Immediate Value
After this tutorial, you’ll be signed in with a complete profile, you’ll know where Affinity will (and won’t) notify you, and — if you’re an admin — your workspace will be ready for the rest of your team.Prerequisites
- You’ve received an invite email from Affinity, or your workspace admin has provisioned your account.
- (Admin tasks) You’re an Admin — or an Enterprise Admin on the Enterprise plan.
Quick-Start Roadmap
- Sign in (or accept your invite)
- (Enterprise admin) Configure Custom SSO
- Configure your profile and email signature
- Set your notification preferences
- (Affinity for Salesforce admins) Set up your Salesforce Integration User
Why Account Setup Matters
A clean account setup prevents small problems from compounding. Your profile is what teammates see when you author a note or get @-mentioned. Your notification preferences determine whether Affinity feels useful or noisy. And for admins, SSO (on Enterprise) and the Salesforce Integration User (if you use Affinity for Salesforce) are foundational — they affect every person who joins your workspace afterward.See Account-level permissions for the role hierarchy you’ll see referenced in admin steps.
Task 1: Sign In or Accept Your Invite
Context
If your admin invited you, you got an email with a link. If you’re setting up a new workspace from scratch, you’ll go through Affinity’s signup flow.Action
- Open your invite email and click “Accept invitation” (or open the link directly).
- Set your password, or sign in with “Continue with Google” / “Continue with Microsoft” if your workspace allows it.
- You’ll land on your workspace home.
Expected Outcome
You’re signed in and looking at your workspace’s left sidebar.📚 Help Center
Task 2: Configure Custom SSO (Enterprise Admins Only)
Enterprise plan only. Custom SSO is available on the Enterprise tier. If you’re not setting it up, skip ahead to Task 3.
Context
Custom SSO routes your team’s logins through your company’s identity provider (Okta, Google Workspace, Azure AD, etc.). Set this up before inviting your team — switching SSO on retroactively forces everyone to re-authenticate.Action
- Your IT team sends Affinity the SAML 2.0 details listed in the SSO guide: the Audience URI / SP Entity ID, Name ID format set to Email Address, your identity provider, and your metadata URL. One of the attributes must be email.
- In your identity provider, register Affinity’s redirect (single sign-on) URL for your workspace, as given in the SSO guide.
- Set up data syncing to match your email platform — Google domain-wide delegation, Microsoft Graph client credentials for Microsoft 365, or an impersonation service account for on-premises Exchange.
Expected Outcome
You can sign in via your IdP, and any new user you invite will be routed through SSO automatically.📚 Help Center
- How to set up Custom Single Sign-On (SSO) with Affinity
- Custom Google SSO / SAML for Affinity access
Task 3: Configure Your Profile Photo and Email Signature
Context
Your name and signature appear on every note you author and every email you send through Affinity. Set them once and forget them.🎬 Watch
Action
- Click your user avatar in the top-left corner of the dashboard.
- Click the icon for your profile from the sub-menu to upload your photo.
- Go to Settings → Email Signature and paste in your signature. Format it the way you’d format an email signature in Gmail or Outlook.
Expected Outcome
Your profile reflects you and any email sent from Affinity will include your signature.📚 Help Center
Task 4: Set Your Notification Preferences
Context
Affinity notifies you in the web app and by email — for @mentions and replies to your notes, reminders, lists shared with you, being added to an Owners field, and unanswered emails. Set this early so the app stays useful instead of noisy.Action
- In Settings, go to “Notifications”.
- For each activity, choose how often you get email: Immediately, Daily (around 7 AM your time), or Never — plus Weekly for Notes and Reminders. Web app notifications always arrive immediately, whatever you pick for email.
- If you’re heads-down most of the day, set email to Daily for most activities and Immediately only for the ones you act on straight away. You can revisit anytime.
Expected Outcome
You’ll only hear from Affinity when it matters.📚 Help Center
Task 5: Set Up Your Salesforce Integration User (Affinity for Salesforce Only)
Only if you’re connecting Affinity for Salesforce. Skip this task otherwise.
Context
The Integration User is a Salesforce user that Affinity for Salesforce authenticates as. Setting up a dedicated user, rather than using a person’s own login, keeps the integration running if that person leaves.Action
- In Salesforce, choose how to set it up:
- Quick setup (or a Sandbox): use a user with the System Administrator profile.
- Extended, more secure setup: create a permission set called Affinity Integration with the Salesforce API Integration license type, grant the objects and system permissions listed in the guide, and assign it to a user on the Minimum Access - API Only Integrations profile.
- Use this user in the authentication step when you set up the Affinity integration.
- Save its credentials in your team password manager.