I have a workflow set, that is triggered when a contact submits a form on our website. Part of this workflow is that the contact is given the lifecycle stage “Active Contact” (similar to subscriber). However, what do I do when the contact is already a prospect, customer etc. - so farther ahead in the lifecycle stages?
With my workflow settings I’m assuming this person will be labeled as “Active Contact” again, even though their actual status didn’t change.
Is there a way I can set this up in workflows so that submissions will be set as “Active Contact” or stay in the lifecycle stage they are in, if they are already further ahead?
Hope that makes sense. Can anyone help me out?
Hi @STrummer,
By default, contacts will not move back in lifecycle stage. Unless you make an active effort to clear the field (using the ‘Edit record’ workflow action), HubSpot will only let you move a contact forward in lifecycle stage, not backward. The attempt to move a contact backwards will throw a (harmless) error.
Imports, forms, APIs, the Salesforce integration, and the Set a property value action in a chatflow or workflow can only set a record’s default Lifecycle stage property forward. To set the lifecycle stage backward via these tools, you will first need to clear the record’s existing lifecycle stage value. The value can be cleared manually, or may be automatically cleared via a workflow or an integration that syncs contact data.
Best regards
Thank you very much for the quick and helpful reply!
Does that mean that if I set the workflow to change the lifecycle stage to “Active Contact” (in edit record) and do NOT check the option “clear existing property value”, the workflow will only change the lifecycle stages of contacts before the stage “Active Contact” and leave all the later ones untouched? Or will I get an error which you mentioned?
@STrummer if you do not clear the value and the workflow attempts to set a contact to an earlier lifecycle stage, this will not happen and you will get a harmless error, the contact will remain in their (later) lifecycle stage.
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What you can do here is build a workflow that controls lifecycle stage movement and prevents contacts from moving backwards. HubSpot doesn’t block this by default, so if someone updates a contact manually or via integration, the stage might get overwritten. To avoid that, set up a workflow that only allows forward movement—using if/then branches that check the current stage before making any changes. This way, you make sure no one accidentally resets a contact’s lifecycle progress.