Canvas Course and Panopto Video Auto-deletion

• We’re aligning with the university’s records retention schedule for course-related data, which includes disposal of these materials after five years.
• This practice will also help the UO contain the costs for these services.

• Canvas
  • This information is available in the Term column in your course list at canvas.uoregon.edu/courses.
• Panopto
  • To see a list of your videos slated for auto-deletion based on their last-viewed date, please visit the Panopto Upcoming Deletion Activity dashboard (Duck ID login required).

• Some videos added to Panopto more than five years ago are still being actively viewed in a recent copy of a Canvas course. Such current or recent activity will delay deletion of the original video.
• The five-year deletion horizon for Panopto videos is based on the most recently accessed reference copy. The Canvas Course Copy function creates working links to new reference copies of all Panopto videos from the old course. The original video won't be deleted until all subsequent reference copies have been unviewed for more than five years.

You may want to save older Canvas course materials or Panopto videos, such as for your professional portfolio or for future use. As you consider saving such materials, please keep the following in mind:

• Remove personal files. Any content that wasn't generated for or in connection with UO work should be removed from UO storage altogether. 
• Follow best practices for records retention. Learn more about managing course records and managing video recordings as records
• Storage costs money. Please be thoughtful about what you keep — especially large files, such as videos — and where you store them. Saving unnecessary files can stretch UO’s storage capacity and cause excess spending. Information Services staff are analyzing usage and costs for all UO storage services and may introduce auto-delete settings for other services soon, in consultation with stakeholders and University Records Management.

Yes. Information Services is setting up automatic email notifications to owners of courses slated for deletion.

• Owners of affected courses will receive a series of three emails spaced approximately three months, two months and two weeks before deletion.
• Each email will list all past courses subject to deletion.

• Unfortunately, Panopto currently lacks this functionality.

To save older Canvas course materials for your professional portfolio or future use, you have two options:

• Entire Canvas course: You can export the entire course (excluding student submissions) as a downloadable package that can be imported later into another Canvas course shell.
• Selected course materials: You can selectively download files or folders from the course.

Learn more about best practices for records management of course materials.

In some cases, it may make sense to preserve an unwatched video longer than five years. Learn more about best practices for records management of videos.

1. From the main Canvas course navigation menu, select Panopto video, then Show archived videos.
2. Find the video you want to save, then use its restore from archive button to request it be moved to Ready to view. Restoration from archive may take up to 48 hours.
3. Once the video appears on the main Panopto Ready to view screen, click the video’s settings button.
4. In the settings window, click the Outputs tab.
5. You have the option to change the "Type" and "Quality," after which you must click Apply.
6. Click "Download Podcast" to download your video. (Alternately, click "Download Audio Podcast," if you want to download audio only.)
7. After downloading the file, close the settings window, then please use the video’s More actions button to delete it from Panopto.

Read more about how to download Panopto videos as MP4s. 

Most course materials shouldn’t be saved for more than five years. 

If you export materials from Canvas or Panopto — such as for your professional portfolio or for future use — please save them in the appropriate UO storage service:

• Dropbox, Microsoft SharePoint or Teams, or Microsoft OneDrive 
  • Please use shared spaces (SharePoint, Teams, or Dropbox team spaces) for content that others may need to access for operations or records retention. 

• No. Once they’ve been permanently deleted, Panopto videos and Canvas courses are unrecoverable.

• No. Courses in Community Canvas (community.uoregon.edu) won’t be affected.
• Learn about differences between the two Canvas environments.

• Courses without term dates — such as trainings — won’t be affected.