Understanding recording consent

Tech admin

Any Gong plan*

Call recording is subject to various consent laws that differ by location and industry. Before recording any calls, you must understand and comply with:

• The consent laws in your location

• The consent laws in your customer's location

• Any additional regulations specific to your industry

In some regions, all participants must be notified or agree before recording, while others require only one participant to be aware. If your customer is in a different region, the stricter rule usually applies. Some key points to consider:

• If your customer is in a different state or country from you, typically the stricter consent law applies

• Consent requirements may be different for video vs audio recording

• Some industries (like healthcare or financial services) have additional recording regulations

• International calls may be subject to multiple jurisdictions' requirements

Ways to get consent to record web conference calls

Gong provides several methods to notify participants that calls are being recorded and to obtain consent:

• A consent page hosted by Gong that can be personalized and used to obtain consent to record a web conference call.
  

• An audio prompt, played when participants join a web conference call, letting them know the call is being recorded.

• Pre-call emails sent 10 minutes ahead of the scheduled call reminding them about the call and that it’s recorded.

Consent with native Zoom recording

When setting up web conference calls with the native Zoom recorder, Zoom’s recording disclaimer can be customized and used to inform and get consent to record.

Consent with telephony calls

When making calls with integrated telephony systems, you must verbally inform your customers that the call is being recorded. For details on calls using the Gong mobile app, see Enable your team to use the Gong dialer from mobile and Gong Connect: data protection & privacy.

Manage consent requirements with consent profiles

As your consent requirements often vary between different regions and teams, it may be necessary to have different consent settings for different teams.

Consent profiles enable defining multiple methods for getting consent across your organization. This ensures each team has predefined mechanisms for obtaining consent and removes the need for teams to verify they are complying with their specific regulatory requirements.

When using Outlook, a single consent profile can include settings for multiple web conferencing providers. This lets team members choose which provider to use, such as Zoom or Webex, when creating a meeting, while keeping all providers aligned with the same consent rules. This is useful when teams work with more than one provider but should follow consistent consent practices.

If you need to manage different consent settings across your organization, create multiple profiles to:

• Enable the consent page for different providers, for example, where one team uses Zoom and another uses Google Meet

• Define whether participants can opt out of the recording but stay on the call or whether they must consent to being recorded in order to stay on the call

• Enable or enforce the use of the consent page

• Customize the consent page logo, company name and texts

• Set up different consent pages for different use-cases, for example if your company has subsidiaries

• Play a language-specific audio prompt for each participant on calls hosted by a particular team

• Send the pre-call email in different languages for calls hosted by different teams

What you can set in a consent profile

Set up different consent profiles so that team members can comply with the regulations of the regions they work with most. Define the consent page, audio prompt, and the pre-call email settings.

Consent page settings

Define how the consent page should be displayed.

Web conference provider

Set the web conferencing providers for the consent profile.

You can define multiple providers in the same consent profile. How these providers are used depends on the calendar integration:

• Microsoft Outlook: Team members can choose which provider to use when scheduling a meeting, as long as the provider is defined in their consent profile.

• Google Calendar: Meetings are created with the default provider defined in the profile.

Supported providers are:

• Zoom

• Google Meet

• WebEx

• Microsoft Teams

• GoToMeeting

• Amazon Chime

• RingCentral Meetings

• RingCentral Video

• join.me

• Uber Conference

• Appointlet

The settings available may differ for each provider, as integrations with some providers may include features not supported with a different provider. For example, choosing between dynamic and static meeting links.

Enable or enforce the consent page

Enabling the consent page allows Gong to create meeting links that redirect participants to the consent page before joining a meeting. However, if for some reason the person is able to join the meeting without giving consent to being recorded, the meeting may still be recorded and imported to Gong.

Enforcing the consent page ensures that the meeting is only recorded if all participants consent to being recorded via the Gong consent page. If a participant bypasses the consent page, the meeting won’t be recorded or imported to Gong.

Bypassing the consent page can be done by, for example:

• Adding a meeting link which won’t redirect to the consent page to the meeting description

• Generating the meeting link without using the Gong add-on for Google or Outlook

Enable joining the meeting without recording it: Define whether participants can refuse to be recorded but still join the call or whether they must consent to being recorded.

