Summer of Shred

Zoom AI Companion

Starting on June 18th, 2025, Zoom AI Companion tools were enabled for UW Zoom accounts. The new Zoom features include the ability for Hosts to create AI Meeting Summary, AI Smart Recordings for Meetings, AI In-meeting questions in the chat, and AI Companion for Team Chat (outside-of-meeting chat). By default, all AI Companion features are disabled during a Zoom meeting. To review the details of these changes and each of AI Companion these features, please visit UW-IT’s extensive resource on the subject.

Just like traditional content generated by Zoom meetings like recordings, transcripts, reports and other meeting data, all these new AI Companion artifacts are subject to automated-deletion policies and sharing restrictions. All records created, received, and used by the UW are subject to UW record retention policies, and things generated by Zoom or by Generative AI tools are no different. Please visit our updated Zoom Best Practices resource for details on the automated deleted policies for each type of content and review your responsibilities for the management of these records. 

New Resources for Managing Web Content

All records created and received by the UW must be retained according to a legally approved record retention schedule based on their content and function. This includes entire webpages, content hosted on a webpage, and digital materials posted to the web: social media posts, videos or images posted to a landing page, a webform or PDF made available online. All of this content serves a specific purpose and a unique function, making it difficult to efficiently manage all web content in the same manner. It’s the same reason why we can’t delete our entire email inbox after 30 days, because retention is based not on format, but on the content.

But our office is here to help and created a new suite of web resources to assist units with the management of their web content, breaking down the scenarios where content needs to be retained vs being deleted and actionable steps units can take to manage their web sites. This is particularly prudent in light of the ADA Rule on Digital Accessibility where units across the UW are reviewing their digital content and taking action on it. We implore units to consider the Records Management implications of their website review & revamps and visit our resource for the actions you can take to manage web content in-line with legal retention requirements.

End of Biennium Purge (Legacy Financial Records)

If your office is currently keeping the Other Copy of any legacy financial records with the retention rule of 2 years after end of biennium, this is your reminder to purge them.

This includes Billing Source Documents, Cash Transmittals, Journal Vouchers and more.

Check out the Financial Records (State and Non-Grant) section on the General Schedule for a complete list.

Soils in Seattle

Summer is a great time to work on organizing your records, especially once students are no longer around campus as much. Utilize our “Year in Records” resource to add tasks to your Outlook calendar throughout the summer and for the remainer of the year. You don’t have to clean everything up all at once, bit by bit, completing small tasks will help your office to make progress towards a more ideal status of record-keeping.

Do you still in the year 2025 have paper around your office? Protect yourself from natural disasters and theft by going digital. Did you know that there’s a university scanning center now that can help you with this?

General Schedule Updates

Effective Immediately

Updated/Amended Series

We updated the following record series to more accurately reflect current business processes:

• Returned Checks (FKA NSF Checks)

Records related to checks returned by the bank for non-sufficient funds (NSF) or other reasons, including stop payments, stale-dated checks and non-negotiable or foreign items. May include returned check notices, deposit correction notices, correspondence with the check issuer and documentation of accounting adjustments.

Official Copy: Any department managing a depository bank account

Retention: 6 years after the end of fiscal year in which paid or determined uncollectable

Disposition Method: Shred or Delete