Immediate Value
By the end of this tutorial you will have generated a meeting brief, reviewed a suggested field update, and asked AI Chat to make a change you approved — the three things Affinity AI does for you every day.Prerequisites
- Tutorial 0.2 complete. Affinity AI reads your synced email and calendar. Without sync there is nothing for it to work from.
- Scale, Advanced, or Enterprise. All four agents and AI Chat are on these plans.
- Affinity AI is on for your organization. Ascend turned on by default on August 5 for every firm that didn’t opt out. If you can’t see Ascend or AI Chat in the left navigation, ask your admin to check Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI.
Quick-Start Roadmap
Why Affinity AI Matters
Most CRM work is not deciding — it’s assembling. Reading back through a thread before a call, remembering to log what changed, working out who knows someone at a target company. Affinity AI does that assembly. Agents work in the background and put suggestions in front of you. AI Chat answers questions on demand and can make changes when you approve them. The word to hold onto is suggest. Nothing is written to your CRM without you approving it, and there is no “always allow”.Task 1: Find Ascend and Learn What Each Agent Does
Context
Ascend is where the agents live — a left-navigation item with a New badge. AI Chat is a separate item in the same navigation, and opens as a docked side panel. They work together but they are not the same thing.Action
- Click Ascend in the left navigation.
- You’ll land on Agent Activity — the feed of what the agents have produced for you.
- Click the Agents tab to see the four agent cards.
Only Meeting Prep and Data Update are background agents with a Monitoring toggle. Warm Intro is something you ask for, and Document Synthesis hasn’t shipped yet.
Expected Outcome
You can find Ascend, you know the difference between Agent Activity and Agents, and you know which two agents actually run in the background.📚 Help Center
Task 2: Generate a Meeting Brief
Context
A brief pulls together the thread history, notes, and relationship context for an external meeting, so you walk in already caught up. You don’t need to switch anything on first. You can generate a brief for any external meeting, whenever you want — this is the quickest way to see what Affinity AI does.Action
- Open Meetings in the left navigation, or the Start Your Day module on your home page.
- Find an upcoming external meeting — one with attendees outside your firm.
- Click Generate Brief. The button shows a loading state while the agent works.
- When the brief is ready, a “Your meeting brief is ready” notification appears in the top right. Click View meeting brief to open it.
The notification only shows while you have the page open. If you navigate away, the brief still generates — go back to the meeting and click View Brief, which replaces Generate Brief once a brief exists.
The button appears on external meetings only. An internal-only meeting won’t offer one, which is expected rather than a fault.
Expected Outcome
You have read a brief for a real upcoming meeting and know you can reopen it any time with View Brief.📚 Help Center
Task 3: Turn On Monitoring So the Agents Work for You Overnight
Context
Generating a brief yourself works any time. Monitoring is what makes the background agents do it for you: with it on, Meeting Prep has briefs for your external meetings ready by about 7:00 AM your local time, and Data Update proposes field updates after your meetings. Your admin turning on Affinity AI for the organization does not switch Monitoring on for you — each member turns it on for themselves.Action
- Go to Ascend → Agents.
- On the Meeting Prep card, switch Monitoring on.
- Do the same on Data Update if you want suggested field updates. It suggests updates to the editable fields on the records linked to the meeting; enriched fields are never suggested.
You can turn Monitoring off again at any time, per agent. Turning it off stops the overnight run and new suggestions; it doesn’t remove what the agent has already produced, and you can still generate briefs on demand.
Expected Outcome
Monitoring is on for the background agents you want, so briefs and suggestions arrive without you asking.📚 Help Center
Task 4: Review and Approve a Suggested Field Update
Context
The Data Update agent reads your meeting notes and proposes field changes — a stage moving on, a detail you mentioned on a call. It proposes; you decide. It only works from a note that is attached to the meeting, not just to a company or person. Affinity Notetaker attaches its notes to the meeting automatically. Notes from other notetakers, such as Granola, usually attach to the person or company instead and won’t produce suggestions. This is the habit worth building, because it is what keeps records current without anyone doing admin.Action
- Go to Ascend → Agent Activity.
- Find a set of Suggested Field Updates and expand Review.
- For each field, compare the Current Value with the Suggested Value, and check it against the meeting note it came from.
- Tick the fields you want, or use Select all. To correct a value first, click Edit next to it.
- Click Apply Updates. Anything you leave unchecked is declined, and nothing is written for it.
Expected Outcome
You have applied or declined at least one suggestion and understand that nothing reaches your CRM until you click Apply Updates.📚 Help Center
Task 5: Ask AI Chat a Question — Then Have It Make a Change
Context
AI Chat is a docked side panel that has read every company, person, note, and interaction you have access to. It answers questions, and it can make four kinds of change once you approve them.Action
First, ask it something:- Open AI Chat from the left navigation.
- Try a real question — “What’s the latest with Acme Corp?”, or “Who at our firm has the strongest relationship with Sequoia?”
- Ask a follow-up in the same thread to refine the answer.
- Ask it to make a change — for example, “Create a reminder to follow up with Acme in two weeks.”
- It will propose the change and wait. Read the proposal, then approve it.
- Update a field — a field value, or an opportunity’s pipeline stage
- Add to a list — add a record to one of your lists
- Create a note — draft and log a note on a record
- Create a reminder — so a follow-up doesn’t slip
What AI Chat will not do. It will not send email or outreach, merge or delete records, or make bulk changes. It can’t upload a file, create a saved view, or create a list.
You can’t read your meeting briefs or review Suggested Field Updates inside Chat. Open briefs from Meetings or Start Your Day, and review suggestions in Ascend.
Expected Outcome
You have asked a question, had AI Chat propose a change, and approved it — and you know where its limits are.📚 Help Center
- What AI Chat can do
- Take actions with AI Chat
- Affinity AI Prompt Library — ready-made prompts to copy
Task 6: Ask for a Warm Introduction
Context
The Warm Intro agent finds the strongest path into a company through your firm’s collective network. Unlike Meeting Prep and Data Update, you ask for it rather than toggling it on.Action
- In AI Chat, ask for a path in — “Who can introduce me to someone at Acme Corp?”
- Read the paths it returns, strongest first, with who can make the introduction.
- If you want, ask it to draft the intro request. It drafts; it never sends — you review it and send it yourself.
Expected Outcome
You know how to find a warm path into a target company without asking around the firm manually.📚 Help Center
Good to Know
- Everything is confirm-before-execute. Agents and AI Chat both propose; you approve. There is no “always allow” setting.
- Activity history reaches back about 90 days, so very long-range “first ever interaction” questions may be truncated.
- Answers are scoped to what you can already see. Affinity AI respects your permissions — it can’t surface a record you don’t have access to.
- You can always generate a brief yourself. Monitoring only controls what the agents do overnight on their own.
Troubleshooting
I can’t see Ascend or AI Chat in the navigation. Your plan may not include them, or an admin hasn’t enabled Affinity AI at Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI. Ascend is empty. Check, in order:- Monitoring is on for you for Meeting Prep and Data Update. It’s a per-member setting — see Task 3.
- You have external meetings. Internal-only meetings don’t get a brief.
- Your calendar is synced, and the meeting synced in time.
- For suggested field updates, your meeting note is attached to the meeting — see Task 4.