This tutorial can be completed by anyone, even with no Salesforce expertise.
To jump right into set up, skip to Setting up Einstein Activity Capture.
What is Einstein Activity Capture?
Einstein Activity Capture (EAC) is a tool that helps keep data between Salesforce and your email and calendar data up to date. EAC captures employee emails, calendar events, and contacts into Salesforce. Once captured, this email and calendar data is automatically added to the activity timelines of related accounts, contacts, leads, opportunities, contracts, and quote records.
A great email and calendar integration increases Salesforce ROI
A great email integration solution is important for every Salesforce organization. These tools ensure email conversations between employees and customers are stored in Salesforce.
A great calendar integration is also important. Deals often happen in meetings. Your team can have a transparent and holistic view of customer relationships with calendar data in Salesforce.
The two tiers of Einstein Activity Capture
EAC has two tiers: Einstein Activity Capture Standard and Einstein Activity Capture. Standard is free for up to 100 Sales Cloud users but has many feature limitations. The main Einstein Activity Capture version will likely need to pay for a tool that costs at least $50 per user per month more. You can review the different tiers for EAC here.
This guide will work for both tiers of Einstein Activity Capture.
How to set up Einstein Activity Capture
Before setting up EAC, it is important to decide if EAC is truly the right solution for your organization. Not all Salesforce admins like using EAC for email and calendar sync. EAC has pros but also many tradeoffs and limitations. That is why many other email and calendar sync options exist in the Salesforce ecosystem.
Once you have decided to commit to EAC, you need to continue setup for either Outlook or Gmail.
- If you are setting up EAC for Outlook, continue on the Setup EAC for Outlook section.
- If you are setting up EAC for Gmail, jump to the Setup EAC for Gmail section.
Set up EAC for Outlook
1. Click the gear icon on the top right of the page, then click Setup to launch the setup page.
2. Enter “Outlook” in the Quick Find box and select Outlook Integration and Sync.
3. Turn on Outlook Integration.
4. Enable Customize Content with App Builder.
5. In the Email Application Pane section, create a pane and use Lightning App Builder to add components to the pane and assign the pane to users. You get loads of flexibility in customizing how Salesforce content appears in Outlook. Learn how to use Lightning App Builder to make your reps even more productive.
Once complete, continue with the Give Users EAC Permissions section.
Setup EAC for Gmail
1. Click the gear icon on the top right of the page, then click Setup to launch the setup page.
2. Enter “Gmail” in the Quick Find box and select Gmail Integration and Sync.
3. Turn on Gmail Integration.
4. Ensure that Use Enable Enhanced Email with Gmail is on to log emails as standard message objects and activate Email to Salesforce. (If you do not see this, it is okay to skip this step.)
5. Give your reps instructions to set up the Salesforce Chrome extension to use with Gmail.
Give Users EAC Permissions
1. To set up Einstein Activity Capture, you must set up user permissions individually.
2. Enter “permission” in the Quick Find box and select Permission Sets.
3. Click New and create a new permission set for all users you want to give EAC. You can name the permission set something like “Einstein Activity Capture”.
4. Once created, click on the new permission set.
5. Click Manage Assignments then click Add Assignment and assign users you want to have Einstein Activity Capture.
How to enable Einstein Activity Capture
1. Enter “Einstein Activity Capture” in the Quick Find box. Select Settings within the Einstein Activity Capture dropdown.
2. Follow the guided setup flow by clicking “Get Started”
3. Choose your email service and click “Next”
4. Decide how you would like to configure your connection. If you are setting all Salesforce users up with EAC, you may want to choose a global connection (in the case of Gmail, Google Workspace Marketplace App). Otherwise, user-level connections allow admins to set up each connection individually.
5. Review sync settings. Decide if you want email, events, and contacts to sync from your email service. For example, your org may not want to sync contacts from email services.
6. Next, you can set some advanced settings. One important EAC limitation is that standard EAC only stores emails for up to 6 months. Organizations should keep in mind if deal cycles are longer than 6 months long which is very common.
7. Next, decide if you would like to exclude domains or specific email addresses from syncing to Salesforce.
8. Finally, decide how activity sharing should work. It is often preferred to choose to share all data with everyone. This gives team members as much customer information as possible.
9. If you run into setup errors, reach out to Salesforce support or consider email integration options for Salesforce.
Follow-up steps
1. If needed, define settings that control how emails and events are captured. To learn more, check out:
- Exclude Certain Emails and Events from Being Added to Salesforce
- Set Default Activity Sharing for Einstein Activity Capture Users
2. If you use Einstein Activity Standard, turn on email insights.
