Recordings and transcripts

Design recording around the evidence your team needs. A caller’s response, voicemail and a recording of both sides are different requirements. Identify the capture source and the call that produces it before building a review process.

Recording commands and managed recording transfers require organization-level recording preview access. In a Bird sequence, configure recording through the steps available in the sequence builder. A recording window captures received audio from its source leg. A bridged call can produce separate recordings for each participant; do not assume one recording contains a mixed conversation. Ordinary SIP trunking does not automatically create a recording.

Define the recording requirement

1. State the purpose of capture and who needs to review it.
2. Identify the audio source. Check whether the connected application records received audio, generated prompts or both. A PBX or contact-center recording has its own source and permissions.
3. Include the notice and permission process appropriate to the conversation.
4. Define the capture window, access and retention requirements. Stop capture before sensitive input when the workflow requires it; hiding keypad telemetry does not remove speech from audio.
5. Decide whether the workflow needs transcription. A successful audio capture and a successful transcript are separate results.

Keep the source system explicit if your PBX or conversational runtime records the call. Moving telephone connectivity does not move its existing recording archive.

Prepare a controlled capture test

Use a number your team controls. Test the intended start, stop and hangup behavior, including a short call that ends before the normal capture window. Confirm which participant is audible and whether the expected audio was retained.

Keep the call, leg and recording identities with the result. A call can group related legs. Identify the leg that produced the recording. The leg log provides the telephone outcome.

Open Voice > Calls, then select the call to inspect its captured artifacts. Check the published API, CLI, or MCP reference before integrating recording retrieval: the existence of a dashboard recording action does not publish an equivalent operation on those surfaces.

Distinguish processing states

Check audio availability and transcript processing independently. A pending transcript, failed transcription and unavailable audio require different responses. Empty text does not establish that the participant said nothing.

A call can end before processing finishes. Preserve the final telephone outcome while checking the artifact’s later state. If retained audio expires, retrying playback cannot restore it.

When a transcript is ambiguous, review the source audio where available. Names, dates and numbers can be misrecognized. Confirm important actions against the system that executed them.

Review access and retention

Use the permissions of the system that owns the artifact. Share a controlled call or recording reference with an authorized colleague rather than copying audio into unrelated records. Treat temporary playback URLs as temporary access, not a durable archive reference.

Bird audio files have a 30-day storage expiration policy. Recording entries and transcripts have separate expiry rules, so an entry can remain listed after its audio becomes unavailable. Those records expire 31 days after the end of their anchor day in UTC: a recording entry uses its own start time, and a transcript uses the source audio's start time. Transcription does not restart the retention window. An empty result does not establish that nothing was ever recorded. For recordings stored by your PBX or conversational runtime, check that system's retention policy separately.

Confirm the business outcome

Keep source audio, transcript, generated summary and business result distinct. A summary can help a reviewer find an issue; the booking, payment or support system confirms whether an action completed.

Record missing or partial evidence in the review. A completed call does not establish that a recording exists, and a transcript alone does not prove that every participant was captured.

Next steps

• Call sequences
• Call log
• Voice events