External member relationships are built on mutual, controlled visibility. Here's exactly what is and isn't shared — and how to control who can make outreach requests through external members.

What external members can see about your network

When someone joins your network as an external member, they can see your team's connections — but only at the relationship level. Specifically, for each person your team knows, external members can see:

  • Name
  • Role / job title
  • Relationship score — Strong, Familiar, or Weak

That's it. External members cannot see email addresses, phone numbers, or any other contact details. They cannot see email history, message content, or anything beyond name, role, and relationship strength.

What you can see about their network

The same rules apply in reverse. When an external member connects their account, you gain visibility into who they know — name, role, and relationship score only. No contact details, no email history, nothing else.

The principle: Both sides can see who the other knows and how well — enough to identify warm intro paths. Neither side can see sensitive contact information or use CTD to reach out to the other's contacts directly.

Outreach approvers

When you have high-value external members — a board member, a prominent investor, a key advisor — you probably don't want your entire team sending them intro requests independently. A board member shouldn't be fielding 50 ghost email drafts from account executives across the company.

CTD's outreach approver setting lets you define a gatekeeper for each external member. Here's how it works:

  1. An account executive finds a warm path through the board member and writes a ghost email draft
  2. Instead of going directly to the board member, the draft is routed to the approver (e.g. the CEO)
  3. The CEO reviews the draft, edits it if needed, or declines it if the request isn't appropriate
  4. If approved, the CEO forwards it to the board member, who then sends it to the target. From the board member's perspective, the request came from the CEO — not an account executive they may not know. That context alone significantly increases the chance the board member follows through.

This gives you one trusted person in the chain who ensures that every outreach request to a high-value external member is vetted before it goes out.

Approver configuration options

  • Optional or mandatory — approvers can be set as required (no one can skip them) or advisory (the requester can bypass if needed)
  • Per external member — you can assign different approvers for different external members. Your lead investor might route through the CEO; a regional partner might route through a VP of Sales.
  • Workspace-level setting — configured by CTD admins in your workspace settings
Setup note: Outreach approver configuration is covered as part of the CTD implementation process. Your Account Executive will walk through the right setup for your organization during onboarding.