"Where was the recording of last month's board meeting?" When asked this, the file couldn't be retrieved from deep within a former employee's Drive and was ultimately lost. The more a company establishes the practice of recording meetings, the more common these near-misses become. Whether recordings, transcripts, or minutes, if you accumulate them without deciding who owns them and where they are stored, they turn into assets you cannot retrieve when you actually need them.
In July 2026, Google Meet rolled out a specification change that directly touches this issue. Meeting recordings, transcripts, and notes are now automatically organized and accumulated in the host's My Drive. While it is a convenient automation, without designing storage locations in advance, an organization ends up mass-producing a state where company meeting records are scattered across individual Drives. We break down what changed and where to draw the line.
What changed in July 2026
Google began rolling out a change where recordings, transcripts, and notes generated in Meet meetings are automatically uploaded to a newly created "Google Meet" folder inside the host's My Drive and organized into subfolders by meeting. The rollout was announced to begin on July 22, 2026, for Rapid Release domains, and on July 30 for Scheduled Release domains (Google Workspace Updates).
Because files are automatically organized by meeting, it is true that they become easier to find. The problem lies in the destination. The fact that the organized location is the host's personal My Drive directly impacts day-to-day operations. While we previously defined boundaries for automated meeting recording features in Before Gemini starts taking minutes across company-wide meetings, this discussion takes it one step further: where to store the records that are kept.
Why individual My Drives cause problems
Having meeting records pile up in My Drive means ownership of those records belongs to individual accounts rather than the company. This gives rise to three tangible harms.
First, they can be lost entirely upon employee departure or transfer. Because files in My Drive are tied to individual accounts, suspending or deleting an offboarded employee's account means meeting records held only by that individual are either wiped out all at once or trigger a scramble for transfer work. Having records of board meetings or critical sales negotiations vanish along with an employee's departure is an operational incident.
Second, they cannot be retrieved during audits or disputes. When you want to verify after the fact what was decided in a given meeting, having records scattered across everyone's My Drives makes company-wide discovery impossible. Third, sharing scopes become reliant on individual discretion. Sharing permissions for personal folders tend to be left up to the individual, increasing the risk that records that should never leave the company leak via link sharing.
In short, left unaddressed, this update has the effect of accelerating the rate at which company records scatter as personal assets, precisely because it has become more convenient.
How to design the storage location for meeting records
The core of the solution is to avoid leaving meeting records scattered in individuals' My Drive folders and instead consolidate them into company-owned shared drives. Here is how to structure this design approach.
| Discussion point | When left unmanaged | When properly designed in advance |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Individual organizer | Company (shared drive) |
| Upon employee departure | Records disappear / transfer required | Remains company property |
| Searchability | Dispersed across individual drives | Centrally managed by department and purpose |
| Sharing scope | Dependent on individual settings | Controlled via shared drive permission roles |
Specifically, for high-priority meetings (such as executive meetings, board meetings, critical sales negotiations, and performance evaluations), establish rules to move automatically generated records to designated shared drives. With shared drives, the company becomes the owner of the records, ensuring they remain even after employees depart, and shared drive permission roles allow the organization to control who can view them. Additionally, establishing retention rules for how long to keep and when to delete records prevents an unmanageable accumulation that complicates future audits.
What administrators must decide beforehand
Leaving this up to individual teams will cause the architecture to unravel. Administrators should establish alignment on the following three points in advance:
First, the organizational scope permitted for recordings, transcripts, and meeting minutes—whether to automatically generate them for all meetings or limit them to specific meeting types. Next, the consolidation destination for generated records and transfer operations—defining who transfers them to shared drives and when (e.g., making it the organizer's responsibility for critical meetings). Finally, how to handle meetings involving external participants—automatically generating written transcripts for sales meetings or hiring interviews poses significant risks, so a clear line must be drawn here.
In each case, deciding these rules before enabling the feature saves substantial effort. If you design the process only after enabling it and letting records accumulate, you will have to begin by retrieving files that have already dispersed across individual drives.
What you should tackle first
The first step in responding to this change is to establish a single rule: "Do not leave records of critical meetings in personal My Drive folders; collect them in company-owned storage locations." Solidifying just this foundation will preemptively eliminate the majority of employee departure risks, audit compliance issues, and accidental sharing incidents.
If you would like to organize where to consolidate your company's meeting records and determine the appropriate retention rules and permissions—including the overall architecture of Google Workspace shared drives—reach out via our free IT & Google Workspace consultation. We will propose a storage and governance structure tailored to your organization.
