Can Your AI Notetaker Read Your Calendar and Your Client's?

The meetings that matter are on someone else's calendar

If you consult, run an agency or work as a fractional executive, your week is probably split across two calendars. Your own account holds internal calls and new business. A client gave you an address on their domain, and their steering meetings, standups and reviews are invited there.

A notetaker uses the calendar to name a meeting, know who was invited and link it to the last one in the series. So the question is simple: can it read both? For the tools most people compare, the answer is no, or only with a workaround that someone else has to approve.

What each vendor's own help page says

Fireflies' page on supported calendars says it supports Google Calendar and Outlook, and only one calendar per account. If you sign up with Google, it only joins meetings on that Google calendar, and to use a different calendar you have to sign up again with that account. At least one comparison site lists Fireflies as able to merge several calendars. Its own help page says otherwise, and that is the one to trust.

A Fathom help page edited in March 2025 says Fathom can only read meetings from the primary calendar connected to your account. Calls scheduled on a secondary calendar still get recorded, but Fathom cannot pick up the meeting name and labels them Impromptu. Its advice is to schedule on your primary calendar, which you cannot do when the client sends the invite.

Granola goes furthest. It syncs your primary Google or Microsoft calendar and lets you switch on other calendars in Settings. Calendars from a different account have to be shared into the account you sign in with, with See all event details granted, because it cannot show events from free/busy access. Its other option is separate Granola accounts with an account switcher, which keeps the two sets of notes apart.

The workaround is not yours to approve

Sharing the client calendar into your own account sounds like a two minute job. It is, if the client's Google Workspace admin allows it. Google's admin documentation says admins choose how much calendar information users can share outside the organisation, from free/busy only up to full details, and that users cannot exceed that limit. If the limit is free/busy, everyone outside sees busy and nothing else.

A busy block has no title and no attendee list, so a notetaker reading it has nothing to name the meeting with. You will find this out on the first client call, after the share looked like it worked. Ask the client before you start the trial, and ask specifically for full event details.

There is also the question of whether you should. A client's calendar often holds board prep, hiring and HR meetings you were never invited to. Sharing the whole calendar puts all of that into another company's tool. If the client will only share a calendar you are actually on, that is the safer setup anyway.

What you lose when a calendar is missing

With a bot free notetaker, a missing calendar does not stop the recording. You can still start a note by hand and get a transcript and summary. What goes is everything the invite carried: the title, the names of the people invited, the link to earlier meetings in the series, and any prep that depends on knowing who you are about to meet.

That matters more over months than on day one. A client relationship is a series of calls, and a series only hangs together if each call is filed under the right meeting with the right people. Twenty notes called Impromptu are hard to search and harder to hand over.

How Driffle handles it

Driffle reads one calendar account: the Google account you signed in with. Driffle's server enforces that, so there is no way around it in the app. If you pick a different Google account on the consent screen, the connection is refused and you see a page saying it is a different Google account than the one you are signed in with. Outlook calendars are not supported.

Within that account, Settings has a Synced calendars list where you choose which calendars Driffle reads, including calendars other people have shared with you. Turning one off does not delete the notes, tasks or decisions that came from it. So the route for a client calendar is the same as Granola's: get it shared into your account with full details, then switch it on.

One choice is worth making on purpose. Driffle treats the address you sign in with, and its company domain, as you. Sign in with your own firm's account, not one a client issued, or the client's domain will count as your own and its people will not show up as an outside company. Driffle runs on Macs with Apple Silicon as a direct download, captures calls without a bot, and does its transcription and AI work in the cloud.

Check this before your first client call

Decide which account you will sign in with. List every calendar your client meetings arrive on. Ask each client to share that calendar with your sign-in address, with full event details, and ask whether their admin caps outside sharing. Then open the notetaker's calendar settings, switch the calendar on, and find one real upcoming client meeting by its title and attendees. If it shows up as busy, or does not show up, you have your answer before any notes depend on it.

If you want to run that check with Driffle, download it for Mac at driffle.ai/download.