Zeeg gives you two independent settings to control how invitee personal information (PII) appears for hosts:
Hide personal info — hides invitee PII from the emails Zeeg sends to the host.
Mark calendar events as private — marks the calendar event as private on the host's connected calendar (Google, Outlook, Exchange), so other people who can view the host's calendar see only "Busy" instead of the event details.
Both settings are configured per event type and can be enabled together or independently, depending on your privacy needs.
These settings are available on all plans that support custom notifications. Both settings are configured per event type in the Notifications tab of each event type.
These settings are useful when:
You operate in a regulated environment (healthcare, legal, finance) where invitee details should not appear in mailbox notifications.
Hosts share inboxes or calendars with assistants, teammates, or delegates, and you want to limit who can see invitee details.
Hosts use email previews or screen-sharing, and you want to prevent invitee PII from showing up there.
You need to reduce the surface area where invitee data is stored, forwarded, or visible to others.
Why this matters for GDPR and data protection
If you operate in the EU or process the personal data of people in the EU, the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) requires you to apply the principles of data minimisation (Article 5(1)(c)) and data protection by design and by default (Article 25). In practice, this means invitee personal data should only be visible to the people who actually need to see it, and only in the systems where it's actually needed.
These two settings help you meet those obligations:
Hide personal info supports data minimisation by keeping invitee names, email addresses, phone numbers, and form answers out of email notifications — which are often retained in mailbox archives, indexed by search, forwarded, or replicated to mobile devices and backup systems.
Mark calendar events as private supports the principle of access control by ensuring that delegates, assistants, and teammates who share the host's calendar cannot see invitee identities or meeting topics they don't need to know.
Other regulated frameworks with similar requirements — such as HIPAA (healthcare in the US), Swiss FADP, UK GDPR, and many sector-specific codes for legal, financial, and counselling services — benefit from the same controls.
A few things to keep in mind from a compliance perspective:
These settings are technical safeguards, not a substitute for a lawful basis to process invitee data, a privacy notice, or a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with Zeeg. You can request Zeeg's DPA from our support team.
Even with both settings enabled, invitee data is still stored in Zeeg, in the host's own calendar, in webhooks, and in any integrations you've connected. Make sure your retention policies and integration configurations are aligned with your privacy commitments.
If you receive a data subject access, deletion, or rectification request under GDPR, the booking record in the Zeeg dashboard is the source of truth — not the redacted host email.
The two settings in detail
Hide personal info
When Hide personal info is enabled on an event type, the following invitee details are removed from the host emails Zeeg sends for that event type:
Invitee name (and salutation)
Invitee email address
Invitee phone number
Guests added to the booking
Custom query parameters
Answers to booking questions
The email subject is also rewritten so it no longer contains the invitee's name. For example:
Notification | Default subject | With Hide PII |
New booking | New event: <Event type> | <Invitee name> | <Date & time> | New event: <Event type> | <Date & time> |
Cancellation | Cancelled: <Event type> | <Invitee name> | <Date & time> | Cancelled: <Event type> | <Date & time> |
The host emails affected are: new booking notification, reschedule notification, event change notification, and cancellation notification.
What the host email still shows:
Event type name and team
Date and time (and the previous time, for reschedules)
Reschedule reason
Location (link, room, or address)
Price (for paid events)
Cancellation reason
Link to open the event in Zeeg
Hide PII does not change what's written to the host's connected calendar. The calendar event title still shows the invitee's name, the invitee is still added as an attendee, and the description still contains booking questions and answers. The .ics file attached to the host email also contains these details. This is intentional — the calendar event is the host's primary working record of the meeting. If you also want to hide the event details from people who share the host's calendar, enable Mark calendar events as private as well.
Mark calendar events as private
When Mark calendar events as private is enabled on an event type, Zeeg marks every event it creates on the host's connected calendar as private:
Google Calendar: the event is created with visibility = private.
Outlook / Microsoft 365 / Exchange: the event is created with sensitivity = private.
What this means in practice:
The host (the calendar's owner) still sees the full event with title, description, attendees, and all booking details.
Anyone else who has access to that calendar — delegates, assistants, teammates with shared-calendar permissions, or people viewing free/busy — sees only that the host is Busy during that time, with no title, no invitee name, and no description.
What Mark calendar events as private does not do:
It does not hide invitee details from the host's own calendar view.
It does not hide invitee details from the host's email notifications. (Use Hide PII for that.)
It does not affect the .ics attachment.
How to enable these settings
Go to Event types and open the event type you want to configure.
Open the Notifications settings for that event type.
Toggle Hide personal info and/or Mark calendar events as private on.
While you're in the Notifications tab, also review and customize the invitee notification templates as described above.
The settings take effect immediately for new bookings, reschedules, and cancellations on that event type. Emails and calendar events that were already created are not changed retroactively.
