How to Invite Your Team, Connect Gmail, and Search Your Combined Network
When your whole team connects their Gmail to Ask Scout, Scout can search across everyone's combined network at once —
surfacing warm intro paths that would otherwise be invisible to any one person. This guide walks through the full setup
from start to finish.
Step 1: Create a Team
If you haven't created a team yet:
1. Click Teams in the left sidebar
2. Click New team in the top right
3. Give it a name (e.g. "Sales Team" or "Founders") and click Create
You'll land on your new team's page. You're the owner.
Step 2: Invite Your Teammates
From your team's page, there are two ways to invite people.
Option A — Invite by email (recommended)
1. On the team page, click Invite member
2. Enter their email address
3. Optionally add a personal note in the message field
4. Click Send invite
They'll receive an email with a link to accept. Once they accept, they appear in your Members list.
Advanced option: Under the invite dialog, you can toggle "Restrict to 1st & 2nd degree network search only". When
checked, the new member's searches will default to your team's shared network rather than the broader web. Useful if you
want to keep searches focused on warm connections.
Option B — Share a join link
If you want to share a link instead of emailing each person:
1. On the team page, find the join link in the Members tab
2. Click Copy link and paste it wherever (Slack, email, etc.)
Anyone who opens that link can request to join. You'll see their request appear and can approve it.
Step 3: Each Member Connects Their Gmail
This is the key step. Every person on the team needs to connect their own Google account so Scout can read their contact
graph. No emails are stored — Scout only reads who you've communicated with and how often.
Each person should do the following:
1. Click their avatar or name at the bottom of the sidebar
2. Go to Account → Integrations (or navigate directly to /account/integrations)
3. Find the Google section and click Connect Google
4. Complete the Google OAuth sign-in and grant permission
5. Scout will begin syncing your network in the background — this usually takes a few minutes for most accounts
Once the sync is done, a confirmation appears and the "Sync complete" status shows in the Google section.
Note: If someone on your team doesn't see the Connect Google button, they may already be connected. Check whether their
profile shows a Google account listed.
Step 4: Turn On Network Sharing
After connecting Gmail, each member needs to confirm they're sharing their network with the team.
1. Go to Teams → open your team
2. On the Members tab, find your own row
3. Make sure the Share my network toggle is switched on
When this is on, your contacts become part of the team's shared graph. Every other member with sharing enabled also
contributes their contacts — so a 5-person team with active Gmail connections might have a combined network of 10,000+
relationships.
Step 5: Search Your Team's Network
Now that everyone is connected and sharing, you can run searches that pull from the full team network.
1. Go to Home (click Ask Scout in the top left, or the Home link in the sidebar)
2. In the chat input, you'll see a toggle for "1st & 2nd degree"
3. Make sure that toggle is on
4. Type your search — for example:
- "Find me pre-seed investors in Chicago"
- "Find me VP Sales candidates in SaaS"
- "Find founders who need help with sales under $1M ARR"
1. Press Enter or click Send
Scout will search across your team's combined contacts and surface the strongest matches with warm intro paths.
Understanding the Search Modes
On the home page and inside any chat, you'll see two main search modes:
Web scrape (default on) - Searches LinkedIn and the broader web for people matching your query
1st & 2nd degree - Searches only inside your own + your team's connected networks
You can use both at the same time. Web scrape finds new people; 1st & 2nd degree tells you who you already have a path
to.
Tip: For fundraising, hiring, or sales — run with both modes on. You'll see results from the web alongside a "warm path"
indicator showing which results have a connection through your team.
Troubleshooting
The "1st & 2nd degree" toggle is grayed out
→ You need to connect your Gmail first. Go to Account → Integrations → Connect Google.
My search returned no in-network results
→ Check that the sync completed. On the Integrations page, the Google section shows sync status. If it's still
processing, wait a few minutes and search again.
A teammate's contacts aren't appearing
→ Ask them to check two things: (1) their Gmail is connected and sync is complete, and (2) their Share my network toggle
is on in the team Members tab.
I sent an invite but my teammate never got the email
→ Ask them to check their spam folder. You can also re-send by going back to the team page — pending invites appear in
the Members tab with a re-send option.
I want to remove someone from the team
→ On the Members tab, click the ⋯ menu next to that person's name and select Remove.
What Happens to My Email Data?
Scout reads your Gmail contact graph to understand who you know and how closely — it does not read the content of your
emails. The data is used only to power warm path lookups and network search. You can disconnect your Google account at
any time from Account → Integrations, and optionally delete all synced network data from the same page.