Affinity

The Affinity native connector allows relationship‑driven organizations—especially private equity, venture capital, and investment banking firms—to bring Affinity’s relationship intelligence data into Glean. With this integration, teams can search, analyze, and use their Affinity people, company, and opportunity data alongside the rest of their enterprise knowledge. Glean honors Affinity’s workspace‑level visibility for people and organizations, and list‑based permissions for opportunities and lists, so users only see what they can access in Affinity itself.

​

Use case examples

• Relationship and company research: Combine Affinity data with other systems in your stack (email, calendar, CRM, deal room, etc.).
  • Example: “Who is the main contact for Acme Corp and have we had any meetings with them recently?”
• Opportunity and list workflows: Research about lists and opportunities assigned to you and find out additional information.
  • Example: “All open opportunities where the close date is next month and amount > 100K US Dollars, assigned to me.”

​

Limitations

• Notes and reminders in Affinity are not crawled or indexed.
• All supported objects use full crawls only; there is no incremental crawl yet. Changes may take up to about one hour (or your configured full‑crawl interval) to appear in Glean search.
• Additional fields beyond the default set must be configured by Glean; there is no self-serve UI for admins to add or change Affinity fields.

​

Objects and data indexed

​

Objects crawled

The Affinity connector crawls the following object types:

• People
• Organizations (Companies)
• Opportunities
• Lists

The connector also crawls the Affinity schema for each object, making field metadata available to Glean. By default, the connector runs a full crawl of all supported object types and schemas approximately once per hour. Glean can adjust this frequency.

​

Default fields indexed

By default, Glean indexes the following attributes for each Affinity object type. You can work with Glean to add additional custom fields on a per‑customer basis. People

• First name
• Last name
• Primary email address
• All email addresses
• Current job title
• Current organization
• Phone number
• Industry
• Location
• Last email

Organizations (Companies)

• Name
• Domain
• All domains
• Description
• Industry
• Location
• Investment stage
• Total funding amount (USD)
• Year founded
• Investors
• Last funding date
• Number of employees
• Last email

Opportunities

• Name
• People (associated contacts)
• Status
• Owners
• Organizations (associated companies)
• Amount
• Close date
• Last email
• Created by
• Created at

Lists

• Name
• Type
• Visibility / Is public
• Owner
• Created by

Custom properties can be indexed on request. Glean can be configured to fetch both additional basic fields and additional custom fields for supported Affinity objects, using the exact Affinity field names from your workspace (including case and spacing). This configuration is currently performed by Glean Solutions Engineering or Support teams.

List‑specific properties for People and Companies are not currently supported as indexed fields in Glean.

​

Permissions and visibility

Affinity enforces access through a combination of workspace‑wide visibility and list‑level sharing. The connector mirrors these rules in Glean.

​

Authentication and authorization mechanism

​

OAuth model

Glean integrates with Affinity using OAuth 2.0 Authorization Code Grant as a confidential client.

• Affinity has created and registered a central Glean OAuth app that is reused for all customers. Affinity does not currently support per‑customer apps for this integration.
• The Glean app must be greenlisted for each customer’s Affinity workspace before OAuth will succeed. Customers must work with Affinity Support to get the central Glean client approved for their workspace; otherwise OAuth attempts are likely to fail.

​

API endpoints used

The connector uses the following Affinity v2 API endpoints to fetch data:

​

Requirements

To use the Affinity connector, you need the following:

• A Glean deployment where the Affinity connector has been enabled.
• Access to the Glean Admin Console with permission to add new data sources.
• An Affinity workspace where:
  • Affinity Support has greenlisted the central Glean OAuth client for your workspace.
  • At least one admin user who can complete workspace‑level OAuth with Glean.
  • End users can complete per‑user OAuth as needed for opportunities and lists.

​

Setup and configuration

​

Step 1: Admin setup (workspace authorization)

Workspace‑level setup is performed by a Glean admin.

1. In the Glean Admin Console, go to Data sources > Add data source and select Affinity.
2. Enter your Affinity workspace details as prompted.
3. Click Authorize and complete the Affinity OAuth flow using an appropriate admin account. This grants Glean access to workspace‑wide Contacts (People) and Companies (Organizations).
4. Save the data source configuration.

After this step, Affinity Contacts and Companies will begin crawling based on the configured crawl schedule.

​

Step 2: Per‑user OAuth (end‑user authorization)

For Opportunities and Lists, each Affinity user who needs access must complete an additional OAuth step:

• Each user authenticates with Affinity via the Glean interface (per‑user OAuth flow).
• Once a user has completed this OAuth flow:
  • Glean enqueues crawls for that user’s Opportunities and Lists.
  • Those items become visible to that user in Glean, subject to Affinity’s list‑based permissions.

Admin setup alone is sufficient for Contacts and Companies; per‑user OAuth is specifically required for private or user‑scoped Opportunities and Lists.

​

Crawling strategy and update frequency

​

Full crawl

• For each supported Affinity object type—People, Organizations, Opportunities, Lists, and their associated schemas—the connector currently performs full crawls only (no incremental crawls).
• By default, a full crawl for each object type and its schema runs approximately once per hour, although this cadence can be adjusted via configuration by Glean.
• Because the connector relies solely on full crawls, changes made in Affinity can take up to about one hour (or your customized full‑crawl interval) to appear in Glean search and Assistant responses.

​

Identity and schema crawling

In addition to object records, the connector:

• Crawls schemas for People, Organizations, Opportunities, and Lists to keep field definitions in sync.
• Performs access token refresh operations as a separate object crawl, ensuring OAuth tokens remain valid without admin intervention.

​

Advanced configuration (by Glean)

The following advanced configurations can be performed by Glean:

​

Crawl frequency tuning

Glean can tune the full crawl frequency for each Affinity object type (People, Companies/Organizations, Lists, Opportunities, schemas, and token refresh) via internal configuration, expressed in seconds. This allows, for example, more frequent crawls of Opportunities relative to Lists or People if needed for deal workflows.

​

Field selection and custom fields

For supported objects, the connector distinguishes between:

• Basic fields – the default set of fields that are always fetched for the object (for example, name, email, title, and location for People).
• Additional fields – supplemental fields that can be added per customer (for example, custom properties on Contacts, Companies, or Lists).

Key behaviors:

• Field lists are defined using the exact field names from the customer’s Affinity instance (including spaces and case), and are case‑sensitive.
• By default, only the predefined basic fields are enabled; the additional‑fields list starts empty.
• To add custom fields, customers must work with Glean (Solutions Architects / Support). There is currently no self‑serve UI for adding new Affinity fields directly.

​

FAQs