Will a notetaker join twice if a meeting is on two of your calendars?

The same meeting often sits on two of your calendars: a Google one and an Outlook one, or a client's and your own. Whether a notetaker then sends one bot or two depends on whether it can tell the two entries are the same meeting. This guide is for professionals who connect several calendars to one notetaker, with calls on Google Meet and Microsoft Teams. It explains how duplicates arise, how they can be recognised, and exactly what TrackHeros does. The account model behind it is on the multi-account page.

Why does the same meeting end up on two of your calendars?

Because an invitation is sent to addresses, and you have more than one. Whenever two of your addresses are on the guest list, two of your calendars hold the same meeting.

The usual ways it happens:

• You schedule from one account and attend from another. You create the call from your own account and add your client address, so it appears where the client expects to see you.
• Somebody forwards the invitation. The organiser invited your personal address, and a colleague forwards it to your client address, or the other way round.
• Two people invite you separately. One uses your client address, the other the address on your email signature.
• Your own calendar is connected next to a client's. Anything a client sends to your own address lands on both.

None of this is a mistake. It is what happens when one person holds several identities.

Will a notetaker send two bots?

It will if it treats every calendar entry as its own meeting. Two entries means two scheduled bots, two participants called "Notetaker" in the call, and two sets of notes for one conversation. Whether it does depends on whether it can recognise that the entries are one meeting.

Two bots is not a disaster. It is a poor look in front of a client, though, and it leaves you two transcripts and two lists of action items to reconcile for a single call.

Whatever notetaker you use, ask one question before connecting a second calendar: what happens to a meeting that sits on both? If the answer is unclear, switch the bot off for one calendar's copy of anything you know is shared.

How can a notetaker tell two calendar entries are the same meeting?

Two signals work: the invitation's own id together with the occurrence's start, or the same meeting link at the same start time. Either one is enough, and each covers a case the other misses.

The invitation id, plus the start

Every calendar invitation carries a unique id from iCalendar, the standard calendar apps use to exchange events. Your copy, your colleague's copy and the copy on your second account all share it, so it looks like the perfect key.

It fails on recurring meetings. A weekly stand-up is one invitation, so every occurrence shares the same id. Match on the id alone and a notetaker would treat the stand-up of 6 October and the one of 13 October as one meeting, and only one of them would get a bot. The fix is to pair the id with the occurrence's start: same id and same start is the same meeting; same id and a different start is another week of the series.

The same link at the same time

A bot joins a link. Two entries pointing to the same Google Meet or Teams link at the same moment are one call, whichever calendars they came from. This catches what the id can miss: Google and Microsoft calendars do not write an occurrence's start the same way, so the id-plus-start comparison does not always line up between the two providers.

The time matters as much as the link. Many people reuse one meeting room link every week, and two meetings in the same room at different times are different meetings.

What does TrackHeros do when both calendars belong to the same client?

It treats them as one meeting and sends one bot. That holds when one calendar is Google and the other Microsoft: if both accounts are connected to the same client, the entries are matched by id and start, or by link and time, and only one meeting is created.

That meeting has one transcript, one summary and one set of action items, in that client's workspace. The unified calendar shows it once.

What if the two calendars belong to different clients?

Then TrackHeros does not match them, on purpose, and each client records the call with its own bot. Meetings are never linked across clients.

This happens more than you might think. A fractional CTO is invited to a call between two companies they advise, once on each company's address. A consultant's two clients share a supplier, and both invite them to the supplier's demo. To notice the duplicate, TrackHeros would have to compare one client's meetings with another's, and that comparison is a read across the wall the product exists to keep. A second bot is the visible cost. The alternative is an invisible one: one client's meeting details consulted while working inside another client's workspace.

The fix takes a few seconds. Open the meeting under the client that should not record it and switch auto-join off. Auto-join has three levels: this meeting, this recurring series, and your account default. The most specific one wins, and the meeting page shows which level decided. For a recurring joint call, switch it off for the series. Why the walls hold even here is explained in client workspaces that never mix.

What about your own calendar next to a client's?

The copy on your own calendar arrives unfiled, and no bot joins an unfiled meeting on its own, so the client's copy is the one with the bot. When you connect your personal Google or Microsoft calendar to TrackHeros, its meetings wait in a private space only you can see until you file them under a client.

If the call is already on that client's calendar, the client's copy has the bot and the unfiled one can stay where it is. When you file a recurring meeting and tick "Remember this for the whole series", later occurrences are filed under that client as they arrive, and one that is also on that client's calendar is matched to the meeting already there rather than duplicated. More in the guide to your own calendar next to your clients'.

Which case are you in?

Find the two calendars that hold the meeting, then read across.

The two calendars	What TrackHeros does	What you do
Two accounts of the same client, Google or Microsoft	One meeting, one bot	Nothing
Accounts that belong to two different clients	A record and a bot in each client	Switch auto-join off for it in one client
Your own calendar and a client's calendar	Your copy stays unfiled, with no bot by default	Nothing; the client's copy has the bot

If you are connecting a Google and a Microsoft account for the first time, the guide to connecting both to one notetaker covers the rest of the setup.