The option to hold a call that isn’t recorded is available for these web conferencing systems:

It’s possible to monitor how many participants opt-out of being recorded using the Call status report.

Links to the consent page

The link to the meeting is redirected to display the consent page so that participants can consent to being recorded as they enter the meeting. Gong supports the following types of links:

• Dynamic link: Generated per meeting and considered the most secure option as participants must have the meeting link to join the meeting. This prevents people not invited from joining the meeting. Dynamic links are generated by the Gong calendar add-on for Google or Microsoft Outlook.

• Static link: Permanent links that don’t change and open in the meeting owner’s personal meeting room. A personal meeting room is a permanent, dedicated virtual meeting space with a fixed URL/meeting ID assigned to a specific user. Different web conference providers refer to this with different terms.

Dynamic links are available for the Zoom, Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, and Webex integrations. For other web providers, all meeting links are static.

Dynamic links

Advantages of dynamic links:

• Most secure method of ensuring that only people invited to the meeting can join

• No risk of overlapping meetings

• A new recording is started for each meeting

• Dial-in participants are informed how to give consent before joining

Disadvantages of dynamic links:

• Personal meeting rooms are not supported, they must be opened with a static link

• Scheduling tools such as Calendly are not supported

• Can’t be used when scheduling meetings on behalf of someone else

Static links

Static links are permanent links to a team member’s personal meeting room, found in their web conferencing provider’s app. Gong can automatically display the consent page before redirecting to the personal meeting room for the following providers:

• GoToMeeting

• Webex

• Zoom

For all other supported web conferencing providers, team members must add their personal meeting room link to their profile page. Once they have done this, Gong displays the consent page before opening the personal meeting room.  

Advantages of static links:

• Allows scheduling meetings on behalf of others, such as, an SDR scheduling for an AE

• Suitable for teams that prefer to use personal meeting rooms

• Supports scheduling tools such as Calendly

Disadvantages of static links:

• With back-to-back meetings, hosts must control admission to avoid participants “bumping into” one another as one meeting ends and another begins.  There’s a risk that recordings will overlap.

• For certain providers, team members must manually add their personal meeting room link to their profile to display the consent page.

• Dial-in information is not supported

• Need for additional configuration

Let the host decide

Meeting hosts decide whether to set up meetings using a dynamic or static meeting link. The host can either manually copy their static link to their personal meeting room into the meeting invite, or they can use the Gong calendar add-in to generate a dynamic link. This option allows the meeting host to choose the meeting link that most suits that specific meeting.

Localize the consent page

Gong's consent page can be localized to the participant’s native language when their browser is set to any of the supported languages. The default language is English.

Viewing the consent page in a physical meeting room

The consent page isn’t displayed when a meeting starts from a meeting room system, and participants can’t consent to being recorded. To get consent, start the meeting from your laptop first and then add the meeting room. It’s recommended to announce at the beginning of the meeting that it is being recorded.

Audio prompt

The audio prompt is played at the start of the call, and settings include whether to play the audio prompt for each participant or only once, the language of the audio prompt and the voice and text used.

There is also an option not to play the audio prompt if the participant consented to the recording via the consent page.

Pre-call email

An automated email can be configured to be sent between 10 and 20 minutes before the meeting is scheduled to take place. The email is sent from the Gong email service. The subject and body of the email can be customized as well as the company logo and privacy policy. The email includes a section informing the participant that the meeting will be recorded, and this text cannot be removed or edited.

Gong’s app for the Calendar

Gong provides an app for Google Workspace and Outlook 365 which automates adding a link to a meeting which ensures the consent page will be opened before the meeting starts. This app is required if you want to use dynamic links. For static links, the add-on retrieves the static link defined in the team member’s profile and adds it to the meeting. For details on how to install the app, see Install the Gong calendar add-on.

Consent with the Gong assistant

All settings in the consent profile are applied to a call that the Gong assistant is invited to.

*The features available to you depend on your company’s plan and your assigned seats.