Einstein Activity Capture and Lightning Sync: Updating an Event Series from Outlook/Exchange Deletes the Name and Related To Fields

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a recurring series in Salesforce with the Name and Related To fields populated (no attendees/invitees).

2. Let it sync to Outlook/Exchange.

3. Update a single occurrence in Outlook/Exchange (e.g., change the subject or the start time).

4. Let the single exceptional occurrence sync inbound to Salesforce.

5. Observe there is no Name (Who) or Related To (What) association on the exceptional occurrence.

Root Cause

This behavior occurs because, when an exceptional occurrence is created through inbound sync, the system generates a new event record for that specific occurrence (exception). During this process, the Who and What associations that exist on the recurring series master are not automatically copied to the newly created exceptional occurrence.

If the exceptional occurrence continues to include attendees, Who association matching is performed based on the attendee data. However, if the recurring series had a Who association that was not listed as an attendee or invitee, Who matching will not occur, since there is no attendee information available for matching.

Best Practice

Make sure at least one Contact record is listed as an attendee at the time the event is created. This allows Who association matching to succeed on exceptional occurrences created through inbound sync.