Enabling Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity for Einstein Activity Capture: Lessons Learned

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If you've implemented Einstein Activity Capture (EAC), you've probably run into one of its biggest limitations: although captured emails appear on the Salesforce Activity Timeline, they aren't actually stored in your Salesforce org. Instead, they're stored externally in Salesforce's Activity 360 service, which means they can't be queried with SOQL, reported on using standard report types, or used to trigger Flow and Apex automation.

Salesforce introduced Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity to address this limitation by storing captured emails as standard Salesforce activity records. This unlocks powerful capabilities for reporting, automation, integrations, and AI—but enabling the feature isn't quite as simple as flipping a switch.

In this article, we'll cover what the feature does, when it makes sense to enable it, and several lessons we learned during implementation that can help you avoid common pitfalls.

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What Is Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity?

EAC - Before vs After

By default, Einstein Activity Capture stores captured emails in Activity 360, an external Salesforce-managed data store.
This provides users with a familiar Activity Timeline experience but comes with several limitations:

Emails cannot be queried using SOQL
Standard Salesforce reports cannot include captured emails
Record-triggered Flows and Apex cannot respond to captured emails
Integrations cannot access the email records through the Salesforce API

When Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity is enabled, Salesforce creates standard EmailMessage activity records within your org. Those emails become part of your Salesforce data model and can be used just like any other activity record.

Default Einstein Activity Capture	Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity
Stored in Activity 360	Stored in Salesforce
Not queryable	Queryable with SOQL
Limited reporting	Standard Activity reports
Cannot trigger Flow or Apex	Supports Flow and Apex
Doesn't consume Salesforce storage	Consumes Salesforce storage

Before You Enable the Feature

Although the feature is incredibly useful, it's important to evaluate whether it makes sense for your organization before enabling it.

Privacy and Sharing

Once emails are stored as Salesforce activity records, they follow your organization's standard activity sharing model. Depending on your security model, users who have access to an Account, Opportunity, or Contact may also gain access to related email activity. If email privacy is a significant concern for your organization, carefully review your sharing model before enabling this feature.

Storage Consumption

CRITICAL
Syncing emails as Salesforce Activity consumes org data storage. A high-volume sales team can add GBs quickly. Check Setup > Storage Usage before enabling in production.

For organizations with high email volume, storage can grow surprisingly quickly. Before enabling the feature in Production, review:

Setup → Storage Usage

Estimate your expected email volume to ensure you have sufficient storage capacity.

Do You Actually Need It?

Not every organization benefits from storing captured emails inside Salesforce. Ask yourself:

Do we need reporting on captured emails?
Will we build Flow or Apex automation around emails?
Do integrations need API access to email records?
Will users query EmailMessage records?

If the answer is no, the standard Einstein Activity Capture experience may already meet your organization's needs without consuming additional storage.

Every organization has different reporting, automation, and compliance requirements. Before enabling this feature, ask yourself whether your business will truly benefit from storing captured emails as Salesforce records. The decision tree below can help guide that evaluation. If you decide this feature is the right fit for your organization, here are some implementation lessons we learned along the way.

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Lessons Learned During Implementation

While implementing this feature, we encountered several unexpected challenges that weren't immediately obvious from Salesforce documentation.

Lesson #1: "Don't Capture Sensitive Emails" Isn't Foolproof

Einstein Activity Capture includes an out-of-the-box option called Don't Capture Sensitive Emails, which attempts to prevent emails containing sensitive information—such as Social Security numbers or credit card numbers—from being captured.

While helpful, it isn't perfect.

Salesforce relies on pattern matching to identify sensitive data. During testing, we found situations where information our organization considered confidential was still captured because it didn't match Salesforce's predefined detection patterns.

Recommendation

Validate this feature using real-world examples from your organization rather than assuming it will satisfy your compliance requirements.

