Is there a good way to annotate somebody else's meeting?

I get calendar invites from Teams, Zoom, etc. And many of those calls will have an agenda, or I’ll have notes that aren’t included in the meeting invite.

But I can’t edit that meeting in Calendar.

Is there a way for me to add stuff right to that calendar event, so I have it on the Calendar item?

I don’t think so. I either ask the initial inviter to add the agenda to the meeting body or I just make my own meeting entry right next to it and put it in there. I haven’t figured out a better way, yet.

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On the Mac, you can use Hook to link specific calendar events to pretty much anything (e.g. a note/document in something like Notes, Craft, or Google Doc that contains an agenda). I’ve verified that this works with Calendar and Fantastical. Other calendar apps likely also work well.

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+1 for this method. It also allows me to add personal notes which I may not want other attendees to see.

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Can you do that when Calendar won’t let you edit the message though? That’s my challenge.

With Hook, you should be able to link to any appointment, including those that you can’t edit.

For example, if I select MacSparky’s April Virtual Meetup and invoke Hook, I can easily link this appointment to something new (e.g. a new document in Craft where I’m taking note of questions to ask) or something that already exists (e.g. a folder on my Mac that contains notes from MacSparky Labs).

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Ah, I see - you’re linking the opposite direction. That makes sense. Thanks!

You’re very welcome!

Ah, I see - you’re linking the opposite direction.

Hook supports bi-directional linking. So you could Hook an existing note in, for example, Notes, to an existing appointment. Once this link has been established, if you’re in the note and invoke Hook you’ll be prompted to jump to the appointment. Conversely, if you select the appointment and invoke Hook you’ll have quick access to the note.

If you’re dealing with Teams and maybe Outlook, and on Exchange server, the Microsoft way of doing such a thing is to use OneNote and putting the meeting details and your notes on the linked document.

I just checked and I can open a “Meeting Notes” page in a specified notebook from an email calendar invitation.

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Hook is one of best purchases I’ve made for Mac in a long time. Extremely useful tool.

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Yes, that works fine on the Mac, but as I tried the same thing on iPad, I could not find an easy way to create OneNote meeting notes from a calendar event.

Kinda low hanging fruit on the product backlog, you’d think, but here we are.

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Yeah, in this case they’re on Teams, but I’m not. I get that if you drink the Microsoft Kool-Aid you get the benefits of the ecosystem - but it kind of sucks when you’re not all-in on that stuff. :slight_smile:

I use Craft to fill this gap. Craft can read your calendar and you can have a specific note tied your event.

One perk of doing it this way is that for virtual meetings Craft can read the MS Teams and/Zoom info and places the link in the note. This allows you to launch your meeting directly from your Craft note.

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