Considerations for Migrating to Einstein Activity Capture

Migration Timeline

When you need to migrate depends on which email and calendar application Lightning Sync connects to. Lightning Sync in Government Cloud is exempt from this retirement.

Lightning Sync with Microsoft Office 365 using Exchange Web Services (EWS)

In October 2026, Microsoft retires EWS for Microsoft 365 and replaces it with Microsoft Graph API. Lightning Sync configurations that use EWS stop capturing and syncing data after this retirement. Complete your migration to Einstein Activity Capture and upgrade to Microsoft Graph by August 2026 to avoid service disruption.

Migration requires two steps: first, use the Lightning Sync migration tool to move to Einstein Activity Capture. Then, from the Einstein Activity Capture Settings, Upgrade Microsoft Office 365 Authentication Method to Microsoft Graph in Einstein Activity Capture.

All other Lightning Sync integrations (Google, on-premises Microsoft Exchange)

Migrate to Einstein Activity Capture before Lightning Sync is retired in April 2027.

User Permissions Are Required Before Migration Is Complete

When users get access to Einstein Activity Capture depends on the order in which these steps are completed:

• The migration tool moves your Lightning Sync settings and configurations to Einstein Activity Capture.
• An Einstein Activity Capture user permission is assigned to each user.

This documentation recommends that you assign user permissions to users last, after the migration tool has moved your settings. At that point, you can see from your configurations who has the permission and who doesn’t. See Assign Einstein Activity Capture User Permissions.

You can complete your migration at your own pace. That is, you can move your settings and then pause while you prepare your user permissions or obtain licenses. Your users simply continue to sync using Lightning Sync until you complete both steps. While you can’t return to your configurations from your Lightning Sync settings in Setup, you can update configurations from Einstein Activity Capture’s pages.

There are a few cases in which you might want to consider a different order. See the next section.

Considerations for Users With Performance and Unlimited Editions or a Sales Cloud Einstein, Inbox, Sales Engagement, or Revenue Intelligence License

An Einstein Activity Capture user permission is included with Performance and Unlimited editions and with Inbox, Sales Engagement, Revenue Intelligence, and Sales Cloud Einstein licenses. Unless you or another admin removed the permission from their user assignments, it’s likely that the permission is already assigned to users who have access to these features. Users who already have the permission begin syncing with Einstein Activity Capture as soon as the migration tool finishes moving their settings. Likewise, if you set up any Einstein Activity Capture features after your settings are moved, those features roll out to users with the Einstein Activity Capture permission as soon as you update and save their configurations.

If you think you have users assigned to permission sets from these editions or licenses, and it’s important to know precisely when Einstein Activity Capture rolls out to each user, consider reordering your migration. First, take inventory of users’ individual permissions, then decide which order you want to move settings and assign permissions. For example, you can roll out Einstein Activity Capture to users in different batches, based on who has the permission and who needs it. Or you can make sure that all users have the user permission before you move settings. The specifics are up to you.

For a reminder about which user permissions are needed for Einstein Activity Capture and to see resources for verifying what permissions and licenses your users have today, see Understand and Plan for Einstein Activity Capture User Permissions.

Storage Differences

Lightning Sync stores your Microsoft contacts and event data in Salesforce only. Einstein Activity Capture stores your Microsoft contacts and event data in both Salesforce and the Salesforce Amazon Web Services (AWS) infrastructure. After you move your settings to Einstein Activity Capture, if you enable email features for Einstein Activity Capture, email data is stored in AWS only.

Customers in highly regulated industries may require additional information about how their business data is transferred and stored before they can proceed with Einstein Activity Capture. To ensure that it meets your requirements, review the Einstein Activity Capture Security section.

With contact and event sync, your users don’t notice the storage differences introduced by AWS. But if you enable Emails in Einstein Activity Capture, email data is stored in AWS only, and users notice behavior they haven’t observed before.

• It isn’t used to create Salesforce records.
• It isn’t available in standard reporting. However, to see your activity data aggregated, you can use the Activities dashboard and Activity Metrics fields.
• The data retention period determines how much email data is stored and for how long.

Your Lightning Sync settings at the time you kick off migration determine where data is stored. For example, if your Lightning Sync configurations are set to sync both contacts and events, both your contact and event data is stored on AWS and Salesforce.

A user’s contact and event data starts to be stored in AWS as well as Salesforce after both of these migration steps are completed:

• The tool has finished moving your settings to Einstein Activity Capture.
• You assign an Einstein Activity Capture user permission to the user.

After your migration, if you explicitly return to Einstein Activity Capture settings and turn on email-related features (and assign user permissions), your emails are stored in AWS too.

Both Active and Inactive Configurations Are Moved

The migration tool moves all of your configurations to Einstein Activity Capture. Inactive configurations remain inactive unless you decide to activate them later.

Other Considerations

External users that use Lightning Sync aren’t supported by Einstein Activity Capture.

There are a few other considerations for moving to Einstein Activity Capture, but the migration tool helps you manage those items when the time is right. And we cover specifics about them later on in this documentation.

If you’d like, you can also review Einstein Activity Capture Considerations.