How the two settings work together
The table below shows where invitee PII appears and which setting hides it:
Where invitee PII appears | Hidden by Hide PII | Hidden by Mark calendar events as private |
Subject line of host emails | Yes | No |
Body of host emails | Yes | No |
.ics attachment in host emails | No | No |
Title of the event on the host's connected calendar | No | No (only hidden from other viewers of the host's calendar) |
Description of the event on the host's connected calendar | No | No (only hidden from other viewers of the host's calendar) |
Visibility of the event to people who can view the host's calendar | No | Yes — they see "Busy" only |
The two settings address different concerns: Hide PII keeps invitee data out of the host's inbox, while Mark calendar events as private keeps invitee data out of view for anyone with shared access to the host's calendar.
The host themselves always sees the full booking details on their own calendar — they need to know who they're meeting with and what was answered in the booking form.
Recommended combinations
Goal | Settings to enable |
Hide invitee details from the host's inbox only | Hide PII |
Keep invitee details visible to the host but hide them from people who share the host's calendar | Mark calendar events as private |
Maximum privacy: keep invitee data out of host emails and hide event details from anyone with shared calendar access | Both |
For GDPR-sensitive workloads (healthcare, legal, counselling, HR), we generally recommend enabling both settings on the relevant event types as a privacy-by-default baseline.
Extending privacy protection to your invitees
The two settings above protect the host's environment. But the invitee also receives confirmation emails, calendar invites, cancellation emails, and any workflow-based reminders or follow-ups you configure — and those notifications are often forwarded, shared, or stored in environments you don't control (a shared family inbox, an assistant's mailbox, a calendar synced to a personal phone, etc.).
To extend the same privacy-by-design thinking to the invitee experience, customize the invitee-facing notification templates for each sensitive event type. In Zeeg you can override the subject and body of:
The invitee calendar invitation (the calendar event the invitee receives).
The invitee confirmation email.
The invitee cancellation email.
Any workflow actions that send emails or SMS to the invitee (reminders, follow-ups, thank-yous, surveys).
Recommendations for invitee notifications
Use a neutral event title in the invitee calendar invitation.
Default templates often include the event type name (e.g. "Therapy session", "Debt counselling consultation", "HR grievance interview") which can leak the nature of the meeting to anyone who sees the invitee's calendar. Override the subject of the invitee calendar invitation with something neutral like "Appointment with [Your organisation]" or "Confirmed meeting".
Keep the calendar event description minimal.
Customize the body of the invitee calendar invitation to remove the invitee's full set of question answers, custom query parameters, and any other context you don't want surfaced on the invitee's calendar — which may be shared with a partner, family, or assistant.
Be careful with confirmation and cancellation email previews.
Email previews on phones and smartwatches typically show the subject line and the first line of the body. Customize the subject and opening line of the invitee confirmation and invitee cancellation templates so the preview reveals as little as possible — start the body with a generic greeting and put the meeting details further down.
Avoid embedding sensitive answers in the email body.
If your booking form asks sensitive questions (medical history, legal matter, financial situation), edit the invitee notification templates to remove the :questions_and_answers placeholder so those answers aren't echoed back into the invitee's mailbox.
Review your workflow templates too.
Reminder and follow-up emails or SMS sent through workflows have their own subject and body — make sure they use the same neutral wording. A reminder that says "Reminder: Therapy session at 14:00" on a locked phone screen can be a privacy incident; "Reminder: your appointment is at 14:00" is much safer.
Tell invitees what to expect.
A short line in the invitee confirmation explaining how their data will be used, retained, and who has access builds trust and supports your transparency obligations under GDPR Articles 13 and 14.
You can edit these templates per event type from the Notifications tab of each event type, and per workflow from the Workflows section.
Using your own mail server for notifications
By default, Zeeg sends transactional emails (invitee confirmations, host notifications, workflow emails) from Zeeg's own mail infrastructure. For organizations that need invitee and host emails to flow exclusively through their own systems — for branding, deliverability, archival, compliance, or to keep PII inside their own perimeter — Zeeg supports two alternatives:
Custom SMTP: The organization owner can configure SMTP credentials (your own mail server, Google Workspace, Amazon SES, Postmark, an on-prem relay, etc.). Once configured, Zeeg uses those credentials to deliver emails. They are sent from your domain, hit your mail logs, and are subject to your retention, archival, and DLP policies.
Outlook integration: If hosts use Microsoft 365 / Outlook, Zeeg can send emails natively through the connected Outlook mailbox. Emails appear in the host's Sent Items folder, just as if the host had sent them manually, and follow the organization's existing Microsoft 365 compliance, eDiscovery, and retention rules.
The custom SMTP configuration follows an organization → team → user chain: settings configured at the organization level are inherited by all teams and users, but can be overridden at lower levels if needed.
Why this matters for privacy and compliance:
Invitee email addresses and any PII contained in the message body are handled by your own mail provider, not by Zeeg's mail vendors.
