If you have opened Permission Sets in Setup recently and found two entries with the same name, nothing is broken.
Salesforce has started shipping a second Standard Einstein Activity Capture permission set, and the matching permission set license, into orgs. The two permission sets grant the same access.
The difference is in the licenses behind them. The original is fixed at 100 seats for every customer. The newer one is sized to your actual user license count. Salesforce says the newer one is what to use going forward.
Here is what changed, and how to pick between them.
For years, Salesforce gave every customer 100 Standard Einstein Activity Capture licenses, bundled with most clouds and editions. That let teams set up as many as 100 users with automatic email and event capture from Outlook, Office 365, or Gmail.
That number was static. Whether you had 25 users or 250, everyone got 100.
As Einstein Activity Capture has grown, that fixed allocation stopped fitting most orgs, so Salesforce released a newer version:
Salesforce often ships a second version of a standard permission set rather than editing the original. Orgs already running on the first one keep working the same way when the underlying entitlement changes.
At the permission level, nothing. We compared both permission sets field by field across every user permission Salesforce exposes. Each one grants exactly two permissions:
Every other permission is off on both. Neither grants any object permissions, field-level permissions, or access to Apex classes, Visualforce pages, or custom permissions. Same description, same namespace, both flagged as standard Salesforce-managed sets.
If you are worried that assigning one instead of the other changes what your users can see or do in Salesforce, it does not.
The real difference is one layer down, in the permission set licenses.
Each permission set is tied to its own permission set license, and those two licenses are sized differently:
In our own org, the math is simple. We hold 5 full Salesforce user licenses, and the newer permission set license shows a pool of 5. The original still shows 100.
This is where it is easy to read the change as an upgrade and assume the newer one is always the better choice. It is not.
It depends on which pool is bigger for you.
If you have more than 100 core Salesforce licenses, the newer permission set is the one you want. This is the scenario Salesforce built it for. Large teams were previously capped at 100 users for automatic activity capture no matter how many seats they had bought. The new license removes that ceiling and scales with your org.
If you have fewer than 100 core Salesforce licenses, the newer permission set gives you a smaller pool, not a larger one. An org with 40 users gets 40 seats on the new license and 100 on the original. Moving your team onto the new one in that situation means running out of seats sooner, not later.
If you already have users running on the original, leave them there unless you have a reason to move. The access does not change, and the original license is still active.
Salesforce says the newer permission set is what to assign going forward, and keeps the original mainly for backward compatibility in orgs that already had it. Plan for that.
Just confirm the seat math before you move anyone. The recommendation is where Salesforce is going, not a cutover you have to make this quarter. Both licenses are active today.
Go to Setup, enter "Permission Sets" in Quick Find, and look for two entries labeled Standard Einstein Activity Capture. The UI labels are identical, so open each one and check the API name to tell them apart.
In Setup, enter "Company Information" in Quick Find and scroll to the Permission Set Licenses section. Find both Einstein Activity Capture entries and compare Total Licenses against Used Licenses on each.
The newer license may show its raw API name instead of a friendly label. That is normal for a recently provisioned license and does not mean anything is wrong.
On that same Company Information page, look at the User Licenses section and find your Salesforce license count. That number is what the newer permission set license sizes itself against.
Once you know which pool is larger, assign that permission set to the users who need automatic email and event capture. Use Manage Assignments on the permission set itself.
This catches more admins than the duplicate naming does.
A permission set license grants your org the right to use a feature. The permission set is what actually turns it on for a user. They are assigned separately, and having one does not give you the other.
It is easy to look at a user record, see the Standard Einstein Activity Capture permission set license listed, and assume they are set up. If the permission set itself was never assigned, StdAutomaticActivityCapture is still off and nothing is syncing.
If Einstein Activity Capture is not capturing activity for someone who looks licensed, check the Permission Set Assignments section on their user record, not just Permission Set License Assignments.
Are the two Standard Einstein Activity Capture permission sets actually different?
Not in what they grant. Both enable the same two user permissions and nothing else, with no object or field-level access attached. The difference is the permission set license each one is tied to.
Why does one license show 100 seats and the other show a different number?
The original Einstein Activity Capture license was fixed at 100 seats for every customer regardless of org size. The newer license is sized to your actual core Salesforce user license count.
Should I move my users to the newer permission set?
That is the direction Salesforce is pointing, and orgs with more than 100 Salesforce licenses gain capacity by moving. If you hold fewer than 100, the newer pool is currently smaller, so check the seat counts before you migrate anyone.
Is the original permission set being deprecated?
Salesforce says to assign the newer permission set going forward and keeps the original for backward compatibility in orgs that already had it. Both licenses are still active, so there is no forced cutover today.
Why does the newer permission set license show an API name instead of a proper label?
That is typical of a recently provisioned license whose display label has not shipped yet. It does not affect how the license works.
My user has the license but Einstein Activity Capture is not working. Why?
The license and the permission set are assigned separately. Check that the permission set itself, not just the permission set license, is assigned to that user.
Open Company Information in your org and write down three numbers: your core Salesforce user license count, the seat total on the original Einstein Activity Capture license, and the seat total on the newer one. That comparison tells you which permission set to standardize on.
Then spot-check a few users who should have Einstein Activity Capture running. Confirm the permission set is assigned, not just the license. That one check catches more broken activity capture than any other step here.
Need help sorting out Einstein Activity Capture across your team? Concept is a certified Salesforce and HubSpot solutions partner. We help admins audit license allocation, untangle permission set assignments, and get activity capture working the way it was supposed to.
Talk to Concept about your Salesforce setup.