Meeting Prep & Data Update with Ascend

Two Affinity agents work around your meetings. The Meeting Prep agent builds a pre-meeting brief for each external meeting so you walk in with context. The Data Update agent reads the meeting note afterward and drafts the CRM updates that follow — so your job shrinks to reviewing and approving. Both are part of Affinity Ascend, under Ascend in the left navigation and on your home page. This tutorial walks the full path: prepare with the brief, have the meeting, let Data Update propose field updates from the note, and apply the ones you agree with.

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Before you start: prerequisites

1. Your calendar is connected to Affinity. The agent works from your synced external meetings.
2. Affinity Notetaker is turned on. It takes the note and attaches it to the meeting automatically, which is what triggers the suggested updates. Available on Scale, Advanced, or Enterprise.
3. The Meeting Prep and Data Update agents are enabled. At launch (July 22) an admin turns Ascend on for the org at Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI (the Ascend Agents card); from August 5 it’s on by default unless the org opted out. Once the org is enabled, each user can turn individual agents on or off on the Ascend → Agents tab (each a background Monitoring agent).

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Step 1 — Before the meeting: open your brief

The Meeting Prep agent prepares a brief for your external meetings that pulls together relationship history, the last interaction and how recent it was, who else on your team is engaged, deal/pipeline context, and recent company news. Briefs are generated overnight and ready each morning by 7:00 AM in your local time zone, in-app on the Affinity home page (“Start your day” / “Ready for you”) and in the Ascend Agent Activity feed — Affinity on the web only (not email, Slack, or mobile). Open it with View Brief, which brings up the Meeting Brief modal. Read it before you join. The Meeting Brief modal has two actions: Add as note (turn the brief into a note — it appears in Agent Activity as View Note; use this if you don’t have Affinity Notetaker, which otherwise creates that note automatically) and Archive (keeps the brief in Agent Activity until you archive it, then moves it to Activity History).

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Step 2 — Have the meeting (a note gets created)

With Affinity Notetaker on, it captures the meeting note and attaches it to the meeting automatically. That attachment is the trigger: when a meeting note is created, the Data Update agent reviews the context and prepares suggested field updates in the background, usually in under a minute. External meetings only; you get one suggestion set per meeting, delivered to the note’s creator. What it looks at: the agent works out which companies, people, and opportunities the note is about (from the note’s associations, or the meeting’s external attendees as a fallback), then considers only the fields you can already edit. It proposes values the note supports — labeling each stated vs inferred, matching dropdowns to your real options — and drops anything ambiguous, unresolvable, or already correct. It covers records linked to the meeting, not other companies merely mentioned (that’s coming after launch).

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Step 3 — Open the suggestions

Go to the Agent Activity feed and expand Review on the Data Update agent’s item for that meeting Each row shows the field, its scope, the Current Value (with its last-updated date), and the Suggested Value. The source is the linked View Meeting Note. Suggestions cover any editable field — global or list-specific, up to 10 per entity.

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Step 4 — Review each change

With Review expanded, check the Current → Suggested value for each field, and open View Note to confirm it against the note:

• Stage move — does it match how the call went?
• Next step — correct owner and action?
• Deal size — confirm against what was actually said.

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Step 5 — Select the fields and apply

Nothing is written until you click Apply Updates.

• Apply all — Select all, then Apply Updates.
• Apply some — check only the fields you agree with.
• Apply none — leave all boxes unchecked.

Leave a checkbox unchecked to skip that field. At launch you cannot edit a suggested value before applying (that comes later). Applying does not trigger Status/Stage automations at launch, and if a field’s value changed since the suggestion was generated, that suggestion is rejected on apply so it won’t overwrite the newer value.

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When it’s not perfect

• Suggested the wrong stage? Leave its checkbox unchecked and apply the rest.
• A figure looks wrong? Open View Note and verify before applying — it’s still AI.
• No suggestions appeared? The meeting may not have had enough context, the note may have attached to a record instead of the meeting (see the Granola tip in Step 2), or the agent may be off — check Ascend → Agents.
• Wrong company on the item? Leave it unchecked; open View Note to see what it matched on.

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Common questions

• Will it change anything on its own? No. Nothing is written until you click Apply Updates.
• Who sees the suggestions? The suggestion set goes to the note’s creator. The agent only sees and changes what your account can already access.
• I use Granola — why don’t I get suggestions? Suggestions trigger when a note is attached to the meeting; Granola attaches to the person/company record instead. See Getting your meeting notes into Affinity.
• How do I get access? GA on Scale / Advanced / Enterprise. An admin enables Ascend at Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI; each user toggles the agents on the Ascend → Agents tab.

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Affinity AI can make mistakes. Review each suggestion before approving it.