You can apply your own encryption-in-transit policies (e.g. enforced TLS, MTA-STS), DKIM/DMARC alignment with your domain, and outbound DLP scanning.
Audit trails of every notification live in your mail server logs alongside the rest of your organisation's email.
It simplifies vendor management — Zeeg orchestrates the booking, but the email itself never touches a third-party transactional email provider on Zeeg's side.
You can configure custom SMTP and the Outlook integration from the Organization settings (organization owners only).
Custom SMTP is available from the Professional plan and above. Check the Zeeg pricing page for details.
Maximum control: handle all notifications yourself via webhooks
If your privacy or compliance requirements go beyond what the built-in settings and custom SMTP can offer — for example, if you need every notification to flow through your own systems for auditing, redaction, encryption, or routing through a specific email provider — Zeeg supports a fully self-managed notification model.
You can:
Disable the host emails for an event type by enabling Disable host emails in the event type's Notifications settings. Zeeg will stop sending booking, reschedule, change, and cancellation emails to the host.
Disable the invitee notifications by setting the invitee confirmation method to No Confirmation on the event type. Zeeg will stop sending the invitee confirmation, calendar invitation, and cancellation emails.
Subscribe to Zeeg webhooks to receive real-time event payloads (invitee.scheduled, invitee.canceled, invitee.rescheduled, etc.) on your own backend.
From your backend, send the notifications yourself — exactly how, when, and to whom you want. You decide what fields appear, how long links live, what channel (email, SMS, in-app, push, secure portal) is used, what's redacted, and how the data is logged on your side.
This pattern is the right fit when:
You need notification content to comply with sector-specific rules (e.g. healthcare-grade encryption, legal hold requirements, financial regulator audit trails).
You want all communications to come from your own domain, branding, and infrastructure.
You need to route notifications through a Data Processing Agreement-covered provider you've already vetted.
You need to apply your own retention policy or pseudonymisation before any PII reaches an inbox.
Trade-offs to be aware of:
You take on the responsibility for delivery, retries, deliverability, localization, and any reminders or follow-ups Zeeg would normally handle.
The host's connected calendar will still receive the calendar event from Zeeg (so the host's calendar continues to work), but no email notifications will be sent to either party.
The invitee will not automatically receive a calendar invitation — if you want one, you'll need to generate and send the .ics file from your own system.
For most customers, customizing the built-in templates and toggling the two privacy settings above is enough. The webhook approach is for organizations that need end-to-end control of every message sent in their name.
Things to keep in mind
All settings are per event type.
You can enable them on some event types and leave them off on others. There is no global toggle.
Custom email templates and workflows are not automatically scrubbed.
If you've configured custom notifications or workflows that reference invitee variables (e.g. :INVITEE_FULL_NAME, :INVITEE_EMAIL, answers to questions), those variables will still be filled in. Review your custom templates separately.
Webhooks and integrations always receive the full payload. The privacy settings are presentation-only — they do not redact data sent to webhooks, Zapier, your CRM, or any other integration. This is what makes the webhook approach above possible, but it also means you should ensure those downstream systems meet your GDPR commitments.
The booking record in Zeeg is unchanged. Hosts and admins can still see all invitee details in the Zeeg dashboard when viewing the booking.
Mark calendar events as private depends on the connected calendar provider honoring the visibility flag. All major providers (Google, Outlook, Exchange) do, but custom CalDAV setups may behave differently.
FAQ
Does Hide PII also hide information from the Zeeg dashboard?
No. Hosts and admins can still see all invitee details when viewing a booking in the Zeeg dashboard. Hide PII only affects the host-facing email notifications.
Can I enable these settings for all event types at once?
No, both settings are configured per event type. There is currently no global toggle. You'll need to enable them individually on each event type where you want them active.
Do these settings affect what the invitee receives?
No. Hide PII and Mark calendar events as private only affect the host's emails and calendar. The invitee still receives their standard confirmation, calendar invitation, and other notifications. To customize what the invitee sees, edit the invitee-facing notification templates in the Notifications tab.
If I use Mark calendar events as private, can the host still see the full meeting details?
Yes. The host (the calendar's owner) always sees the full event including the title, description, attendees, and all booking details. The private flag only hides event details from other people who have access to the host's calendar.
Does Hide PII apply to the .ics file attached to the host email?
No. The .ics attachment still contains the full booking details. If you need to prevent PII from reaching the host's inbox entirely, consider using the webhook approach to disable host email notifications and handle them yourself.
Are these settings GDPR-compliant on their own?
These settings are technical safeguards that support GDPR compliance — specifically data minimisation (Article 5(1)(c)) and privacy by design (Article 25). However, they are not a substitute for a lawful basis, a privacy notice, or a Data Processing Agreement (DPA) with Zeeg. Contact our support team to request Zeeg's DPA.