Why meeting notes get shared with everyone (even on "only me")

You set your TeamsMaestro sharing preference to "only me." Then a client meeting wraps up and the notes land in three other inboxes, including someone from the client's side. You didn't invite them to the recap. You check your settings again. They still say "only me."

This is one of the most common questions we get, and it usually comes with some panic attached. Understandably: those notes might include pricing details, a candid comment about a competitor, or something you'd rather keep between two people. Before you assume something is broken or leaking, here's what's actually happening and how to stop it.

The problem: your "only me" setting isn't being followed

You open TeamsMaestro, check the sharing setting, and it says exactly what you want: notes go to you and no one else. Then the meeting ends and the recap shows up in everyone's inbox anyway.

Nothing is wrong with your account. Your setting is doing exactly what it's configured to do. It's just one of several settings in that meeting, and a different one took priority this time.

Why this happens: every participant's bot is treated equally

TeamsMaestro doesn't put one person in charge of a meeting's notes. If three people in a call all have TeamsMaestro active, each of their accounts carries its own sharing preference for that meeting. There's no organizer override and no "your setting matters more because you started the call" rule.

When those preferences disagree, the most permissive one wins. One account set to send notes to everyone is enough to send notes to everyone, even if the other two are set to "only me." This has nothing to do with which account is paid and which is free, and it works the same way whether the other TeamsMaestro users are colleagues at your company or people from another organization on the call. TeamsMaestro only sees each person's setting, not their plan or who they work for.

This isn't a data leak, here's the real mechanism

If your first reaction is that your privacy setting failed, that's a fair reaction, but it's not what happened. Nothing was intercepted, exposed, or misconfigured. Your notes went exactly where the meeting's combined settings said they should go. The confusion comes from an assumption that "only me" means "only me, no matter what everyone else in the room chose," when it actually means "only me, if I'm the only TeamsMaestro user in the meeting, or if everyone else also picked a setting at least as restrictive as mine."

That's a real design tradeoff, not a hidden flaw, and it's one every AI notetaker with a bot-based join method shares once more than one bot is active in the same call. We just hadn't written it down anywhere before now.

Fix #1: align settings with everyone in the meeting beforehand

For any recurring meeting where privacy matters, ask every attendee running TeamsMaestro to check their own sharing setting before the call. It takes them under a minute, and it only needs doing once per person, not once per meeting.

A short message before a sensitive call covers most cases:

Message to send before a confidential meeting

Hi team, before today's call: if you're using TeamsMaestro, can you set your meeting notes sharing to "only me"? A few of our recent calls sent recaps to everyone on the invite, which we want to avoid for this one. Takes about 30 seconds in your TeamsMaestro settings. Thanks!

This works, but it only holds for that meeting. New attendee, new bot, same check needed again.

Fix #2: use the Enterprise plan to control this org-wide

If you're managing this across a whole team or company, checking individual settings before every call doesn't scale. The Enterprise plan allows an admin to set the sharing behavior for every account on the same domain, so no one has to remember to change it meeting by meeting. It's built for larger organizations that need consistent behavior across every team, not something you'd bother with for a two-person account.

This is the right move if you're regularly running client calls, board meetings, or anything where the notes shouldn't leave a small circle by default. One setting, applied once, instead of a reminder message before every sensitive call.

What to do if you still see the issue

Check who else on the call is also using TeamsMaestro, since their settings play into what gets shared too. You can spot this by checking the notification TeamsMaestro sends in the Teams chat at the start of the call. It names who invited TeamsMaestro to that meeting, giving you a quick read on who else's settings might be in play.

If everyone was already set to "only me" or a matching restrictive setting and the notes still went out broadly, that's not expected behavior, and it's worth flagging to support with the meeting title and date so it can be checked directly rather than assumed to be the settings mismatch described above.

TeamsMaestro also has a pause and resume button for anything you don't want recorded at all, salary talk, a personal aside, or a legal question you'd rather keep off the record entirely. See how it works on Teams calls.