Does an AI notetaker need access to your calendar?

An AI notetaker does not need your calendar to join a meeting, but it needs it to join meetings on its own. This guide is for professionals with client calls on Google Meet and Microsoft Teams who are deciding what to grant on a notetaker's permission screen: what calendar access adds, what a notetaker should never ask for, how to take access back, and exactly what TrackHeros requests. How TrackHeros connects several accounts at once is on the multi-account page.

Does an AI notetaker need access to your calendar?

No. A notetaker can usually be sent into a call by pasting the meeting link, and the bot joins like any other participant. Calendar access is what turns that into something you never think about.

Without it, you paste every link yourself, for every call, and remember to do it before the meeting starts. That works for a one-off. It fails quietly for a weekly client call that moves twice a month. If you only want a bot in the occasional meeting, skip the calendar entirely; joining a Teams call that way is covered in joining a Teams meeting without calendar access.

What does calendar access give a notetaker?

It gives the notetaker the meeting before you have thought about it. With read access to your calendar, a notetaker can:

• Find the meeting. It sees new invitations as they arrive and pulls out the Meet or Teams link, wherever the organiser put it.
• Turn up on time. It schedules the bot for the start time without you being there.
• Follow changes. A rescheduled meeting moves its bot; a cancelled one cancels it.
• Know whose meeting it is. If each calendar belongs to one client, the meeting is filed under that client before the bot joins.
• Read the agenda. The invitation's description is often the only planned agenda there is, and the notes are better for it.

All of that needs reading. None of it needs writing.

Is it safe to give a notetaker calendar access?

It is reasonably safe if the access is read-only and limited to the calendar. The risk is not that a notetaker asks for your calendar; it is what else it asks for while it is there.

A calendar is more sensitive than it looks. Event titles name clients and projects. Guest lists hold other people's email addresses. Descriptions carry dial-in details, agendas and links to documents. A notetaker reading that is reasonable, because it is the job. A notetaker that can also write to it can create or delete events and send invitations in your name, and nothing in a notetaker's job requires that.

If the calendar belongs to a client-issued account, there is a second question: whether the client allows outside apps at all. Some Microsoft 365 organisations require an administrator to approve any app, and the guide to client-issued Microsoft 365 accounts covers what to do when one does.

What should you look for on the permission screen?

Read-only calendar access, plus whatever is needed to know which account it is and to keep working while you are away. Anything beyond that deserves a reason.

What the screen asks for	What it allows	Does a notetaker need it?
Read-only calendar access	Seeing events, times, guests and descriptions	Yes, to join meetings automatically
Full calendar access	Creating, changing and deleting events	No. Finding meetings needs reading only
Mail	Reading, and sometimes sending, your email	Not for joining meetings
Contacts	Reading your address book	Not for joining meetings
Files	Reading or writing your documents	Not for joining meetings
Offline access	Working while you are not signed in	Yes. The bot joins while you are away from your browser
Your email address and basic profile	Knowing which account was connected	Yes, so you can tell your accounts apart

Two wording traps. On Google, the read-only calendar permission reads "See and download any calendar you can access using your Google Calendar", which is broader than what many apps use, so ask which calendar the app actually reads. On Google, the full-access version reads "See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar". If you see the second, the app can change your calendar.

How do you take a notetaker's calendar access away?

From your Google or Microsoft account's list of connected apps. Disconnecting inside a notetaker stops it using your calendar; removing it from your account withdraws the permission itself. Do both when you are done with a tool.

• Google account: open your Google Account's linked apps, choose the app under access to your Google Account, select See details, then Remove access. Google's steps are in manage links between your Google Account and apps from other developers.
• Microsoft work or school account: in the My Apps portal, open the app's menu, choose Manage your application, then Revoke Permissions. Permissions an administrator granted for the whole organisation cannot be revoked by you; ask that administrator. Microsoft's steps are in edit or revoke application permissions in the My Apps portal.
• Personal Microsoft account (Outlook.com, Hotmail): the list is in your Microsoft account's privacy settings, under the apps and services that can access your data. Microsoft's privacy settings page links to it.

Removing access stops future reads. It does not delete what the app already stored. That is a separate step, inside the app.

What calendar permissions does TrackHeros ask for?

Read-only calendar access, sign-in basics, offline access and your email address, and nothing else. All of it is read-only, and nothing reads mail, files or contacts. The one exception is optional: if you use a calendar for booking links, you grant that account write access separately, so the appointments people book can be created in it.

Provider	Permission	What it is for
Google	openid	Confirming which Google account signed in
Google	userinfo.email	Showing which account is connected
Google	calendar.readonly, with offline access	Reading the calendar while you are away
Microsoft	openid, email	Confirming which account signed in, and its address
Microsoft	User.Read	Reading the account's id and address
Microsoft	Calendars.Read	Reading the calendar, read-only
Microsoft	offline_access	Reading the calendar while you are away

Of everything those permissions could reach, TrackHeros reads each account's primary calendar (Google) or default calendar (Microsoft), from yesterday to about two months ahead. Only events that carry a Google Meet or Microsoft Teams link become meetings; the rest are ignored. Each connected account belongs to exactly one client, so what it reads is filed in that client's workspace and nowhere else, as described in client workspaces that never mix.

What happens to your meetings when you disconnect TrackHeros?

The sync stops for that account and nothing is deleted. Past meetings stay under the client they were filed in, and other connected accounts are untouched.

Three details are worth knowing:

• Google: TrackHeros revokes its own access at Google when you disconnect.
• Microsoft: Microsoft offers no way for an app to revoke its own permission. TrackHeros deletes its calendar subscription and tells you to remove it from your Microsoft account's app permissions, using the steps above.
• Upcoming meetings: meetings already synced from that calendar are not cancelled. Their bots stay scheduled and no longer follow reschedules, so switch auto-join off for any you no longer want recorded. The details are in what happens when you disconnect a calendar.

To remove what was recorded, delete the client workspace, or your whole account. Either asks for a typed confirmation and removes the database rows, the stored recordings and transcripts, and the copy held by the meeting-bot service. What we promise about your data is in the privacy section.