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Concept — background and overview.
Welcome to Affinity! As you sign in and start syncing your email/calendar data into Affinity, here’s a quick overview to help you get started.

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Why should I accept the Google/Microsoft permissions for Affinity?

See the relevant Google/Microsoft permissions below and why they must be accepted. Please note, not accepting these permissions will severely impact your Affinity experience:
  1. View your email messages and settings
    1. Allowing Affinity to view and sync your emails will enable Affinity to auto-create contacts for you if there are full names associated with each email address (see When does Affinity auto-create people contacts?). These people will be auto-added to your All People directory.
    2. Affinity will scan for phone numbers and job titles within the email signatures of contacts to auto-populate the Phone Number and Current Job Title fields as contacts get auto-created. Affinity will also auto-update the Phone Number and Current Job Title fields if a contact’s email signature changes over time.
    3. Based on the people that are auto-created, Affinity will also auto-create organizations for you if the person’s email domain matches the organization’s website.
      • Example: If you’ve interacted with Jane Doe janetest@affinity.co, then Jane Doe will be auto-created as a contact and the organization Affinity affinity.co will be auto-associated with Jane Doe. These organizations will also be auto-added to your All Organizations directory.
    4. By auto-creating these people and organizations in your Affinity CRM, you will gain increased visibility on your team’s communications with those outside your organization with enriched fields such as First Email, Last Email, Last Contact, and more.
      1. These enriched fields can then be used to set up automated reminder triggers so you don’t drop the ball on time-sensitive communications.
Note: Any email interaction that gets synced into Affinity will remain in your Affinity CRM, regardless of whether it gets deleted/archived from your inbox. 2. Send emails on your behalf
  1. Allowing Affinity to send emails on your behalf simply means being able to send emails directly from your Affinity CRM.
  2. This will enable you to use features such as sending personalized bulk emails and tracking email engagement.
  3. Access your calendar
    1. Allowing Affinity to view and sync your calendar events will enable Affinity to auto-create contacts for you if there are full names associated with each email address.
    2. Based on the people that are auto-created, Affinity will also auto-create organizations for you if the person’s email domain matches the organization’s website.
    3. By auto-creating these people and organizations in your Affinity CRM, you will gain increased visibility on your team’s communications with those outside your organization with enriched fields such as Last Meeting, Last Contact, Next Meeting, and more.
      1. These enriched fields can then be used to set up automated reminder triggers so you don’t drop the ball on time-sensitive communications.
    4. You can also start leveraging the Meetings tab where you can toggle on/off Affinity Notetaker (Advanced and Enterprise tiers only) to join your meetings and take notes for you.
Note: Any calendar event more than 6 months in the past will remain in your Affinity CRM, regardless of whether it gets deleted or archived from your calendar. 6. Note: Affinity will also sync/surface meetings that are marked private. If there are external contacts involved, these private meetings will appear on the external contacts’ respective profile pages.

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How to Control Which Emails Sync (Selective Email Sync)

By default, Affinity syncs your entire mailbox. If you want more control over which emails sync to Affinity, you can enable Selective Email Sync (by calling Support).

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What is Selective Email Sync?

Selective Email Sync lets you choose specific emails to sync by applying a label (Gmail) or folder (Outlook). Only emails tagged with “Affinity” will sync to your CRM - all other emails remain private. What it allows:
  • Opt into which emails sync with Affinity by adding emails to any folder(s) or subfolder(s) in your inbox called “Affinity”
  • Exclude specific meetings by setting them to private visibility in Outlook (requires organization-wide setting - see details below)

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When to use

  • Keep sensitive or personal emails private
  • Reduce CRM clutter
  • Control what your team sees
  • Sync only deal-relevant communications
Available for: Gmail and Outlook (not Exchange/On-Premise) Important naming requirements:
  • Folder(s) or subfolder(s) must be named “Affinity” exactly (capital A, case-sensitive)
  • “Affinity” subfolders can be added to existing inbox folders as desired (e.g., you can have multiple subfolders called “Affinity” under different parent folders)
  • Subfolders cannot be added to Affinity folders themselves (Affinity folder must be a leaf folder)

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How It Works

The basics:
  1. Contact Affinity Support (support@affinity.co) to enable Selective Email Sync
  2. Create a label (Gmail) or folder (Outlook) named exactly “Affinity”
  3. Apply the label/folder to emails you want synced
  4. Tagged emails sync to Affinity (~every 5 minutes)
  5. Untagged emails stay private
For Gmail: Create a Label named “Affinity” and apply to relevant emails
  • Can use nested labels (e.g., Work/Affinity works)
  • Can create multiple “Affinity” subfolders under different parent folders
For Outlook: Create a Folder named “Affinity” and move emails into it
  • Can create multiple “Affinity” subfolders under different parent folders in your inbox
  • Cannot create subfolders UNDER the Affinity folder itself
  • Must be named exactly “Affinity” (case-sensitive)
Excluding meetings from sync (Outlook only):
  • Meetings can be excluded by setting them to private visibility in Outlook
  • Requires organization-wide setting to be enabled by your Affinity Account Admin
  • Contact your admin or Affinity Support to enable this capability
  • Once enabled, any meeting marked “Private” in Outlook will not sync to Affinity
Important notes:
  • By default, meetings still sync automatically (calendar sync unchanged unless private meeting exclusion is enabled)
  • Can be applied to historical emails retroactively
  • Once synced, removing the label/folder doesn’t delete from Affinity

