Allow calculated properties to build strings

HubSpot Ideas

Status: Idea Submitted

1

Calculated properties are great if you are dealing with numbers, but what about strings?

We want a “smart” property for Contacts which could assemble a URL similar to the following

(fixed string) + (value from object) = property value

e.g.

"http://otherSAAS.com?hubspotContactID= " + [current record ID]

resulting in value of

http://otherSAAS.com?hubspotContactID=123456

2

This is possible using the advanced calculated property editor and the concatenate function.
First, make sure all the properties you’re trying to combine are the same type; number (int/float) or text (string). You can’t concatenate strings with ints/floats.

Record ID by default is a number, so let’s create a String version of that property first:

  1. Create a new single-line text property, let’s call it “Record ID (String)” in this example.
  2. Create a workflow, the minimum trigger can be “Record ID is known”. Add whatever additional triggers you may want/need.
  3. Add an action “Copy property value” and set the “Copy from” field to be “Record ID” and the “Copy to” field to be “Record ID (String)”
  4. Turn on the workflow

You now have a contact property that contains the record ID as a string value.

Now to create your combined contact property:

  1. Create a new calculated property, name it what you want, for example “Contact URL”, set the “Calculated property type” to be “Custom Equation”, enable “Advanced Mode” and set “Output type” to “String”
  2. Enter the following in the calculation field (based on your example above):
    concatenate(‘othersaas.com’,[properties.record_id__string_])

The [properties.record_id__string_] may differ depending on what you named the property we created in the first section of my answer, and potentially based on your internal property structure as well, I’m not sure. Underneath the calculation field there’s a button that says “Insert” which you can use to insert a contact property instead of typing out the internal name of it, similar to how you personalize an email or SMS with contact properties. Replace [properties.record_id__string_] with the “Record ID (String)” property if you wish, this’ll ensure that it’s grabbing the correct property data.
For a contact with the record ID 123456 this new calculated property (“Contact URL)” will now populate with othersaas.com
Hopefully this helps!

3

concatenate("othersaas.com ",number_to_string([current record ID]))