Single on/off checkbox property type has three options

Marketing & Content Hub Tips, Tricks & Best Practices
1

Why does Hubspot have three options possible for what is supposed to be a True/False field? Yes, No, NULL.

I created a new property “Marketing Suspended” using this field type. This is a field that is designed to switch back and forth between Yes/No, but any new record starts with NULL. They do not show up if you filter for NO.

So, you have to use two different filter criteria each time to make sure you are getting everyone.

Marketing Suspended is any of “No”

OR

Marketing Suspended is unknown

This is an important field I am asking my team to use for targeting, so the potential for error here is pretty high.

How does Hubspot or others recommend working with this field type? Deeply curious why it was designed this way…

Thanks

2

Additional problem:

I tried building workflows that use the filter:

Marketing Suspended is none of Yes

HOWEVER, then you can’t re-enroll people using that filter. The whole point is this property will switch back and forth, so re-enrolling based on this property being the opposite value is crucial.

It seems like the only way to make a single checkbox field work reliably is to have a workflow set each value to no if it is blank for every new record. Any better ways?

3

Hi @CBentley7,

Creating a workflow that sets blank values to “No” would be the fastest option here. It’s also a simple and fast solution so I wouldn’t spend more time on exploring potentially better solutions (which I can’t think of).

If you wanted a field with two values only, a multiple checkboxes property or radio select property with only one option – however “is unknown” cannot be used for re-enrollment, if that’s one of your requirements.

Hope this helps!

4

Thanks @karstenkoehler this is basically what I ended up setting up. However, I wouldn’t say it is a simple option, since every property that you want to function as bolean you would need to set up a workflow to make blanks = No.

Also, as you point out, there is no re-enrollment for “unknown”. In the event that someone cleared the value for this property, they will not get reset to “No”. I have never seen another product use string fields for bolean field type, and I can’t imagine why it was designed that way.