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Setting Up Automation Rules

Automatically apply the Affinity label/folder using rules: Gmail:
  1. Use Gmail search to find emails (e.g., subject contains “pitch deck”)
  2. Click Search options → Create filter
  3. Check “Apply the label” → Select “Affinity”
  4. Click Create filter
Outlook:
  1. Settings → Mail → Rules
  2. Add new rule with your conditions
  3. Action: Move to → Affinity folder
  4. Save rule
Common automation criteria:
  • Subject contains: “investment”, “term sheet”, “due diligence”
  • From specific domains: @targetvc.com, @portfolio-company.com
  • Has attachments + keywords indicating deal activity

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What Gets Synced

With Selective Sync enabled: Syncs:
  • Emails with “Affinity” label/folder (exact match)
  • Emails in any subfolder named “Affinity” under other parent folders
  • Historical and new emails (applied retroactively)
  • All calendar meetings (unless private meeting exclusion enabled for Outlook)
Doesn’t sync:
  • Emails without “Affinity” label/folder
  • Gmail: Emails also labeled Spam, Trash, Drafts, or Chat
  • Outlook: Emails in subfolders created UNDER Affinity folders (Affinity folders cannot have subfolders)
  • Outlook meetings marked “Private” (only if org-wide setting enabled)
Label/folder naming:
  • Must be exactly “Affinity” (capital A, case-sensitive)
  • Gmail: Can be nested (e.g., Work/Affinity works). Can have multiple “Affinity” subfolders under different parents.
  • Outlook: Can create multiple “Affinity” subfolders under different inbox folders. Cannot nest folders UNDER an Affinity folder.
Important Considerations Privacy:
  • Selective Sync controls WHICH emails sync to Affinity
  • Privacy settings control WHO sees synced emails (separate setting)
  • Teammates may still sync emails you chose not to tag
Meeting privacy (Outlook only):
  • Private meeting exclusion requires organization-wide setting to be enabled
  • Contact your Account Admin or Affinity Support to enable
  • Once enabled, marking meetings “Private” in Outlook prevents them from syncing
  • Gmail does not currently support meeting privacy exclusion
Once synced:
  • Removing the label/folder doesn’t delete email from Affinity
  • Contact support@affinity.co to request email deletion
Team collaboration:
  • If another user syncs an email, it appears in Affinity even if you didn’t tag it
  • Selective Sync is per-user, not per-email

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Syncing frequency

When you sign in for the first time, Affinity will start syncing your email/calendar data. Depending on how many emails you have, it may take several hours for the syncing to be up-to-date. Once syncing is up-to-date, Affinity will continue to sync your data on an ongoing basis.
  • Affinity checks your email accounts every 6-8 minutes to sync new email data.
    • For Office365 Calendars, the sync times are roughly 2 hours.
    • For Google Calendars, the sync times are roughly 30 minutes.
  • However, processing and surfacing the data within the product may take additional time, depending on the amount of data and time of day.
  • If you don’t see your email/calendar data appear on Affinity over the next 24 hours, please reach out to support@affinity.co with relevant information and screenshots - we’d be happy to help.

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Does Affinity consider the BCC line when displaying emails on profiles?

  • Yes, but only for internal users who are syncing their email accounts into Affinity.
    • This is why you may see an email interaction on an external contact’s profile page, where the “To” and “From” lines include external email addresses, but no internal email addresses (since they’re in the “BCC” line).
  • BCC lines are not used to auto-create external contacts, so these external contacts must have existing profiles in Affinity in order to surface the relevant email interaction where the internal user is BCC’ed.

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How Affinity associates synced activities with organizations

Affinity associates your synced emails and meetings with organizations by matching email domains. When you interact with someone using their work email address (like jane@meta.com), that interaction is associated with the corresponding company (Meta). This means:
  • Company activity timelines show interactions where someone used that company’s email domain
  • Smart fields like Last Contact and Last Email reflect interactions specific to each company
  • Reports accurately represent your team’s activity with each organization
Note: If someone uses a generic email address (Gmail, Yahoo, etc.) that doesn’t indicate a specific company, the interaction will be associated with all organizations they’re linked to in your CRM. To view all interactions with a person across all their organizations, visit the person’s profile directly.

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Data and folder types not supported for sync

Here are the few data/folder types that Affinity does not sync:
  • Gmail
    • Chat, Draft, Spam, Trash
    • Gmail Contact Book
    • Shared Folders
  • Microsoft Office365 and Microsoft Exchange (On-Prem)
    • Clutter, Conflicts, Conversation Action Settings
    • Deleted Items, Drafts, Journal, Junk, Junk E-Mail
    • Local Failures, Server Failures
    • Notes, Outbox, Quick Step Settings
    • RSS Feeds, RSS Subscriptions
    • Shared Folders
    • Suggested Contacts, Sync Issues, Tasks, PersonMetadata
    • Microsoft Office365 Contact Book
      • We only sync Exchange (On-Prem) Contact Books at the moment

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Important Callout for Microsoft 365 Government Community Cloud (GCC) users