Connecting Hubspot Portal to private developer app

Hello! Please forgive me if this is a basic question, but could you point me in the right direction on how to authorize my Hubspot portal with my privately developed app so that I can use the API webhooks? I’ve got a developer account with an active website, and I’ve got a portal, but I’m missing the step for how to connect the two. I don’t think I need oAuth, because it’s not a public app.

Thinking maybe I need somehow do a one-time auto process.

Also, I have like 10 users on my portal, so I need the actions they take specified by the webhook configuration to trigger the webhook too, not just my actions.

Specifically, the webhook listens for a deleted contact.

Thank for the help! Tom

Hi @Tom_Copeland1,

No worries, happy to clarify.

The Webhooks API actually does require your app to be installed via the OAuth flow, but you can choose to keep your app Private, per this documentation.

Once your app is installed in your production portal, the Webhooks API will listen for all actions you have specified, whether they were made by your user or others in the portal.

Thanks Isaac, but that document does not talk about keeping an app private.

How does one go about installing a custom app we created in our developer account to our production portal?

@dvanbrunt ,

Currently there is no way to make an app private other than not listing it, but we are in the process of building a solution for this. Please stay tuned and follow the changelog where it will be announced :grinning_face:

Yes, we’re less interested in the “private” part and more interested in the quick/easy/no-oauth setup it would give us. We just want access to webhooks and without the need to setup oauth and publishing an app.

I got a notice in the HS developer portal about an upcoming “Private App Beta” and if I would like access. I filled out the form but haven’t hear more. It this beta in a place that we could get access to try it out?

@dvanbrunt ,

That was the feature that I was hinting at :wink:. It isn’t quite ready for beta testing, yet, but we are getting there!

Is there any news regarding this?
I have exactly the same use case, an app for webhooks and we have this unnecessary overhead for connecting it to a production account.

@Eliya

Glad you asked :wink:

Follow the yellow brick road to private apps

via GIPHY

Thank you @dennisedson, very cool update.
But I don’t think I can use this, as documentation states:

Please note: private apps do not support extensions or webhooks. If you plan on building an app using these features, you should create a public app instead.
Do you maybe have any recommendation for my simple use case:
I have an app that is used only for defining webhooks to an external service.
This external service is not customer facing, it accepts webhook messages and uses the Hubspot API using the account access key. It is now used by a test account and I merely want to connect it to the main hubspot account.
For that I need to implement OAuth 2 although my application actually doesn’t use it?

I guess I got a little too excited :sad_but_relieved_face:

Unfortunately, in your specific case, I believe you will have to use OAuth.

I think the only other option would be to possibly send webhooks via a workflow

This requires Operations Hub professional and I am unsure if you have that.