Immediate Value
After this tutorial, you’ll understand how Relationship Intelligence works, check connection strength on any profile, find warm intro paths through your team, explore inferred connections, add your LinkedIn network, and know how Affinity tracks introductions.Prerequisites
- Tutorial 2: Navigating Profiles
Quick-Start Roadmap
- Understand what Relationship Intelligence is
- Check relationship strength on any profile
- Find a warm intro path
- Explore inferred connections
- Add your LinkedIn network
- Choose warm vs. cold outreach
- See how introductions are tracked
What Relationship Intelligence Is
Affinity analyzes the email and calendar history of every team member who has connected their account, plus the interactions your team logs by hand. It scores the strength of your team’s relationship with every person and company from how recently and how often you interact. Whenever you open a profile, you can see who on your team knows that entity and how well.Task 1: What Is Relationship Intelligence?
Context
RI runs automatically once team members connect their email and calendar. Relationship strengths recalculate every 6 hours; after your first sync, allow up to 24 hours for connections to appear. Manually logged interactions — a call, a LinkedIn conversation — count too.🎬 Watch
Action
On a person or company profile, RI shows up in a few places:- Connections tab — who on your team knows this entity, ranked by relationship strength
- Inferred Connections — likely paths in when no one has interacted directly (Task 4)
- Introductions tab — introductions made by and to this person or organization (Task 7)
- Activity timeline — the interaction history behind the relationship
Expected Outcome
You understand that RI is automatic, where it appears, and roughly how often it updates.Task 2: Check Relationship Strength
Context
Before outreach, check whether anyone on your team has a connection — and how strong it is.🎬 Watch
Action
- Open any person or company profile.
- Open the Connections tab and find the strength bars next to each teammate.
- Read the color. Behind it is a score from 10 (weak) to 100 (strong), based on the recency and frequency of interactions:
- Click a connection to see the interaction history behind it.
Expected Outcome
You can read relationship strength and identify which teammates have the strongest connections.📚 Help Center
Task 3: Find a Warm Intro Path
Context
The Connections tab on any profile lists every team member who has interacted with the entity, ranked by strength. On Scale, Advanced, and Enterprise, AI Chat can do the legwork for you.Action
- Search for a target person or company (Cmd+K / Alt+K).
- Open the profile and go to the Connections tab.
- Find the teammate with the strongest connection, and click it to see the interaction history.
- Reach out to that teammate for an introduction.
warm_intro skill in Affinity MCP.
Expected Outcome
You’ve identified a teammate who can introduce you to a target contact.📚 Help Center
Task 4: Explore Inferred Connections
Context
On a new deal, nobody at your firm may have spoken to anyone at the target. Inferred connections surface likely paths from shared history anyway — a contact who worked at the same company as a teammate over the same period, or a contact who was at an investment firm when it funded the target. They’re leads worth checking, not confirmed relationships. Available on Scale, Advanced, and Enterprise.Action
- Open a company profile → Connections tab.
- Below your direct connections, find Inferred Connections to
{Company}. Each card is one person your firm might be able to reach, with the bridge — the person who can likely make the introduction — named on the card. - Open a person’s profile → Connections tab to see Inferred Connections to
{Person}: the people that person may be able to reach.
Expected Outcome
You can find a likely route into a company where your firm has no direct relationship, and you know which way the path runs.📚 Help Center
Task 5: Add Your LinkedIn Network
Context
Many of your relationships live on LinkedIn, not in your inbox. Importing your LinkedIn connections lets your team see who is connected to whom.Action
- In LinkedIn, request your data export and choose Download larger data archive — that’s the one with your connections. LinkedIn can take 24–48 hours to send it.
- In Affinity, go to Settings → LinkedIn Data and click Import Connections, then upload the file.
- Once imported, look for the LinkedIn badge on profiles, the LinkedIn Network tab in the Connections card, and the LinkedIn Connected To filter on your lists.
People who come in only from LinkedIn don’t get a relationship strength score — scores come from real interactions. The more teammates who import, the more useful the LinkedIn Network tab becomes.
Expected Outcome
Your LinkedIn connections are visible to your team, and you can filter a list to targets someone is connected to.📚 Help Center
Task 6: Warm vs. Cold Outreach
Context
Whether to ask for an introduction or reach out cold depends on what RI shows you.Action
Before outreach, check the Connections tab:Expected Outcome
You have a repeatable approach for deciding between warm and cold outreach.Task 7: See How Introductions Are Tracked
Context
You don’t log introductions by hand — Affinity detects them from email. It also records each relationship’s Source of Introduction: the person behind your team’s first interaction with a contact.Action
- When you make an introduction, format the email so Affinity catches it: a subject like “Intro: Alice <> Bob”, sent as the first email in a new thread, with both people in To or CC and at least one external recipient.
- Open a person or organization profile and click the Introductions tab to see introductions made by and to them.
- Check the Source of Introduction in the profile’s Connections tab, or in the Source of Introduction column on people and organization lists. If it’s wrong, double-click the cell to correct it.
Expected Outcome
You know how introductions are captured, where to see them, and how to fix a Source of Introduction.📚 Help Center
Common Questions
How far back does RI analyze?
How far back does RI analyze?
Affinity analyzes email and calendar history from the point your team’s email accounts were connected. The exact lookback depends on the data available in the connected accounts.
Does RI work across the whole team?
Does RI work across the whole team?
Yes. RI aggregates connections across every team member who has synced their email, so you can discover that a colleague has a connection you didn’t know about.
Can I see why a connection is rated "strong"?
Can I see why a connection is rated "strong"?
Yes. Click on a connection to see the interaction history — emails, meetings, and recency of communication that contribute to the strength score.
Is my email content visible to teammates?
Is my email content visible to teammates?
No. Relationship strength is calculated from interaction data — who, when, and how often — and your teammates see the strength, not your messages. Introduction detection does read email subjects and bodies to recognize an introduction. See your organization’s privacy settings for details.
See It In Action
Where to Go Next
- Next tutorial: Tutorial 7: Master List Views
- Learning Paths: Deal Sourcing (Step 3)
- Help Center: Leveraging your Connections and Relationship Strengths