Find how much you have
Sign in to the Admin Portal with an admin account that has access to the company call logs. Open the Analytics & Logs tab, then Call Log.
The log opens on the last seven days of inbound and outbound calls across all company numbers. Use the calendar to widen it: the presets run to Last 60 days, and you can enter your own start and end dates.
Open the filter icon. Under Types of Call, choose Recorded Calls Only so you are counting calls that have audio. Use the Detailed tab if you want more information on each call.
Click Download and choose the Call Log option. You get a CSV of the view you are looking at, with your filters applied. RingCentral does not say how large one download can be, so start with a short range and widen it.
Total the call lengths in the file and divide the minutes by 60 to get hours. The company call log on screen has a Length column, which RingCentral describes as the duration of the call, and a Recording column, so check that your CSV carries the same fields. Note the number of recorded calls as well.
Find the oldest recorded call in the log. Automatic recordings are kept for 90 days on RingCentral's servers, so unless you have been archiving them elsewhere, that date is where your audio starts.
What to put on your intake
Your intake has five boxes for each system. Here is what goes in each one for RingCentral.
- What does it hold?
- Business phone calls across your company numbers, including call recordings, a call log, voicemail and text messages. Say which lines are recorded, for example: recorded inbound sales, dispatch and claim-intake calls.
- Data types
- Audio for call recordings and voicemail. Add Structured records for the call log, and Text for SMS and team messaging.
- How big is it?
- Choose Hours and enter total recorded call minutes divided by 60. Put the call count in the description. Length in the call log is the duration of the call, not a measurement of the saved audio file, so say in the description that the hours come from call lengths.
- Verified or estimated
- Verified when the figure comes from the Call Log download for your full recorded range. Estimated when you scaled up from a sample week or one extension.
- Records start
- The oldest recording you can still play, or the oldest one in your own archive if you have been backing up. On RingCentral's servers that is no more than 90 days ago for automatic recordings. Call log entries reach back 12 months for most accounts.
Exporting the full history
If a buyer licenses your records, this is how the full history comes out of RingCentral.
A buyer export happens only after a license is signed and the scope is agreed: which lines or extensions, which date range, and whether recordings, call logs and messages are all in. Separately, RingCentral's developer guide calls archiving a best practice and says it does not store communication data indefinitely, so run a private export for yourself now, before more recordings age out.
For call logs and recordings, an admin goes to Admin Portal, Analytics & Logs, Call Log, sets the date range and filters, and clicks Download. The Call Log option gives a CSV and the recordings option gives MP3 files. Only the current view downloads, so a long history means many slices.
For chat and team messaging, open Settings, then Administration, then Messaging, switch on Enable message data export, and click Request. RingCentral says turning the feature on takes Super Admin privileges and does not say who else may submit requests. Pick all conversations, up to 10 selected users, or up to 10 selected teams, and a date range of 7, 30 or 90 days or a custom range of up to 180 days.
When the message export is ready it appears under Export history with a download icon. RingCentral says there may be a delay while the system prepares it, depending on how much data is involved. It arrives as a ZIP of JSON files in folders such as Chats, Files, Members and Posts. Shared files come through as links, not as the attachments themselves.
For a full backlog, a developer can pull the account-level call log and each recording through RingCentral's API. Each call record that has audio carries a recording object with an ID and a content link, and RingCentral says recording metadata and audio are available only at the account level. The app needs the ReadCallLog and ReadCallRecording permissions.
Under the license, caller names, numbers and other identifiers are removed from the call log and texts before anything reaches a buyer, and recordings are reviewed and de-identified or excluded.
We only ask for an export after you sign a license and agree the scope. Sizing your data for the intake never needs one.
Limits to know
Retention warning
RingCentral keeps automatic call recordings for 90 days, so older calls may already be gone. Export what you have now.
- RingCentral keeps automatic call recordings for 90 days, up to 100,000 recordings per account. On-demand recordings also last 90 days, with a limit of 200 per voicemail box per user. If you have not been archiving, your audio history is about three months deep, whatever the age of the account.
- Call log entries are kept for 12 months on most accounts and nine months on some. RingCentral points you to Customer Support for the figure on your account.
- RingCentral does not retain recordings shorter than 30 seconds, so very short calls may have a log entry and no audio.
- Received voicemail has no time limit but is capped at 200, after which the oldest are replaced. Text and multimedia messages have no time limit, with 5,000 per user in each of the Inbox, Outbox, Sent and Deleted folders.
- Team messaging retention is set by an admin. The default keeps all messages, and the other options are 30, 60, 90 or a custom number of days. RingCentral says changing the setting resets the deletion clock. AI notes are kept for 12 months.
- Analytics Portal report data such as usage, company numbers and performance reports is kept for six months, and Live Reports for 24 hours, so they will not give you a multi-year total.
- Only company admins can ask Support to change retention, and RingCentral says retention may also depend on your service plan and local law. Check with RingCentral before assuming a longer window.
- The API is rate limited. RingCentral labels the Call Log API as Heavy, and its rate-limit guide gives 10 requests per user per minute as the default for that group, while saying limits vary by app. Going over returns HTTP 429, with a Retry-After header for when to try again. RingCentral's recordings guide adds that recording downloads may fall under a different limit and tells developers to read the X-Rate-Limit-Group header. A developer can see the real limits for your app in the Developer Console, and a big backlog will take time.
This guide isn't legal advice. Check your contracts, and any recording-consent rules that apply, with your own lawyer.
Why buyers value it
A business phone line is where a customer first says what they need: a software customer who can't log in, a policyholder with a claim, a tenant reporting a leak or a homeowner booking a repair. Recorded calls capture support, claim intake, booking, dispatch and pricing conversations in the customer's own words, along with how the office answered.
That is hard to get from public data, and buyers training voice agents and call-scoring models look for it. It is worth more when the calls can be matched to what happened next in your CRM or job system. The catch is depth: with a 90-day recording window, a company that has been archiving for years is far more interesting than one that has not.
What stays private
Caller and recipient names, phone numbers, extensions tied to named staff, voicemail contents, and the contents of texts and team messages are removed or excluded before delivery. Recordings are voice data. They often include spoken names, addresses, claim or policy numbers and card details, so they are reviewed and de-identified or left out rather than passed through as they are.
Account and billing settings, call-routing and phone-system configuration, fax, and logins are not part of the license. Shared files and attachments in team messaging are excluded by default.
Common questions
Sources
Vendor documentation, checked . Screens and plans change, so if a step looks different in your account, check with RingCentral.
- RingCentral Support: Data retention policies (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Support: Viewing and managing your company call log in the Admin Portal (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Support: Viewing your call history in the Admin Portal (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Support: Requesting message data exports (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Developers: Overview of the Call Log API (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Developers: Archiving your RingCentral activity data (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Developers: Call recordings (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Developers: Call Log access control (opens in a new tab)
- RingCentral Developers: API rate limits (opens in a new tab)