The biggest failure mode with any meeting recorder isn't consent — it's forgetting to start it. Shiken gives you four ways to trigger recording; pick whichever suits the conversation.
The four ways Shiken can start recording
Calendar auto-join. Connect your calendar once. Shiken joins scheduled Zoom, Meet or Teams calls as a named bot based on your rules (all, external, internal or impromptu). Best for scheduled video calls.
Pre-meeting notification. Shiken pings you one minute before a scheduled event. One click opens the call and starts the note on the right meeting. Best if you prefer to hit record manually.
Ad-hoc mic detection. The desktop app notices your microphone has gone live and offers to start recording. Dismiss if it's a personal call. Best for Slack huddles, FaceTime, WhatsApp or other unscheduled calls.
Mobile lock-screen widget. One tap from the lock screen starts recording. Lowest friction for conversations that don't live on a calendar. Best for in-person meetings, phone calls and walk-and-talks.
In-person meetings: what actually works
Centre the capture device. Laptop, phone or USB conference mic in the middle of the table. Carpeted rooms beat glass boxes. A USB conference mic dramatically improves quality over a laptop mic for groups larger than three.
Expect single-speaker attribution. With one microphone, speaker separation is imperfect. Either name people aloud once at the start so Shiken can label them, or have everyone bring a laptop with headphones and join the same Zoom — this gives the best diarisation.
Tell the room. It's the ethical default, and people speak more clearly when they know they're on the record, which actually improves transcription quality.
Split long sessions. For multi-hour workshops or clinics, stop and restart between segments. You get tighter summaries per topic instead of one sprawling one.
Before the meeting
Confirm microphone and (on macOS) screen-recording permissions are granted to Shiken
Make sure your calendar is synced so the one-minute pre-meeting notification fires
Choose the template or note type you'll use (sales, coaching, clinical, internal)
If external attendees are joining, add consent language to the calendar invite
For in-person: test the capture device and place it centrally on the table
At the start of the meeting
State verbally that the meeting is being recorded and why
Offer the opt-out and mean it
Confirm Shiken is actually running — look for the recording indicator
Name all attendees aloud once so the transcript can attribute correctly
During the meeting
Use shorthand markers like *** or &&& for points to come back to
Drop private context into your own note pane, not the transcript
Hit pause (not stop) if someone says "off the record"
For long workshops or clinics, stop and restart between segments
After the meeting
Review the AI-generated note for accuracy before sharing
Delete any segment a participant has since withdrawn consent for
For clinical or sensitive use, log in the record that Shiken was used and consent was obtained
Send the summary and action items to participants so nothing is a surprise
Common failure modes to avoid
Microphone permission not granted in System Settings → Privacy & Security → Microphone (macOS)
Screen-recording permission missing (required for Zoom or Meet audio on macOS)
Calendar not synced, so the pre-meeting notification never fires
Phone on silent mode, which suppresses mobile prompts
Related articles
See also: Asking For Consent Before Recording With Shiken for copy-paste verbal scripts and how Shiken's consent features work.