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A few of our customers have asked us the same question: should we be worried? The short answer is no, but it's worth a quick check of your settings before the change happens.
What is Einstein Activity Capture?
Einstein Activity Capture copies your work emails and calendar meetings from Outlook or Gmail into Salesforce automatically. When you open a supporter's record, you can see the emails you've sent them and the meetings you've had, without anyone typing them in.
What's changing?
Until now, those emails have been kept in a separate storage area. You could see them on a supporter's record, but Salesforce couldn't count them, report on them or use them in automations.
Think of it like keeping letters in a shoebox under the desk instead of in the filing cabinet. You can find a letter if you look in the right place, but you can't easily count how many you sent last month.
The update moves your emails and meetings into the filing cabinet: the main part of Salesforce.
Why that's good news
Once your emails are stored as normal Salesforce records, you can:
- Run reports on your contact with supporters, such as "Which donors haven't heard from us in six months?" or "How many funders did we contact this quarter?"
- Trust the "last contacted" date on a supporter's record.
- Automate follow-ups, such as a reminder to call a major donor who hasn't replied.
- Keep a full history of your relationship with each supporter, even when staff move on.
Will it keep the full content of my emails?
This is the question we hear most. By default, the update keeps the whole email, including the subject and the message. There's also a setting to keep only the basic details, such as who it was to and when it was sent, without the content.
One thing to know: Any emails previously marked "private" will move across with the basic details only. Their content won't be kept, and it can't be recovered later.
Three things to check before the change
- Are you using automatic email capture at all? If your team is not already using Einstein Activity Capture, this update won’t affect you. If you are using the old Lightning Sync, you need to migrate before April 2027.
- How much should Salesforce keep? Full emails give you a richer donor history. But if your team emails about sensitive matters, such as health, customer or staff information, keeping only the basic details may be the safer choice. It’s also a good time to make sure the right people can see the right emails
- Will you run out of storage? Emails saved in Salesforce will now count toward your data storage, the same type of storage your contacts and accounts records use. File storage, which charities often fill faster than expected, is not impacted because email attachments are not logged with Einstein Activity Capture.
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How we can help
If you're not sure how your organisation is set up, we're happy to take a look and make sure your settings match how you work, before Salesforce makes the change.
