RecordFlow for users

Managing recordings for several people on a Zoom account? Read the admin guide →

Last updated: July 20, 2026

RecordFlow automatically archives the Zoom cloud recordings you host to a Google Drive folder of your choice. This guide covers everything from install to troubleshooting.

Install RecordFlow

The only setup you need is a sign-in — your Zoom account is your RecordFlow account, with no separate registration.

Steps:

  1. Go to recordflow.org/sign-in and click "Sign in as a Zoom user".
  2. Review the requested Zoom permissions and click "Allow" to authorize.
  3. You land on the RecordFlow dashboard, where you connect Google Drive and start archiving.

Connecting Google Drive

Connect your Google Drive so RecordFlow has a destination to archive recordings.

Prerequisites:

  • A Google account with access to Google Drive.
  • If archiving to a shared Drive, you must have write access to that shared Drive.

Steps:

  1. Sign in to RecordFlow and go to your dashboard.
  2. Click "Connect Google Drive".
  3. Authorize your Google account when prompted.
  4. By default RecordFlow creates a "RecordFlow Recordings" folder in your Google Drive and archives there. To choose a different location instead, click "Change" and use the Google Picker to select a folder from your personal Drive or a shared Drive.
  5. Click "Save & Connect" to confirm.

RecordFlow only ever has access to the folder it creates or the one you explicitly pick — it can't see the rest of your Drive.

Folder picker not opening, or showing an "API developer key" error? Here's the two-minute fix.

Once connected, RecordFlow begins syncing your recordings automatically — no “start” button to press. By default it brings over your last 2 years of Zoom cloud recordings and keeps every new one current. You can change how far back it reaches from Archive history in Settings.

Enable Zoom cloud recording

RecordFlow can only back up recordings stored in Zoom's cloud — not recordings saved locally to a computer. If cloud recording isn't on, there's nothing for RecordFlow to archive.

Cloud recording is a feature of paid Zoom plans (Pro, Business, Business Plus, or Enterprise). Zoom doesn't make cloud recordings available on the free plan, so no third-party tool can access them.

How to turn it on:

  1. Open the Zoom recording settings.
  2. Toggle Cloud recording on.
  3. Save.

Whose recordings are archived

RecordFlow archives the cloud recordings owned by the Zoom user who installed the app — the recordings under your own recordings in Zoom. Destination: your own Google Drive folder.

RecordFlow archives Zoom Meeting cloud recordings only. It does not back up Zoom Phone call recordings or voicemail.

Need a colleague's recordings too? That's RecordFlow for admins — one install that archives every member of your Zoom account you enable.

Folder structure

Recordings are organized in your Google Drive by year and meeting:

  • <your-folder> → Year → Date – Meeting Topic

<your-folder> is the RecordFlow Recordings folder we create by default, or whichever folder you picked when connecting Drive. For example: RecordFlow Recordings → 2026 →2026-03-21 – Weekly Standup.

Deduplication. RecordFlow stores the Zoom file ID in each Drive file's description. If a recording is already in your Drive, it's skipped automatically — you won't get duplicates. This also means that if you move, rename, or delete a file in Drive after it's been archived, RecordFlow will not re-create it on the next sync. Your files are yours to manage. RecordFlow also won't create an empty meeting folder: a folder is only created when there's actually a new file to put in it.

Automatic and manual sync

RecordFlow archives new Zoom cloud recordings automatically without any manual action. You can also trigger a sync immediately from the dashboard.

How automatic sync works:

  • Near-real-time: When a recording is completed, Zoom notifies us and RecordFlow transfers it within minutes.
  • Hourly safety check: A scheduled job runs every hour to catch anything that slipped through.

To trigger a manual sync:

  1. Go to your RecordFlow dashboard.
  2. Click "Sync now".
  3. RecordFlow checks for new recordings and transfers them to Drive.

File types archived

RecordFlow archives the following file types from your Zoom cloud recordings:

  • Video — MP4
  • Audio — M4A
  • Transcript — VTT, plus a formatted Google Doc version for easy reading and searching in Drive
  • Chat — TXT
  • Meeting summary — when Zoom's AI summary is enabled
  • Timeline — meeting timestamp markers, when available

Settings

Settings live on the dashboard.

Archive history (how far back we import)

“Archive history” is how far back RecordFlow reaches when it backfills your existing Zoom cloud recordings. New recordings are always archived automatically no matter what this is set to — it only affects the one-time import of your older library.

