You are here:
Events Automatically Related to Contacts or Leads
Lightning Sync can automatically relate Microsoft or Google events to relevant contacts or leads in Salesforce. Learn how that feature works, and how it interacts with other Salesforce options.
Required Editions
| Available to sync records from: Salesforce Classic, Lightning Experience, and the Salesforce mobile app |
| Available to set up from: Salesforce Classic and Lightning Experience |
| Available in: Professional, Enterprise, Performance, Unlimited, and Developer Editions with Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, and Lightning Platform |
To enable this feature, your Salesforce admin selects the Automatically relate events to Salesforce records option from your sync configuration in Setup.
Events are automatically related only under these conditions.
- When sales reps create their events in Microsoft or Google calendars.
- When the attendee’s email address matches an email address found on a contact or lead in Salesforce.
- The first time the event syncs from your Microsoft or Google calendars to Salesforce. After the first time the event syncs to Salesforce, subsequent matching contacts or leads invited to the event aren’t automatically related. Likewise, when a user removes an attendee from an event, the attendee’s name is removed from the Attendees field, but the matching related records aren’t automatically removed from the event. But you can remove or replace the related record manually.
- If Salesforce sharing rules permit the event organizer to see the matching contacts or leads in Salesforce. (Or in record-level access terms, only View access to the matching records is needed.)
For events with an organizer and more than one attendee, you can’t always predict which specific attendee or attendees “wins” as the related record or records. Which records are related depend on these two factors.
- Whether your admin has turned on shared activities (the Allow Users to Relate Multiple Contacts to Tasks and Events option on the Activity Settings page in Setup)
- The kinds of records (users, contacts, or leads) you have in Salesforce that include email addresses that match the attendees’ email addresses.
Matching Attendees with Records when Shared Activities Is Off
When shared activities is off, Lightning Sync can relate only one Salesforce contact or lead to your event.
- For events with an organizer and only one attendee, Lightning Sync searches for a contact or lead that matches that single attendee and relates it to the event.
- For events with more attendees, Lightning Sync evaluates attendees for matches in a random order. Because only one related record is supported, the record that “wins” is dependent on the random order attendees are evaluated and the matching contact or lead you have in Salesforce.
Sometimes Lightning Sync finds multiple Salesforce records that match a single attendee’s email address. In that case, here’s how records are related when shared activities is off.
| If the attendee’s email address matches these Salesforce records | ...Salesforce adds this record to the Attendee field | … and Lightning Sync automatically relates this record to the event. |
|---|---|---|
| A contact and a lead | The contact | The contact |
A Salesforce user and either or both:
|
The Salesforce user | The contact. If no matching contact is found, the lead. |
Matching Attendees with Records when Shared Activities Is On
When shared activities is on, Lightning Sync can relate up to 50 matching contacts or one matching lead to your event.
- For events with an organizer and only one attendee, Lightning Sync searches for a contact or lead that matches that single attendee and relates it to the event.
- For events with more attendees, Lightning Sync first searches all attendees for matching Salesforce contacts and relates the first 50 that are located. If no matching contacts are found, Lightning Sync searches all attendees for a matching Salesforce lead and relates the first one that’s located.
Sometimes Lightning Sync finds multiple Salesforce records that match a single attendee’s email address. In that case, here’s how records are related when shared activities is on.
| If the attendee’s email address matches these Salesforce records | ...Salesforce adds this record to the Attendee field | … and Lightning Sync automatically relates this record to the event. |
|---|---|---|
| A contact and a lead | The contact | The contact |
A Salesforce user and either or both:
|
The Salesforce user | If a contact or lead has the same email address as a Salesforce user, and that user has already been added to the Attendees field, Lightning Sync doesn’t relate the matching contact or lead to the event. Instead, Lightning Sync evaluates the rest of the event attendees, looking for up to 50 matching contacts, and relate them. If no contacts are found, Lightning Sync evaluates the rest of the event attendees, looking for one matching lead, and relates it. |
What to Expect When No Matching Contact or Lead Is Found
If no contacts or leads match your event attendee’s email address, synced events are added to the Unresolved Items list in your Personal Settings in Salesforce. From there, you can choose which Salesforce contacts or leads to relate. Or you can remove the event from the list and opt not to relate a record.
