Managing Call Recordings on Amazon S3
Saving Call Recordings on Amazon S3
All calls that either have auto-recording enabled or are triggered by manual code entry will be recorded and automatically stored on our platform. However, they will only be stored here for a limited period of time and without any guarantee of stored data.
After the storage period set by us (approx. 30 days), they will be automatically deleted. Records removed in this way cannot be retrieved unless they have been stored elsewhere. It is also not possible to re-archive recordings that have failed due to an error.
If you need to keep recordings longer than our storage time on our platform, you must arrange for other storage. We recommend using Amazon S3 for this. In order to store your recordings on this external storage, your Amazon S3 must be available and paid for.
It is important to note that calls will not be able to be moved and archived within your Amazon S3 Bucket if there is a problem connecting to your Amazon S3 account. This may be just for reasons such as not paying your AWS account or changing the bucket user's login credentials.
Provisioning Amazon S3 Bucket for Archiving Call Recordings
As we have mentioned several times, Vulcan Telecom provides standard retention for call recordings for up to 30 days on its own platform. However, the company makes no guarantees as to how long the recorded file will be retained.
If you choose to use Amazon S3 for long-term storage of Vulcan Telecom's call recordings, you must request us to use this service from Amazon.
After you create and set up your AWS account, we need these information, to connect your Amazon S3 Bucket:
- Bucket Name
- Access Key ID for Vulkan Telecom user
- Secret Access Key for Vulkan Telecom user
Once activated, your archived call recording files will be transferred to AWS and segregated into directory folders by domain and date. Each recording will be named using the SIP Call-ID of the recorded call.
Each recording folder also contains an automatically created index file containing data such as ANI, DNIS, call time, duration or call ID. This data then makes searching easier. As noted below, you can access and download call recordings using the Amazon S3 web interface or using a third-party FTP client such as CyberDuck.
Creating Amazon S3 Bucket
By logging in to the AWS console and select the S3 service you can create a bucket. Just give the S3 bucket a name. Remember, that it must be globally unique. For example: 123_user_recordings.
Create IAM User For Vulkan Telecom To Access Bucket
After you log in to the AWS Console, you can select Identity & Access Management by clicking on IAM in the Security, Identity & Compliance section. In this section of the AWS Console, you can select Users from the left menu and click Add User to create a new user. This will allow you to create a new user for Vulcan Telecom and store the login credentials (Access Key ID and Secret Access Key) for us, which will be listed on the next page.
Next, create a new policy by going to Policies in the menu on the left side and then clicking Create Policy.
Select "Create a custom policy" and fill out the form. Paste the JSON below into the "Policy Document" text area and replace the two instances of "123_user_recordings" with the name of the S3 Bucket you created before.
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"s3:ListBucket",
"s3:GetBucketLocation"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::123_user_recordings"
]
},
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"s3:PutObject",
"s3:GetObject",
"s3:DeleteObject"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::123_user_recordings/*"
]
}
]
}
Now all you have to do is link the newly created policy to the previously created user by filtering and clicking on the newly created policy. Click the "Connected Entities" tab in the AWS console. Here, then click the "Connect" button, select the user that was previously created for these needs and click the "Connect Policy" button.
You can now send the S3 Bucket Name, the Access Key and User Secret Access Key to Vulcan Telecom.
Access Call Recordings from Amazon S3
If you have chosen to use Amazon's S3 services, the access to the call recordings stored there is different from the basic non-guaranteed storage provided by Vulcan Telecom. You can access those records by Amazon S3 Web Interface or by CyberDuck software.
Accessing Call Recordings using the Amazon S3 Web Interface
If we want to access the stored recordings within our Amazon S3 Bucket, we need to log into the Amazon AWS control panel. Here, we select S3 from the menu of available services. Then, within the directory structure, we will look up our domain where the recordings are stored. Click on the domain to view the records broken down by year, month, and day. You can then download any record you need from this web interface.
Accessing Call Recordings with CyberDuck
First you need to download and install the CyberDuck program. The CyberDuck software can be found on their website - https://cyberduck.io and there is a version for OS X and Windows. After installing the CyberDuck, all you need to do is to connect it to your S3 Amazon.
Connect CyberDuck to our S3 bucket using the following procedure. On the Connections tab, select the "S3 (Amazon Simple Storage Service)" option. We then fill in the required fields in the form, which will require us to enter the "Access Key ID" and "Secret Access Key" for our Amazon S3 account. Next, under "Additional Options", we will set the path to the name of our S3 bucket where we store our recordings and to which we want to gain access.
After we have successfully connected to our S3 Bucket within CyberDuck, we can browse through the folders to select the year, month, and day of all of our saved recordings. The naming of the files is based on the Call ID (SIP Header) for the call.
How to Delete Call Recordings from Amazon S3
If you don't want to store recorded calls indefinitely, Amazon S3 offers Object Expiration. This feature allows us to schedule automatic deletion of our recorded calls after a predefined period of time. This setting eliminates the need to manually select old recordings and then send deletion requests to Amazon S3.
Multiple Object Expiration rules can be set depending on the call classification.
Once a record has had an Object Expiration rule applied to it, it will be queued for deletion. Importantly, you will not be charged for storing objects on or after their expiration date.