By default we bring over the last 2 years. As soon as you connect Google Drive, RecordFlow starts syncing on its own and brings over every cloud recording from roughly the past 2 years (24 months). There’s nothing to press to begin.

Want a different depth? Choose how far back to go from the Archive history card in Settings on your dashboard — click Change and pick:

  • Past month — recent recordings only, plus everything new.
  • Past 6 months — a season of meetings, plus everything new.
  • Past 2 years (the default) — a deep archive of your recent history.
  • Past 10 years — your full Zoom cloud history.

What happens when you change it:

  • Widening (e.g. past month → past 2 years) starts importing your older recordings right away — depending on how much you have, they can take from minutes to a few hours to be archived. Long lookbacks can use a lot of storage: a one-hour Zoom recording is typically 200–400 MB of video.
  • Narrowing never removes anything — recordings already archived stay in your Drive; it only limits what we import from now on.

How far back it actually reaches is best-effort. RecordFlow can only import recordings Zoom still has — if your Zoom account’s own retention or auto-deletion already removed older recordings, picking “Past 10 years” won’t bring back what Zoom no longer stores.

Transcript-only sync

If you only need meeting transcripts (not video or audio), enable transcript-only mode. When active, RecordFlow archives only the VTT transcript file for each recording, skipping video, audio, chat, and summary files.

Steps:

  1. Go to your RecordFlow dashboard.
  2. Open Settings.
  3. Toggle Transcript-only sync on.

This applies to future syncs only — recordings already archived retain all their files in Google Drive.

Capture AI Companion transcripts

Some meetings are recorded with Zoom’s AI Companion but produce no cloud recording — the transcript lives only in Zoom’s Transcripts tab and never reaches Drive on its own. RecordFlow can archive those transcripts to your Google Drive as Google Docs, alongside your other recordings.

This feature is currently enabled for early adopters. Email support@recordflow.org from the address on your Zoom account and we’ll enable it for you.

Once enabled, RecordFlow archives transcripts from new meetings going forward and also looks back over your past meetings, archiving any transcripts Zoom still has. The look-back is best-effort — how far back it reaches depends on what Zoom’s API still exposes for your account.

What might be missing: RecordFlow can only capture a transcript for a meeting you hosted — Zoom shares the AI Companion transcript with the meeting’s host only. The meeting also has to have had AI Companion turned on and still have its transcript in Zoom’s Transcripts tab. Meetings you only attended, or where AI Companion wasn’t enabled, won’t have a transcript for us to archive.

Steps (once enabled):

  1. Go to your RecordFlow dashboard.
  2. Open Settings.
  3. Toggle Capture AI Companion transcripts on.
  4. Grant the additional Zoom transcript permission when prompted.

Archive AI Companion meeting summaries (early access)

When Zoom’s AI Companion writes a summary for a recorded meeting — the key takeaways, discussion notes, and action items — RecordFlow can archive that summary to your Google Drive as both a Markdown file and a Google Doc, saved in the same folder as that meeting’s recordings.

We’re rolling this out to early adopters first. Email support@recordflow.org from the address on your Zoom account to get in early, and we’ll enable it for you.

Summaries are archived alongside your normal cloud-recording sync, so they cover recorded meetings within your sync window from now on — RecordFlow doesn’t go back and archive summaries for older meetings.

What might be missing: RecordFlow can only archive a summary for a meeting you hosted that has a cloud recording and had AI Companion meeting summary turned on. Summaries can take a while to generate — sometimes after the recording itself is ready — so a summary may land in Drive on a later sync than the recording. Meetings you only attended, meetings without a cloud recording, or meetings where AI Companion summary wasn’t enabled won’t have a summary for us to archive.

Steps (once enabled):

  1. Go to your RecordFlow dashboard.
  2. Open Settings.
  3. Toggle Archive AI Companion meeting summaries on.
  4. Grant the additional Zoom meeting summary permission when prompted.

Plain-text transcript for AI tools

RecordFlow already archives each transcript as a raw .vtt file and a formatted Google Doc. If you're feeding your Drive folder into an AI tool or knowledge base (an AWS Bedrock Knowledge Base, NotebookLM, or your own RAG pipeline), RecordFlow can additionally archive a plain .txt version of the transcript, named after the meeting folder and starting with the call title and recorded date — so a flat folder of transcripts stays self-describing without relying on the folder structure.

