What shipped in October: set your firm's rules once

Written by

Anna Shimoda

Last updated

October 23, 2026

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Every firm has conventions that aren't written down, like how a brief should read, which team sees whose meetings, who is on which deal, or what has to be filled in before something goes to IC. Today, teams enforce them by repeating themselves.

This month's releases move those conventions into Affinity, where you set them once and they apply every time.

Tell Ascend what's important for your firm on meeting briefs

Admins can now write instructions that shape every Meeting Prep brief at your firm. Anyone with the permission to manage AI feature access (admins and Enterprise Admins have it by default) can write up to 2,000 characters on the Meeting Prep agent card. There’s one set of instructions per firm, everyone can read it, and it applies to briefs generated after you save.

An admin might ask briefs to emphasize what was last discussed about round timing and check size, so those two points sit at the top of every brief. Instructions work best for style and emphasis: what to include, what to leave out, and what to stress.

Decide how much other teams see

Until now, a team's synced emails and meetings were visible to the rest of the firm in full or not at all. Each team can now choose how much people outside it see. Team visibility is available on the Enterprise plan.

Say your partners want their activity kept close. They can limit outsiders to names and dates, so the rest of the firm sees that a conversation happened and when. Meanwhile, the investment team shares email subject lines and meeting titles with everyone. Privacy and transparency no longer have to be one firm-wide trade-off, because each team sets its own line.

Restricted opportunities follow your deal team

Add someone to the deal team and they can see the opportunity. Take them off and they can't. Restricted opportunities can now take their access list from a person field on the opportunity, such as your Deal Team field, so there is no separate access list to keep up to date.

Enterprise Admins set this up under Settings, then Opportunities, then Control Allowed Members from Field, choosing the controlling field for each opportunity list. Turning it on backfills access for the opportunities already on that list.

More privacy controls for Notetaker

Admins now control what Notetaker keeps. They can turn transcript retention off (the summary note is still created), set who receives summary emails, and, for Enterprise Admins, export transcripts in bulk. Compliance teams asked for these controls, and they are now in the admin settings.

Reliability improved too. Outlook distribution-list invitees are matched through their own calendars, and on shared calls the organizer's Notetaker joins when they have it turned on.

What's new in New Lists

List triggers, CSV imports, and bulk copy and remove all work in New Lists now, without a trip back to Classic.

Set a trigger from the list's menu to require fields when a deal reaches a status, create an opportunity, or create a reminder. Bring in a CSV with the guided importer. Select several rows to copy them to another list or remove them in one step. Switching back to Classic is still available, for now.

Clean up records from your AI tool

Duplicate companies and stale list entries no longer need a trip into the CRM. Affinity MCP can now delete and merge records, so you can ask your AI tool to merge duplicate companies or people, remove a list entry, or correct a note you wrote. It waits for your confirmation before every delete or merge. Try a prompt like "Merge the two Northwind Logistics company records in Affinity."

The full list: delete list entries, opportunities, companies, and people; edit or delete notes you created; and merge people and companies. Every delete and merge shows you what it will affect and waits for your explicit confirmation. Affinity MCP already read and wrote records, and this update adds cleanup to that.

If you connected before September 24, 2026, restart your AI tool or open a new session to load the new tools.