The Auto-Create Contact feature determines what happens when Global Autopilot cannot find a matching record for an email address. This FAQ explains the available settings, how parent-company matching works, and how to handle common scenarios.
Global Autopilot is available with ExtendSync Outlook Enterprise.
➡️ For matching order and recipient priority, see How Global Autopilot Matches Email Recipients and Auto-Creates Contacts.
🔵 What are my options when Global Autopilot can't find a matching record?
There are three behavior options to choose from when Global Autopilot can't find a matching record:
Options | What Happens |
Ignore the Email | Global Autopilot skips the email. No Contact is created, and the email is not synced. |
Always Auto-Create (Auto-create contact and sync email) | Global Autopilot creates a Contact and syncs the email. If no matching parent record exists, the Contact is created without a parent company. |
Only When a matching parent record exists (Auto-create contact and sync email) | Global Autopilot creates a Contact and syncs the email only when it finds a matching Customer, Lead, Prospect, or Vendor. Otherwise, no Contact is created, and the email is skipped. |
🔵 How does Auto-Create Contact determine which company a new Contact belongs to?
Global Autopilot compares the email domain with the Web Address field on eligible parent records in NetSuite.
Eligible parent records include:
Customer
Lead
Prospect
Vendor
When Global Autopilot finds a match, it creates the Contact and associates it with the matching parent record.
Example
Email address: jane@acme.com
Email domain: acme.com
NetSuite parent Web Address: acme.com
Result: The Contact is created and associated with the matching parent record.
🔵 What happens if the Web Address is blank or doesn't match the email domain?
If the parent record's Web Address is blank or does not match the email domain,
Global Autopilot cannot identify that record as the Contact's parent.
What happens next depends on the Auto-Create Contact configuration:
Auto-Create Setting | Result |
Always Auto-Create | The Contact is created without a parent company, and the email is synced. |
Only When a Matching Parent Record Exists | No Contact is created, and the email is skipped. |
Ignore the Email | No Contact is created, and the email is skipped. |
Example
Email address: leo.brimms@aals.com
Email domain: aals.com
NetSuite company Web Address: academyavenueliquorstore.com
Result: No matching parent is found.
How to update a Contact created without a parent
If Always Auto-Create is enabled and the Contact was created without a parent, users can associate it with the correct company by editing the Contact in ExtendSync or directly in NetSuite.
🔵 My organization has multiple companies that use the same email domain. Which company will Auto-Create use?
If multiple eligible NetSuite parent records match the same domain, ExtendSync cannot control which matching record NetSuite returns.
This is a NetSuite platform limitation.
For example, if multiple Customer records use acme.com as their Web Address, Global Autopilot cannot reliably determine which Customer should become the Contact's parent.
Recommendation: If your NetSuite environment contains multiple companies that share the same domain, consider disabling Auto-Create Contact and have users create or associate Contacts manually using ExtendSync or NetSuite. This ensures the correct parent relationship is selected.
🔵 How are email addresses prioritized for contact creation?
Global Autopilot prioritizes addresses in From and To over those in CC. Addresses in BCC are not processed.
For addresses within the same customer domain:
Email direction | Priority |
Outgoing | To addresses take priority over CC. |
Incoming | From and To addresses, excluding the current recipient, take priority over CC. |
For different customer domains, the email is associated with matching records across those domains. If contact creation is triggered, From and To addresses take priority over CC.
If multiple matching contacts belong to the same parent company, Global Autopilot creates a single email association to avoid duplicate messages on that company record.
🔵 Why Doesn't Global Autopilot Create Multiple Contacts?
Global Autopilot intentionally creates only one Contact per processed email.
This behavior helps:
Prevent duplicate email associations on the same NetSuite company record.
Avoid creating unnecessary duplicate Contacts.
Reduce unnecessary NetSuite API requests.
This is expected Global Autopilot behavior, not an error.
🔵 How do I know if Auto-Create Contact fails?
If Global Autopilot cannot match a record or fails to create a Contact, the failure appears in the ExtendSync Logs view with the corresponding error.
A red dot on the Notifications icon indicates that failed logs are available.
💡 Best Practices
For more reliable Contact creation and parent matching:
Populate the Web Address field on Customer, Lead, Prospect, and Vendor records.
Make sure the Web Address corresponds to the organization's email domain.
Review companies that share the same domain before enabling Auto-Create Contact.
Use Only When a Matching Parent Record Exists if your organization does not want Contacts created without a parent.
Use Always Auto-Create when capturing the Contact is more important than requiring an existing parent relationship.
See Also
Need Help?
💬 Chat with us — Click the chat icon at the bottom-right of this page.
📧 Email: cloudextend-support@celigo.com