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At Affinity, our mission is to make every investor more productive. This means continuously improving our core CRM features to drive efficiency in your workflows.
In our quarterly product release webinar, we discussed our latest features that automate manual processes and can save hundreds of hours of admin time. Key highlights include:
- Automation Builder
- Affinity iOS
- Commenting
- Keyboard shortcuts
Watch the webinar for the complete insights and a demo of the features, or keep reading for the highlights, marked with timestamps so you can dive deeper.
Automation Builder
Keeping your CRM up-to-date is crucial for having an accurate view of your deal pipeline and network—but it shouldn’t be time-consuming.
We created Automation Builder to reduce the amount of time you spend on repetitive, manual data entry and to enhance data accuracy. There are two components of Automation Builder: Dependent Fields and our new Slack integration.
Dependent Fields
Dependent Fields lets you create custom rules to automatically populate fields in one or more Affinity Lists if a certain condition is met. For example, you can create a rule to bulk update the “Sector” in your lists to “Healthcare” if the “Subsector” is “Pharmaceutical.”
Dependent Fields has many use cases, but here are a few that customers have found useful:
- Automatically update deal team assignments using the “Owners” or “Sector” and “Team” fields in Affinity Lists.
- Automatically update deal priority rankings using the “Amount” and “Priority” fields to mark deals as high-priority if the amount exceeds a certain threshold.
- Generate more accurate reporting with confidence that the data in your lists is reliable and up-to-date.
- Manage your automations in one place by going to Settings > Automations (under the Data & Privacy heading). From this view, Account Admins can edit, delete, pause, or resume existing automations and create new ones.
To get started, navigate to the Affinity Homepage > Settings > Automations > New Automation.
Available for: Advanced and Enterprise
Slack integration
Our new automations aren’t limited to the Affinity CRM. You can also create automations that notify members and channels via Slack, making it easier to keep team members in the loop and act quickly on important changes.
For example, you can set up automatic Slack notifications every time the “Status” field of a deal is changed, so your whole team is alerted when you win or make progress on a new deal.
To set up a Slack Automation, create a new Automation > select the Slack instance to connect with > select your audience (either an individual, like a partner or associate, or a specific team channel).
You can also include an automated message, like “New deal won” along with a link to the company profile, amount, or founders’ names.
Available for: Advanced and Enterprise
Affinity iOS
With Affinity iOS, you can access and update the same data as the web experience, but in a new mobile-friendly way. Our enhanced mobile experience allows you to:
- Get reminders for upcoming meetings and tasks to ensure you’re where you need to be
- Check relationship scores, histories, and notes for more productive meetings and networking
- Instantly access lists, company, and people profiles to stay up-to-date
Head to the app store to download the app and access your most critical deal and network information on the go.
Available for: Scale, Advanced, and Enterprise
Commenting
You can now click on any entity in an Affinity List and create or reply to comments. Whether you’re evaluating a live deal or need to ask a question about a potential investment, Commenting ensures that all deal-related conversations are kept in one place.
Commenting also makes it easier to communicate with external partners. When using Commenting with Collaborator Seats (which lets you share a list view with external partners), you can:
- Share important context: Comment on specific people or companies on your shared lists to help provide additional context about your relationship to collaborators
- Answer founder follow-ups: Respond to founder questions or feedback on the talent, prospect, and investor lists you’ve shared with them
- Annotate in real-time: Add fresh commentary and follow-up items whenever you meet with founders and review your shared lists
Available for: Essential, Scale, Advanced, and Enterprise
Keyboard shortcuts
New keyboard shortcuts enable you to make repetitive actions quickly so you can move faster within Affinity. You can toggle search, add notes, switch between lists, and move within profiles with these shortcuts.
Just use Command / (or Control / on a PC) to pull up the keyboard shortcut menu.
Available for: Essential, Scale, Advanced, and Enterprise
What’s next?
Looking ahead, we’re focused on enhancing data hygiene with duplicate management and API compatibility and introducing a new feature: Deal Assist.
Deal Assist is a conversational AI that analyzes the notes and files within your CRM to answer your deal-related questions. With Deal Assist, you can easily pull specific information across notes and files with a simple question—whether you’re preparing an investment memo or need to quickly answer a question during a meeting.
Deal Assist is available for early access, so please reach out to your Customer Success Manager or Account Executive if you want to try it.
In the meantime, watch the full webinar to learn more about the latest Affinity releases, including:
- How to save time and work more efficiently with Automation Builder
- What’s new in our mobile app and how to get the most out of it
- A recap of our new and updated features, and a preview of what’s to come
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