Recorder
1. What it is
Recorder is the cloud side of the desktop app’s screen capture. Capturing a region, a window, the whole screen or your camera in the MangoApps desktop app is free and works whether or not a company has the app: recordings and screenshots are saved on the computer that made them. Recorder adds a company library for those files. An uploaded recording gets a page on the web and on a phone, is transcribed and summarised, can be shared with named people, the whole company or an outside viewer, and can be handed to Training, SOP Hub, Libraries, Service Desk or Practice Hub.
- Enablement: Recorder requires a licence. An admin enables it from the Apps Marketplace, then configures it from Settings inside the app.
- What it is not: Recorder is not AI Notepad. AI Notepad is for meetings — their notes, transcripts, action items and decisions. Recorder is for the screen and camera recordings people make on purpose: walkthroughs, how-tos, updates and bug reports. Recordings are their own library; they are not Drive files and do not appear in Drive.
2. Standing it up
- Go to Admin → Apps Marketplace and enable Recorder.
- Open the app and go to Settings (visible to admins and to app admins for Recorder).
- Under New recordings, set Default visibility to Only the person who recorded it or Everyone in the company. Tick Enforce this default for everyone if people must not choose their own default.
- Under Uploads, set the Maximum upload size (MB). Uploads larger than the cap are refused before any bytes are sent.
- Under Public links, decide whether to tick Allow public links. Until it is on, nobody can mint a link for outsiders, and the Anyone with the link option in Send to chat does not appear.
- Under Transcripts and AI, leave the three switches on unless the workspace should not spend AI credits on recordings. Transcription is what makes a recording searchable, captioned and usable by Ask AI.
- To verify: in the desktop app, capture a screenshot, click Upload on its card, then open the link it copies. The recording’s page shows the file with its poster. Record a short narrated video the same way; within a few minutes its page gains a transcript, a summary and chapters.
Two pairings silently do nothing until both halves are set. Draft an SOP and the other hand-offs appear only where the target app (Training, SOP Hub, Libraries, Service Desk, Practice Hub) is enabled and the person may use it. Translate captions into the workspace’s languages does nothing until the workspace has enabled languages under the platform’s translation settings.
A company that has not enabled Recorder sees the desktop panel exactly as before: capture, annotation, trimming, the tray and the shortcuts keep working, and no cloud actions appear.
3. How it fits together
Local first — A capture is saved to the computer’s capture folder the moment it ends. Uploading is a separate, optional step, and the local file stays where it is afterwards. A card that has been uploaded shows Copy link, Open in browser, Share…, Send to chat and Use this recording instead of Upload. The desktop’s Cloud tab lists what is already on the server.
One row per capture — The desktop identifies each capture by the file it was saved as, so retrying an interrupted upload, or uploading the same capture twice, lands on the same recording rather than a duplicate. Cancelling an upload moves its recording to the recycle bin; uploading that capture again brings the same recording back.
Videos and screenshots — A recording is either a video or a screenshot. Both share the library, sharing, links, comments, pins and the recycle bin. Only videos get a transcript, a summary, chapters, captions, a call-to-action and watch-through insights; a screenshot’s page shows the image and its details.
Processing — After the bytes arrive, the server confirms the file type, reads the duration and dimensions the desktop did not send, and makes a poster frame when none was supplied. A video is then transcribed, summarised into a summary with chapters, and its captions are translated. The page shows Processing until the poster is ready and fills in the transcript and chapters as they finish. A silent screen recording finishes without a transcript; that is normal, not a failure.
Three ways to open a recording — Visibility is the recording’s own switch: Only the person who recorded it or Everyone in the company. Sharing adds named people on top of that, as Viewer or Editor. A public link is a separate door for people without a MangoApps account; it is minted per recording, can expire, carry a password or ask for an email, and stops working the moment an admin turns public links off. Admins configure the app but get no read-all door into private recordings; they can, however, restore any deleted recording.
Worked example: Priya records a 4-minute walkthrough of the new expense form. It starts as Only the person who recorded it. She shares it with Dan as Editor so he can retitle it, and with the finance team lead as Viewer. Once the form ships she flips it to Everyone in the company so nobody needs to be named. When the outside auditor asks, she mints a public link that expires in 7 days, asks for an email before playing and hides the Download button.
Owner, editor, viewer — The owner is the person who uploaded the recording; only the owner can change the Show a Download button switch, delete or restore it, and see who watched. An editor can rename it, change its visibility, share it further, set the thumbnail, manage captions, add a call-to-action and mint public links. A viewer can play, comment, react, pin, and gets a Download button when the owner shows one. That switch controls the button, not the bytes: anyone who can watch a recording can save the file from their browser either way.