This feature is currently enabled for early adopters. Email support@recordflow.org from the address on your Zoom account and we’ll enable it for you.

Once enabled, the .txt file is archived alongside the .vtt and Google Doc for every future transcript. It doesn’t include meeting duration — just the call title, recorded-on date, and speakers — since that's what AI ingestion pipelines have told us they actually need.

Auto-delete after archive (optional)

RecordFlow can optionally move Zoom cloud recordings to your Zoom Trash after they've been safely copied to your Google Drive. This frees up Zoom cloud storage without manual cleanup.

Use RecordFlow's auto-delete instead of Zoom's own auto-deletion. If you've turned on Zoom's built-in recording auto-delete (in your Zoom recording settings), switch it off and let RecordFlow handle the cleanup. Zoom's setting runs on a fixed schedule and doesn't check whether your copy is safely in Drive yet, so it can delete a recording before it's archived. RecordFlow only trashes a recording once it's verified in your Google Drive — and then waits a few days as a buffer — so you get the same storage savings without risking a recording that was never backed up.

How it works:

  • We delete recordings from Zoom once they're safely in Drive. RecordFlow waits at least 3 days after the archive completes before issuing the trash call.
  • After that, Drive is yours: you can move, rename, or even delete the Drive file. The Zoom-side cleanup runs on the same schedule regardless — your choices about your Drive copies don't pause it.
  • Recordings are moved to your Zoom Trash (not permanently deleted). Zoom keeps a 30-day Trash window if you change your mind.

Steps to enable:

  1. Go to your RecordFlow dashboard.
  2. Open Settings.
  3. Toggle Auto-delete after archive on.
  4. Authorize the additional Zoom permission when prompted.

If you have the auto-delete feature enabled, you can also delete individual recordings from Zoom on demand without waiting for the 3-day grace period: open a synced meeting in your sync history, click "Delete from Zoom", and confirm. RecordFlow checks that the recording was successfully transferred to Drive before issuing the trash call.

You can turn auto-delete off at any time. Pending deletions are cancelled, but deletions already issued cannot be undone through RecordFlow (recover via the Zoom web interface within 30 days).

Email notifications

Get notified by email each time recordings are synced to your Google Drive, with direct links to the archived files.

Steps:

  1. Go to your RecordFlow dashboard.
  2. Open Settings.
  3. Toggle Email notifications on or off.

Removing RecordFlow

To remove RecordFlow from your Zoom account:

  1. Go to the Zoom App Marketplace.
  2. Click Manage → Added Apps.
  3. Find RecordFlow in the list and click "Remove".
  4. Confirm the removal when prompted.

When you remove RecordFlow, syncing stops immediately, your Zoom and Google OAuth tokens are revoked, all your account data (encrypted tokens, sync history, settings) is automatically and permanently deleted from RecordFlow, and any recordings already in your Google Drive remain there untouched. RecordFlow sends one confirmation email to the address on file after the deletion completes and never contacts you again.

If you also want to revoke RecordFlow's access to Google Drive independently, go to your Google Account → Security → Third-party apps and remove RecordFlow from the list.

When something's not working

My recordings aren't syncing →

The most common cause is a cloud-vs-local recording mix-up — the fix article walks through it step by step.

I get an authorization error when connecting

Connecting RecordFlow takes two approvals: one for Zoom and one for Google Drive. If you hit an authorization error part-way through, reload the page and start the connection again, making sure to approve the access RecordFlow asks for in both the Zoom and Google windows. If the error keeps coming back, email us at support@recordflow.org with a screenshot of the message and we'll help you get unblocked.

I see duplicate files

RecordFlow uses deduplication to prevent duplicate files. If you see what appear to be duplicates, they likely have different Zoom recording IDs (for example, from separate recording sessions of the same meeting).

Sync is slow

Large recordings are transferred in 10 MB chunks. An hour-long meeting may take a few minutes to fully transfer. This is normal and ensures reliable delivery even for large files.

My video shows "not ready for playback" in Drive →

That's Google Drive preparing a freshly uploaded video — your recording is already safely backed up. The fix article explains what to expect.

Need more help?

Start with the common problems, fixed list. For anything else, contact us at support@recordflow.org — please include the email address associated with your Zoom account and a description of the problem.