We have certain workflows that automatically send SMS messages to customers. We need to add the contact owner’s phone number/name as variables in the message body.
However, there seems to be a disconnect between the contact owner and the User object. Even if I add the additional data object as “User” and use the phone number field, it doesn’t pick up the contact owner’s phone number.
Is there a workaround for this?
How does the association between a contact and a user work?
Contact Owner is a user id on the contact, not a live join to the User object inside most workflow actions. That is why picking User → phone usually comes back empty even when the owner field is set.
Workarounds that hold up:
Mirror the fields you need onto the contact (or company) with a tiny sync workflow: when Contact owner is known / changed, copy Owner full name and Owner phone (or a dedicated SMS-from number) into contact properties like owner_display_name / owner_sms_number. Reference those contact properties in the SMS body.
If you only need the name, some SMS tokens can use the owner token HubSpot exposes for contacts. Phone is the one that usually fails unless you mirrored it.
Avoid “additional data = User” unless you have an explicit association path that points at that same owner user. In practice the mirror properties are less fragile than hoping the join works in every action type.
Keep the mirrored phone as E.164 and treat it as ops-owned config when someone changes owners in bulk.
If you say whether the SMS action is native HubSpot SMS or a webhook/custom code action, easy to narrow which of those four is the least messy.
Thanks @kishoreaxioprax ,
How do you define this?
Avoid “additional data = User” unless you have an explicit association path that points at that same owner user.
I checked the object mapping and there is an association between contact object and user object. So I’m not sure where else you can define an association.
Hi @AAdmin7
The Contact Owner is linked to a HubSpot user, but not all user properties are available as personalization tokens in SMS workflows. If the owner’s phone number isn’t pulling through, a practical workaround is to sync the owner’s name and phone number into custom contact properties and use those in your SMS message instead.
Thanks!
Which action are you using this in? In the send email / internal email actions you can insert the contact owner tokens (name, email etc.) through the personalize option. If it’s a webhook or custom code action, you’d need to pull the owner property in separately. Let me know which one and I can point you better.
Hi @AAdmin7 ,
You’ve already tried adding the User object as additional data, so I think the confusing part here is how HubSpot handles Contact Owner behind the scenes. The Contact Owner property points to a HubSpot user, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the user’s properties are available as variables in every workflow action.
For the SMS use case, the simplest workaround I’ve seen is to create contact properties such as Owner Name and Owner Phone, then keep those values synced whenever the Contact Owner changes. You can then use those contact properties directly in the SMS action instead of trying to pull the phone number through the User object.
If you’re using a webhook or custom-code action, there may be another option where you retrieve the owner ID first and then look up the user, but for a standard SMS workflow I’d go with the mirrored properties. It’s a little less elegant, but much more reliable.