FAQ - Top customer-related questions about a product or feature
Pricing & packaging
What tiers include Ascend, and is it included in current subscriptions or additional spend- Scale, Advanced, and Enterprise. Included at no additional cost.
- MCP is included in Scale+ at no additional cost. Token costs in Claude, ChatGPT, or other external tools are between the customer and the AI provider. Affinity does not charge separately for MCP access.
Enablement & availability
Where do we enable Ascend in settings?- Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI.
- Ascend has been generally available since July 22, and it turned on by default on August 5 for every firm that didn’t opt out. Admins can turn it on or off at any time at Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI. Each member then turns Monitoring on for Meeting Prep and Data Update on Ascend → Agents. It’s off for users by default.
- Both. Where Meeting Prep is monitoring a user’s meetings, briefs generate overnight and are ready by 7 AM local time — no scheduling required. Users can also generate a brief on demand for any external meeting from the Meetings panel or the Start Your Day module, whether or not Monitoring is on for them. Also available as an MCP skill for on-demand briefs outside Affinity.
Data sources & scope
How are the data quality agents verifying data, and what sources are they using?- The Data Update agent reads a meeting note attached to an external meeting and compares what was said against the editable fields on the linked records. It then suggests updates for you to review, edit, or decline. Nothing is applied until you click Apply Updates. Today it works from meeting notes only.
- Meeting Prep uses relationship history, deal activity, past interactions, and news. AI Chat can query CRM records, notes, emails, meetings, lists, and enriched company data you have access to, focused on roughly the last 90 days of activity. Both use automatically captured data.
- On-platform agents are scoped to Affinity data. MCP is the path for combining Affinity data with other tools — firms can chain Affinity’s MCP skills with other data sources in Claude or ChatGPT.
- Through Affinity Notetaker (built-in), or via third-party notetakers that create meeting notes through the Affinity API v2. Manual paste also works.
- No. Agents don’t read email content. They use on-platform information that you have permission to access.
Notetaker & Integrations
Can I feed meeting notes via Granola directly?- Granola’s integration syncs notes to the person or company record, not the meeting, so Granola notes don’t trigger Data Update. The same applies to any notetaker: the note must be attached to the meeting. To get suggestions, use Affinity Notetaker or add a note to the meeting yourself.
- Only if the notetaker creates meeting notes via API v2. Legacy integrations using API v1 may not create meeting notes in the format agents need. Confirm which API version the integration uses.
Agent functionality
What surfaces will agents support (e.g., Slack)?- Three surfaces: on-platform (Affinity web app), AI Chat (inside Affinity), and MCP (Claude, ChatGPT, or other AI tools your firm uses). Slack isn’t an agent surface.
- Data Update only triggers on a meeting note attached to an external meeting (one with attendees outside your firm), and it suggests updates for the records linked to that meeting. An internal weekly dealflow call won’t trigger suggestions, even if Notetaker takes notes on it.
- That’s Document Synthesis, which is coming soon. It appears as a “Coming soon” card on Ascend → Agents and isn’t functional yet. See Document Synthesis.
- Yes. Supported field types: Text, Number, Date, Location, Dropdown, Ranked Dropdown, Person, and Organization. Covers both global and list-specific fields. Excluded: identity fields (name, domain), and all enriched fields — anything Affinity auto-populates, including provider data from Crunchbase, PitchBook and Dealroom. Applying a value over an enriched cell stops Affinity auto-syncing it, so the agent leaves those to you. Fields fed by your Slack, Microsoft Teams and Salesforce integrations, and Source of Introduction, are still eligible. Before applying, you can click Edit to change most suggested values. Activity History keeps both the suggested and the applied value.
- Yes. Agents start with built-in domain knowledge and your Affinity data, and you can add your firm’s context: admins can write org-wide instructions for the Meeting Prep agent, and field descriptions on your custom fields in New Lists tell the Data Update agent what each field means and the format it expects. See Give Ascend agents your firm’s context. Your CSM can help you write your first ones.
Warm Intros
For Warm Intros, does this extend to 3rd-degree connections?- Warm Intros maps paths within your firm’s own network, including inferred connections and LinkedIn connections your team has uploaded. It does not access other Affinity customers’ networks. Firm data stays siloed. It also flags past relationships (someone who no longer works at a company) so they’re excluded from the ranked path.
- LinkedIn connections can be imported via CSV into Affinity, which feeds the relationship graph Warm Intros uses.
- Warm Intros finds ranked intro paths to any target based on your firm’s interaction history. The same workflow applies regardless of the context. No specific fundraising walkthrough exists yet.
- No. No agent or skill monitors external deal announcements.
MCP & Skills
Are MCP skills pre-built? How do we access them?- Pre-built. They’re deployed as part of the Affinity MCP server. Restart Claude or ChatGPT to pick up new skills. On Ascend → Agents, the Affinity MCP card has Open in Claude and Open in ChatGPT, which take you straight to your client.
- Five MCP skills are available: Meeting Prep, Warm Intro, Market Map, Data Migration, and Event Setup. The “10+” referenced new MCP tools (API endpoints), not skills. More than 10 new tools were added (create records, retrieve saved views, audit field history, and, since September 24, delete records, update or delete notes, and merge people and companies). Skills are pre-built workflows that run on top of those tools.
- On-platform agents run continuously without prompting, have governance (audit trails, per-agent controls, admin settings, review flows), and use proprietary Affinity algorithms for connection scoring and intro ranking. MCP is for when you’re already in Claude/ChatGPT, building something complex, chaining tools, or need third-party integrations alongside Affinity data.
- OAuth is supported for Claude, ChatGPT, Notion, and Copilot Studio and Power Automate (through the certified Affinity MCP connector). GitHub Copilot (CLI, VS Code), Gemini, and other clients connect with an API key (create one with + New App at Settings → Manage Apps; you can have a separate key for each client). For programmatic backend access, use API key authentication.
- This is not included in our most recent launch.
- Field-level MCP permissions aren’t available. Today’s controls: admins choose which OAuth clients (Claude, ChatGPT, Notion) can connect at Settings → Affinity MCP (on Enterprise, the Manage MCP Agents permission controls which roles can change that setting). Users can connect read-only by unchecking the write scope at OAuth consent, or block individual tools in their AI client, including switching off the delete tools. Every delete and merge shows you what it will affect and waits for your explicit confirmation, and every MCP action is limited to what the user can already access.
Compliance & governance
How do we set up the compliance/governance layer?- Org-level controls in Settings → Automations & AI → Affinity AI. Affinity AI is on for the org by default (since Aug 5, unless the firm opted out), and admins turn Ascend on or off for the whole organization. Each member turns Monitoring on for Meeting Prep and Data Update themselves — it isn’t on for users by default. Agents are constrained to records the user already has access to.
API
Will API call limits increase?- On-platform Ascend features (agents, AI Chat) do not count against API rate limits. MCP does use API calls but is included for Scale+.
Other product
How does LinkedIn connections import work? Separate import per team member?- Upload LinkedIn connections via CSV into Affinity. Intelligent matching to existing records; new records created for unmatched connections.
- Since September 24 you can merge people and companies through the Affinity MCP (
merge_persons,merge_companies). Every merge shows you what it will affect and waits for your explicit confirmation. Merging people requires an org admin with the Manage Duplicates permission. An admin can unmerge local records at Settings → Duplicate Management → Merged; a merge involving a global company can’t be undone. The Data Migration skill is different: it prepares a clean CSV for import and doesn’t import it for you.
- Help center articles, workflow walkthroughs, and deeper dives on each agent are here.