topic Re: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks in APIs & Integrations

Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

JBarks — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 17:02:01 GMT

Hello! I have been a developer for years working largely with Salesforce, Twilio and IBM products. I am just now learning HubSpot. Salesforce and Twilio both have the ability to create a custom function/api that can be exposed publically to be used as a webhook (ex: a third party integration that can call custom webhooks when certain events are triggered). I see that HubSpot has the ability to build custom functions, but can these be exposed to be called from an external third party?

Betreff: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

MiaSrebrnjak — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 10:23:35 GMT

Hi @JBarks,

I'm not an expert on this topic, but I know a couple of folks who are: 🙂

Hi @louischausse, @Teun, @MatthiasKunz, we'd be very thankful for any insights you can share on this. 🙏

Thank you!

Cheers
Mia, Community Team

Re: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

louischausse — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 12:38:47 GMT

Hi @JBarks

There are 2 ways of creating webhooks in HubSpot to send data to a third party:

By creating an app: https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/webhooks (can be private app or OAuth app)
From a workflow: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/how-do-i-use-webhooks-with-hubspot-workflows

Don't forget to mark my reply as a solution if you are satisfied. If not, do not hesitate to ask me anything!

Re: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

JBarks — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 13:33:01 GMT

@louischausse ,

Thank you so much for your reply. Actually what I'm needing is the reverse, but let me clarify my use case becasue I dont think I was very clear.

I want to integrate data specifically from Donately into Hubspot whenever a new donation or contact is created in Donately. We are aware that there is an out of the box connector to do this, but it does not quite meet our needs. We also have the option for Zapier, but would perfer to avoid using it if possible (we are wanting more flexiblity). Donately provides the ability to add custom webhooks where it will send JSON data to the webhook you specifiy based on triggering events such as a new donation/contact/campaign..etc. What I am wanting to do is:

create a custom function inside of HubSpot that can be exposed as a webhook to recieve the JSON data from Donately so that I can execute my own custom logic to parse and populate fields inside of HubSpot
Use HubDB to create a mapping of HubSpot fields to Donately fields where the data can be pulled in the function at runtime to parse the Donately JSON data and update HubSpot fields dynamically
Create a UI to modify the HubDB table mapping so that my users can update the mapping themselves to capture any new custom fields that have been created in Donately.

Based on the documentation that I've read this all seems possible with the exception of item #1 which is what I need to confirm. I read somewhere about a possible CORS limitation in HubSpot. Otherwise, I'm going to create a containerized API/webhook to receive the data from Donately and use the HubSpot API to create/update HubSpot data.

Does that make more sense? Thanks again for any help you can provide.

Jason

Betreff: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

JBarks — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 13:31:01 GMT

thank you @MiaSrebrnjak !

Re: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

louischausse — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 13:48:48 GMT

@JBarks this is clearer!

If you have Operations Hub Enterprise, you can do this in a contact-based workflow:

It includes mapping so I don't think you'll need HubDB

You can then use data from the webhook in you workflow actions:

Unfortunately it is not available yet in other workflow type than Contact-based workflow. Ideally you would have handle donations in a deal-based workflow, but what you could do is send all data (e.g. donation amount) to the contact record and then trigger a create deal record action to create the deal where you can copy the data to the deal:

Once you have set the webhook, you shouldn't have to code a custom function. Most of what you want to do is possible with HubSpot workflow action (create records, format data, set property values, etc.). You should rely on custom code only when this is the only option. That way, your non-coder users will be available to edit the workflow.

If you don't have Operations Hub Enterprise, I can help you get it at a discounted price since I am a HubSpot partner. Let me know.

Don't forget to mark my reply as a solution if you are satisfied. If not, do not hesitate to ask me anything!

Re: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

JBarks — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 23:35:10 GMT

This is a great solution! I'm going to do some tests and run this by the team. Thank you!

Re: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

JBarks — Fri, 20 Oct 2023 17:28:44 GMT

Thanks again for your post @louischausse . I'll leave this marked as the Accepted Solution because it would have met my needs based on what I requested. However, we do not currently have access to this functionality. I talked to HubSpot sales and it would be quite a jump to change plans in order to have access to this (even at a discounted price). Would you happen to have any alternative solutions? We are on Sales and Marketing Pro+.

Re: Newbie Question - Custom Webhooks

louischausse — Mon, 23 Oct 2023 13:25:13 GMT

In the scenario you don't have Operations Hub Enterprise, the best solution is that you set a server outside of HubSpot to run those. Could be a serverless function on GCP, Azure or AWS or anything you feel comfortable with.

Hope this helps.