Lesson #2: You Can Customize the Matching Logic

When Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity is enabled, Salesforce automatically creates a Flow named:

Activities: Match Email to Records

Many administrators don't realize this Flow is fully customizable. You can modify the Flow to:

Implement custom record matching logic
Match emails to additional objects
Prevent EmailMessage records from being created under specific conditions
Filter unwanted emails
Apply organization-specific business rules

For organizations with unique privacy or matching requirements, this Flow can become an extremely valuable extension point.

Lesson #3: The Feature May Not Be Available

If your organization enabled Einstein Activity Capture before the Summer '25 release, you may not immediately see the Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity setting. If the option is missing, don't spend hours troubleshooting permissions. Instead, open a Salesforce Support case and request that the feature be enabled for your organization. Once enabled, the setting should appear within Einstein Activity Capture configuration.

Lesson #4: Permission Sets Alone Don't Grant Access

One of the more confusing issues we encountered involved user access. Assigning users the required Einstein Activity Capture permission set was not enough to enable the feature. Users must also be assigned to an active Einstein Activity Capture Configuration. Navigate to:

Setup → Einstein Activity Capture → Configuration

From there, add each user to the appropriate configuration. When troubleshooting access, verify all three items:

The user has the required permission set(s).
The user has been added to an active Einstein Activity Capture configuration.
The configuration includes the correct sync settings.

This small step is easy to overlook and can save significant troubleshooting time.

EAC - Lessons Learned

Lesson #5: Existing Automation May Suddenly Start Running

One subtle but important side effect of enabling this feature is that captured emails become real Salesforce records. That means they can now trigger:

Record-triggered Flows
Apex Triggers
Validation Rules
Platform Events
Integrations

If your org already contains automation built around EmailMessage records, thoroughly regression test your automation before enabling this feature in Production.

Lesson #6: This Is More Than a Storage Change

The biggest takeaway from our implementation was that enabling Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity fundamentally changes how captured email behaves within Salesforce. You're not simply changing where emails are stored—you are making captured emails first-class Salesforce records. That means:

Better reporting
More powerful automation
API accessibility
SOQL querying
Improved downstream AI capabilities
Increased storage consumption
Different security considerations

Understanding those tradeoffs upfront will help you decide whether this feature aligns with your organization's goals.

EAC - checklist

Final Thoughts

Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity bridges one of the biggest gaps in Einstein Activity Capture by transforming captured emails into standard Salesforce records. For organizations that rely on reporting, automation, integrations, or AI, it can unlock significant new capabilities.

However, it's not a feature to enable blindly. Storage growth, security implications, user configuration, automation impacts, and the limitations of sensitive email detection all deserve careful evaluation before rolling it into Production.

By understanding these lessons ahead of time—and thoroughly testing in a sandbox first—you can avoid common implementation pitfalls and confidently decide whether Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity is the right fit for your Salesforce organization.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Does enabling Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity use up Salesforce storage?

Yes. Once enabled, captured emails are saved as standard EmailMessage records in your Salesforce org rather than in the external Activity 360 service, which means each synced email counts against your org's data storage. High-volume sales teams can see storage grow by several gigabytes quickly, so check Setup → Storage Usage and estimate expected email volume before turning this on in Production.

Will enabling this feature trigger existing Flows or Apex automation on emails?

Yes, and this is easy to overlook. Because synced emails become real Salesforce records instead of external Activity 360 data, they can trigger any existing record-triggered Flows, Apex triggers, validation rules, or platform events built around EmailMessage records. Regression test your automation in a sandbox before enabling this feature in Production to avoid unexpected behavior.

Why isn't the Sync Emails as Salesforce Activity setting showing up in my org?

If Einstein Activity Capture was enabled before the Summer '25 release, the setting may not appear automatically, even with the correct permissions assigned. Rather than troubleshooting permission sets, open a Salesforce Support case and request that the feature be enabled for your org; it will then appear in the Einstein Activity Capture configuration.