Pins — The Pin button on a recording is a Bookmark; pinned recordings appear on Bookmarks alongside wikis, tasks and pages, and disappear from there if the recording is deleted or the app is turned off.
Hand-offs reference, never copy — Use this recording creates a record in another app that points back at the recording: a Training lesson that plays it inside the course player with the transcript already attached, a draft SOP whose steps come from the chapters, a library link item, a comment on a Service Desk ticket, a new ticket whose title and steps AI drafts from the transcript for the person to edit before sending, or a Practice Hub attempt. Deleting the recording never deletes the lesson, SOP or ticket; the reference goes blank.
Classic My Recordings — For customers coming from MangoApps Classic, Recorder is the successor to My Recordings. Private and company privacy, sharing roles, public links, pins, the recycle bin, thumbnails, captions, the call-to-action and view insights each have a counterpart here; hashtags and public-page colour themes do not. Classic recordings do not appear in Recorder on their own; the migration is scheduled with MangoApps per workspace.
4. Running it
Uploading from the desktop, the web or a phone
In the desktop app, open the Recorder panel, find the card and click Upload. In the capture editor, Quick Save to Recorder saves the edited image or trimmed clip and uploads it in one step, copying the link when the upload is ready. On the web, drag a file onto the Recordings page. On a phone, open the mobile library and record straight from the camera or pick a file from the camera roll. All three land in the same library and go through the same processing.
Working in the library
Recordings lists everything you can see, with Videos and Screenshots tabs, Search by title and a Sort control. Tick several cards to Share with company, Make private, Download zip or Delete them together. The More menu opens Insights (plays, completion and call-to-action clicks for your own recordings, exportable as CSV) and Your preferences (what new recordings start as, and whether to transcribe them).
Sharing and links
Share opens a drawer with People with access, where you add people as Viewer or Editor, and — when the admin allows it — a Public link section with New public link, an expiry, a password, Ask for an email before playing and Show a Download button on this link. The same drawer holds Get embed code. Send to chat posts a card with the title, an optional note and the link into a chat room.
Transcripts, captions and thumbnails
On a video’s page, Captions & translations lets an editor translate the captions now, upload a caption file, edit a track or delete one. Set thumbnail picks a frame from the video or uploads an image. The chapter list and the transcript panel seek the player when clicked.
The recycle bin
Delete moves a recording to the Recycle bin, where it can be restored for 30 days; after that a nightly sweep removes the recording and its file for good. Members see their own deleted recordings; admins see every deleted recording in the company, by title and owner, and can restore any of them. With Keep recordings for (days) set, older recordings move to the recycle bin on their own each night.
5. Settings
All at Recorder → Settings, in the order the page shows them.
| Setting | Where | Default | What it changes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Default visibility | New recordings | Only the person who recorded it | What a new upload starts as when the person has not chosen their own default. |
| Enforce this default for everyone | New recordings | Off | When on, Your preferences no longer offers a personal default and every new recording starts at the tenant default. |
| Show a Download button on new recordings | New recordings | On | Seeds each new recording’s Show a Download button switch; owners can still change it per recording. It shows or hides the button — it does not prevent saving. |
| Maximum upload size (MB) | Uploads | 1000 | The largest file the desktop, the web or a phone will accept. |
| Allow public links | Public links | Off | Whether editors can mint links for people without an account. Turning it off makes every existing public link stop working. |
| Links expire after at most (days) | Public links | 30 | The longest life an editor can give a public link; a longer request is shortened to this. |
| Transcribe new recordings (captions, search and Ask AI) | Transcripts and AI | On | Whether videos are transcribed after upload. Off means no captions, no summary and no search by what was said. |
| Write a summary and chapters from the transcript | Transcripts and AI | On | Whether a transcribed video also gets a summary and chapters. |
| Translate captions into the workspace’s languages | Transcripts and AI | On | Whether captions are translated into the languages the workspace has enabled, and whether Translate now appears on a recording. |
| Recorder Agent in Ask AI | Transcripts and AI | On | Whether people can find and act on recordings from the Ask AI sidebar. |
| Keep recordings for (days) | Retention | 0 (keep for ever) | Recordings older than this move to the recycle bin each night. |
| Flag company-visible recordings nobody has watched | Retention | Off | On the weekly content-governance scan, flags company-visible recordings past the review interval with no plays and nudges the owner. |
Transcription, summaries and caption translation draw on the workspace’s shared AI wallet.
6. More help
- Recorder FAQ — why Upload is missing, who can see what, public-link behaviour, transcripts that never arrived, the recycle bin, and every limit.
- Capture itself — regions, windows, the camera, annotation, trimming and shortcuts — is part of the desktop app and does not depend on Recorder.
- Ask AI — the assistant answers questions about Recorder from these articles.