Exporting Historical Call Recordings Metadata in Bulk

How-To-Articles
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Exporting Historical Call Recordings Metadata in Bulk

Executive Summary & Architectural Context

Enterprise contact centers process millions of call recordings per year. While Genesys Cloud AWS S3 buckets provide incredibly secure, encrypted storage for these .wav and .webm files, many organizations are legally mandated to export these recordings-or at least their metadata (ANI, DNIS, Agent Name, Duration, Tags)-to an external corporate Data Lake for long-term retention or auditing.

Attempting to export 100,000 call recordings by sequentially querying the GET /api/v2/conversations/{id}/recordings endpoint will immediately result in an HTTP 429 Too Many Requests API block, grinding your ETL script to a halt.

This masterclass details how to architect a bulk export pipeline using the Recording Batch Request API combined with AWS S3 pre-signed URLs, allowing you to extract thousands of recordings and their associated metadata securely and asynchronously.

Prerequisites, Roles & Licensing

  • Licensing: Available on all Genesys Cloud CX tiers.
  • Roles & Permissions: OAuth Client with recording:readonly and conversation:readonly.
  • Platform Dependencies:
    • A secure external storage target (e.g., your own corporate AWS S3 bucket).

The Implementation Deep-Dive

1. The Architectural Strategy

The bulk export process is a 3-step asynchronous workflow:

  1. Identify the Conversation IDs you need via the Analytics API.
  2. Submit a Batch Request to the Recording API containing those IDs.
  3. Poll the Batch Job status. When complete, download the .zip file containing the metadata and/or audio files.

2. Identifying the Conversations

First, gather the list of UUIDs for the calls you want to export (e.g., all calls from yesterday).
Use the Analytics Conversation Details Query (POST /api/v2/analytics/conversations/details/query) to extract the conversationId for every relevant interaction. Store these IDs in a JSON array.

3. Submitting the Batch Recording Request

Do not request the audio streams individually. Submit the array of Conversation IDs to the Batch API.

  1. Endpoint: POST /api/v2/recording/batchrequests
  2. Payload:
{
  "batchDownloadJobSubmissionQuery": {
    "batchDownloadJobSignatures": [
      {
        "conversationId": "3b2e5...<ID_1>"
      },
      {
        "conversationId": "9f1a2...<ID_2>"
      }
    ]
  }
}

Limits: You can submit up to 100 conversationId signatures per batch request.

4. Polling the Job and Downloading the Payload

The API will return a 202 Accepted and a jobId. Because audio files must be decrypted and transcoded from the Genesys S3 bucket, this process takes time.

  1. Poll Endpoint: GET /api/v2/recording/batchrequests/{jobId}
  2. Poll this endpoint every 10 seconds.
  3. Check the expectedResultCount vs the resultCount.
  4. When resultCount == expectedResultCount, the job is complete.
  5. The API response will provide a resultUrl.
  6. The Result: The resultUrl points to an Amazon S3 pre-signed URL containing a .zip file. This zip file contains the requested audio files AND a highly detailed .json metadata file mapping every recording to its conversation metrics.

Validation, Edge Cases & Troubleshooting

Edge Case 1: Dual-Channel vs Mono Transcoding

By default, Genesys Cloud records voice calls in dual-channel (stereo) to separate the agent audio from the customer audio (which is critical for Speech Analytics).

  • The Trap: If your legacy QA software only accepts .wav files, or if you need to minimize storage space in your data warehouse, dual-channel .ogg or .webm files might be incompatible.
  • Solution: The Recording Batch API supports transcoding on the fly. In your POST payload, you can explicitly request the output format to be transcoded to WAV or MP3, though this will increase the processing time of the batch job.

Edge Case 2: AWS S3 Integration (The API Bypass)

If you need to export every single recording your contact center ever makes, using the REST API is the wrong architectural approach.

  • The Best Practice: Purchase the Genesys Cloud AWS S3 Recording Integration. This native integration connects Genesys Cloud directly to your corporate AWS S3 bucket via an IAM Cross-Account Role. The moment a call ends, Genesys automatically pushes the audio file and a JSON metadata file directly into your corporate bucket. No API scripts required.

Official References