Autosave & Autorelate email and appointments

Activity tracking is an important part of any salesperson's responsibilities and as such, we want to make it as easy as possible to track and record these to the relevant areas in Membrain, whether they are created in Membrain or not. 

This article will describe how auto-saving and auto-relating those activities to their relevant areas in Membrain works, what the benefits are, and how to choose the settings that suit your organization best. 

The Benefits

There are many benefits to auto-saving activities in Membrain, just some of which are outlined below. And, as you are in control of how and when activities are saved to the relevant Sales Projects and Prospects, you can be confident that all your team's activities are recorded correctly and effortlessly in Membrain.

  • Increased productivity due to time-saving. Now there is no need to sift and sort through appointments that were scheduled externally and manually relate them to the relevant Sales Projects or Prospects. With settings applied Globally, you can be confident that this will happen automatically, with the settings that suit your organization.

  • Increased collaboration as team members can see all related email communications and appointments automatically saved to Membrain and can contribute to the conversation around the activity.

  • Better activity goal tracking. With less manual tweaking of externally created activities, activity reporting and goal attainment are more reliable than ever before.  

How It Works 

Simply put, Membrain looks at emails and appointments and saves them to the relevant Prospects, Sales Projects, and/or Account Growth Projects based on the contacts' email address (recipient/sender or attendee) and if they are an external* stakeholder of that project.
*recipients/senders or attendees who are Internal Stakeholders are not referenced during auto-relating.

Of course, all emails, and appointments created within Membrain are automatically related to the relevant Prospects, Sales Projects, and/or Account Growth Projects straight away, but what about those emails that you send from your Outlook or Gmail client, which is connected to Membrain? Or those appointment invites that you send or receive into your synced 3rd party calendar? 

As Membrain doesn't have the same insights into these external activities, it makes the best attempt to save emails and appointments to the relevant Prospects, Sales Projects, and/or Account Growth Projects using the Auto Relate Settings configured for your Membrain. By default only activities that relate to a single Prospect, Sales Project, or Account Growth Project for a given contact are automatically related.

With these settings outlined below, you can manage how activities are automatically saved to Membrain, based on the scenario that suits your organization best.

What's Right for Your Organization

Membrain is a very customizable platform, allowing you to configure and use areas of the product in a way that suits your specific organization. For example, it is common to have more than one Open Prospect, Sales Project, or Account Growth Project for a specific Company, with potentially the same contacts set as an external stakeholder for each of these projects. Also, there may be cases when salespeople other than the owner of a Prospect, Sales Project, or Account Growth Project are involved in communication with a related contact.

This mix of scenarios leads us to a place where it's important to get specific on how emails and appointments should be saved to Membrain, and in which case you want these activities to be related to the relevant Prospect, Sales Project, or Account Growth Project, or not.

Activity Auto Relate Settings

These settings are set at a Global Level by an Administrator and affect all users that have integrated their email and calendar integrations and turned on the Email Auto Save feature from My Settings, for Emails sent/received and Appointments created in Membrain or your local client.

  1. Go to System Setup
  2. Under the Productivity and Collaboration tab, click on Activity Auto Relate Settings
  3. From this dialog, you can choose how you want emails and appointments to be saved to Prospects, Sales Projects, and Account Growth Projects across your organization.
  4. Next, select the option that describes the scenario to which you would like activities to be connected.


    Explanation of options:

    All - Activities will be related to each and every Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project where the contact (email recipient/sender or meeting attendee) is an external stakeholder.
    Project with most recent activity - Activities will be related to the 1 Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project which has the most recent activity, where the contact (email recipient/sender or meeting attendee) is an external stakeholder.
    Project which has most recently been changed - Activities will be related to the 1 Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project which has most recently been changed, where the contact (email recipient/sender or meeting attendee) is an external stakeholder.
    Project which has most recently been created - Activities will be related to the 1 Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project which has most recently been created, where the contact (email recipient/sender or meeting attendee) is an external stakeholder.
    Only if only one project was found - Activities will only be related if there is only 1 Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project where the contact (email recipient/sender or meeting attendee) is an external stakeholder.
  5. Finally, select the option that describes the relationship the Membrain User (person who creates the activity) must have to the Prospect, Sales Project, or Account Growth Project before it will be related.


    Explanation of options:

    No Restriction - Activities will be related to the Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project (as chosen above) where the contact is an external stakeholder, regardless of whether the Membrain user is the owner of the Prospect/Sales Project/Account growth Project or not.
    User is Project Owner - Activities will be related to the Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project (as chosen above) where the contact is an external stakeholder, but only if the Membrain user is the owner of the Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project.
    User is Internal Stakeholder in Project - Activities will be related to the Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project (as chosen above) where the contact is an external stakeholder, but only if the Membrain user is an internal stakeholder in the Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project.
    User is Owner or Internal Stakeholder in Project - Activities will be related to the Prospect/Sales Project/Account Growth Project (as chosen above) where the contact is an external stakeholder, but only if the Membrain user is either the owner of the Project or an internal stakeholder in the Project. This setting allows for a broader participation in project-related activities, enabling both project owners and internal stakeholders to engage with external contacts in relation to the project.

Email Auto Save Settings

These settings are configured at a Global Level and impact all users who have integrated their email account and enabled the Email Auto Save feature from My Settings for emails sent/received through their local client and/or Membrain.

  1. Navigate to System Setup
    Access this feature through the Settings section in System Setup to customize your organization's email saving preferences.

  2. Email Auto Save Settings
    Within this menu, users can define the specific processes for which emails from the Sales Inbox and Sent Folder should be considered for saving. This ensures that emails are only saved when they are relevant to an open project within the chosen process/es. 

    An email can be saved if the sender’s or the recipient's email address matches en external stakeholder present in an open project.

  3. What to Save?
    Select specific processes to apply these settings, facilitating a more streamlined approach to managing email communications related to projects.

  4. "For all known contacts" setting
    When enabled, Membrain will automatically save any email in the Sales Inbox and/or the Sent folder for a user based on the rest of the Auto-Save and Auto Relate settings.
    This setting can only be enabled by a Developer. Users that have access to the Email Auto Save Settings will see the option as disabled, with a hover explanation indicating the steps needed to change the state of the toggle.
  5. "Only Save if Auto-Relate Finds a Specific Match" Setting
    This setting applies specific rules from the Activity Auto Relate Settings to determine if an incoming email has a direct link to a project. If no specific match is found based on these rules, the email will not be saved. However, note that this setting is being phased out as part of the enhancements to the email saving process.
  6. Exclusion List
    This feature allows users to specify certain email addresses or domains to be excluded from the auto-saving process. If an email address is listed here, it will not be saved, even if it otherwise meets the criteria for saving under the selected processes. This enables finer control over which emails are associated with your projects, ensuring that only the most relevant communications are saved.