored with its full content. Transcript retention lets a workspace admin set how long that content is kept. After the window passes, the content is removed and the conversation record is left behind: who, when, how long, the outcome, the counts, and (unless you choose otherwise) the AI summary.
Nothing is removed until you set a window — and nothing is removed automatically until you say so. Retention is Off for every workspace until an admin turns it on; turning it on lands in Report only, which lists what the policy would remove and removes nothing until you review the list and choose what to remove. Automatic removal — daily, without asking — is a separate step that can only be taken from Report only, after at least one report exists, and with a typed confirmation. A blank window — at the account level, on a channel, or on an agent — means kept indefinitely in every mode. The page never fills a blank in with a default number.
agents:chat:manage, agents:sms:manage, agents:voice:manage or
agents:mail:manage), since the override is saved on the agent's own form.Two depths are available. The account default sets one; a channel or an agent can choose the other.
| Content only | Content, summaries and quotes | |
|---|---|---|
| Message text, chat logs, call transcripts | Removed | Removed |
| Call and meeting recordings | Removed (switchable) | Removed (switchable) |
| Inbound attachments and MMS media | Removed | Removed |
| Search-index copies of the transcript | Removed | Removed |
| The full agent message a training thread was raised on | Removed | Removed |
| AI summary, title, topic and analysis prose | Kept | Removed |
| Quotes extracted into CRM signals, mentions, commitments and training threads | Kept | Replaced with [removed by retention policy] |
| The conversation record: dates, participants, direction, outcome codes, counts, sentiment and score values | Kept | Kept |
What the sweep does not touch: agent memories, Tenant Brain knowledge, contact intelligence narratives, insight reports, helpdesk ticket messages, Google Local Services lead records, and the nightly database backups — which age out on their own schedule, so a short window still leaves content in backup archives until that schedule catches up.
Removal is permanent. It is not covered by CRM → Setup → Recently Deleted and cannot be undone from the settings page.
The Mode card at the top of the page has three choices, and they form a ladder:
| Mode | What runs | What is removed |
|---|---|---|
| Off | Nothing. | Nothing — every transcript is kept indefinitely. |
| Report only | Once a day, a report lists every conversation the saved windows would remove. | Nothing, until an admin reviews the report and removes some or all of it by hand (below). |
| Automatic | The daily report, then removal of everything past its window. | Everything the report lists, daily, without asking. |
Turning retention on lands in Report only. Automatic can only be chosen
from Report only, after a report has been generated for the windows as saved,
and by typing AUTOMATIC to confirm; the card is greyed out with Turn on
Report only first while the saved mode is Off, and saving is refused while no
report exists for the saved windows or while the windows on screen differ from
the saved ones. Automatic is a decision about one set of windows: changing
any window while in Automatic returns the workspace to Report only, so the
new windows get a report and a review before anything is removed under them.
Stepping down — Automatic to Report only, or anything to Off — never needs a
confirmation.
Deploying the feature changes nothing on its own: a workspace that has never opened the page is Off, and a workspace that has never saved a mode is Off.
Path: Settings (the gear icon) → Access & security → Transcript Retention.
The Latest report card shows when the report was generated, how many conversations are past their window, and the count for each window (account default, channel, or agent override). Regenerate now rebuilds it from the saved settings on the spot.
Under Review and remove, the page lists the conversations in the latest report that are still past their window and intact. The report is the ceiling: Remove all never removes more than the report lists, and a conversation that aged past its window after the report was generated waits for the next report (or Regenerate now).
REMOVE in the confirmation panel and click Remove n.Every removal is re-checked against its window at the moment it runs: a conversation that is no longer past the window, or whose content was already removed, is skipped and counted as skipped in the result. The removal is recorded on the Audit Trail with your name, and on the report itself. The review you are acting on expires after ten minutes; if it has, the page asks you to reload the report and try again. Up to 500 selected conversations can be removed per request; Remove all processes the report in bounded runs and says when a run hit its cap.
Report history lists the last ten reports with what each flagged and what was removed from it, and whether that removal was after review or by the daily run.
Once you are happy with what the reports flag:
AUTOMATIC and click Save policy.From then on the daily run generates the report and removes everything in it. The Last automatic run card shows when it ran, what it removed, and any errors — a storage delete that failed is retried on the next run, and the settings hub row turns amber until it succeeds. Each run leaves a row on the Audit Trail naming how many conversations were cleaned up per channel.
To change a window while in Automatic, change it and save: the page warns that the workspace returns to Report only, a report for the new windows is generated within a minute, and you switch back to Automatic once you have reviewed it. To pause, choose Report only or Off and save; no confirmation is asked.
Each agent can keep its conversations longer, shorter, or forever.
The Agent overrides table on the settings page lists every agent with its override and effective window, with an Edit on the agent link — the table is an overview; the override itself is always saved on the agent.
The conversation stays in every list, report and timeline. Opening it shows This transcript was removed under your workspace's transcript retention policy, with the date and the window, in place of the messages; the recording card on a call reads Recording removed under your workspace's transcript retention policy; Copy and Export disappear because there is nothing to copy. Agents and AI tools that read past conversations see the same notice rather than an empty transcript, so nothing is summarised or re-analysed from content that is gone.
The hub row says Report only · no window set · kept forever (or the same with Automatic). Retention is on but every window is blank, so there is nothing to flag or remove. Enter a default window, a channel window, or a custom window on an agent.
The hub row says Report only · 12 conversations flagged · nothing removed. That is Report only doing its job: the report is waiting for review, and nothing is removed until an admin removes it or switches to Automatic.
Automatic is greyed out, or saving it is refused. Automatic can only be
chosen while the saved mode is Report only, after a report has been generated
for the windows as saved, with no unsaved window changes on the page, and with
AUTOMATIC typed in the confirmation panel. Save the windows with Report only
first, wait for the report (within a minute, or Regenerate now), then
switch.
The workspace went back to Report only on its own. A window was changed while the mode was Automatic. That is deliberate: review the report the new windows produce, then switch back.
Remove was refused with "This review has expired or does not match". The review is valid for ten minutes and is tied to the report on screen and to you. Reload the page, review the report again, and remove.
Some selected conversations were skipped. Each one is re-checked against its window as the removal runs; a conversation that received a new message since the report, or one already removed, is left alone and counted as skipped. Regenerate the report to see what is left.
A conversation past its window is not in the review table. The table shows the latest report's set, not today's: a conversation that aged past its window after the report was generated appears in the next report. Click Regenerate now to bring it in.
A conversation past the window still shows its transcript. In Report only that is expected — nothing is removed until an admin removes it. In Automatic, check the agent: an agent set to Keep forever is exempt, and one with a custom window follows that window, not the account default. The daily run also processes a bounded number of conversations per run and continues within the hour when it hits that cap — a large backlog drains over a day or two.
The Last automatic run card shows errors. Usually a recording or attachment could not be deleted from storage. The affected conversations are retried on every run; the transcript text is already gone.