Hi everyone,
My name is Megan Legge and I am a product manager at HubSpot for the workflows tool. Thank you for taking the time to leave detailed feedback about specific changes and why they have created difficulty and confusion for you. Our product team is absolutely listening and your feedback is crucial to us making improvements (which we certainly want to do). There are several different changes mentioned in these threads. I’d like to address the different changes and feedback that’s been raised for each.
Workflows index page (home page)
Last Summer we moved the Workflows list page to the same design system used by most other list pages throughout HubSpot. We are continuing to lean into this approach, and are actively working on a project to bring custom properties to Workflows (this project is currently in development). We are taking this approach to Workflow organization for the following reasons:
- To create an organizational system that leverages filters, custom views, and eventually enables workflow reporting by Workflow custom properties.
- To enable Workflows to live in multiple views (by combining custom views + custom properties) instead of in a single/flat folder structure.
- To create a consistent way of organizing objects throughout the HubSpot platform (contacts, campaigns, emails, workflows, etc.).
- With this change we were able to add the highly requested feature of subfolders to the workflows experience.
While we don’t plan on “reverting” the workflow list page to the previous experience, we would like for users to continue to share all thoughts and feedback on the new experience. We have already made several updates based on this feedback, and will continue to track and make additional updates in the future.
Please share all feedback on the Workflows list page and organization experience to Jessica Hartnagle at jhartnagle@hubspot.com
Moving the action panel to the Left side
We moved the workflow action and editing panel to the left side of the page to be aligned with other HubSpot tools. With this move to the left, we’re now repeating the pattern found in Lists, Reporting, Email, Webpages, Social and more, to create a consistent experience for customers. We have no plans to revert this change because we believe a cohesive experience across our tools is important.
Building Triggers
By re-crafting our triggers, we are simplifying the way that customers can create workflows without removing functionality. For instance, a popular use case has always been the ability to trigger a workflow when a property value changes. Before you could hack this with certain filters, but now you can simply select the “property value changed” event trigger to automatically trigger when the property is updated. It also allowed us to add several other new trigger types, like ones for new object types, custom behavioral event triggers and webhook triggers (now in beta). In addition to providing new types of triggers, we’re trying to bring clarity to things like re-enrollment. Please continue to provide feedback on how we can make the triggers UI even stronger, this is an area in which we want to continue to invest and iterate in the future. If you specifically would like to give more feedback about workflow triggers, please reach out to product manager Sierra Howard at showard@hubspot.com.
Building Filters
Like the move of the action panel to the left, the filtering process in workflows has been updated to mirror the filtering process of the Lists and Reporting tools to create a consistent experience and feature parity. The updated filter UI also brings many new filter categories to workflows that had previously only been available in the lists tool, for example marketing event and custom behavioral event filtering and associated ticket record properties filtering. Adopting the same filtering system as lists means that workflows will now get all the new filter features that are launched, for example relative date filtering which is coming soon. This change is out to all customers, and our team is continuing to gather feedback. The given examples around clickiness and button placement are helpful and will be considered for future improvements.
Reorganized action panel, Action card UI changes, Branching changes
One of the more obvious UI changes that a lot of comments in this thread are about is the UI changes of the action selection panel picker, the action cards within the workflow itself and the overall layout. To give context, these changes are in beta to a small percentage of customers and we are actively collecting feedback and making regular updates and improvements. We know large UI changes can be interruptive, so made it so this beta can be opted out of at any time, via the options in the lower left hand corner of the workflows tool. Please use that option if you do not want to use this new UI until it is more mature. To dive into some of the components and the reasons behind the changes, read on
We reorganized our actions by function to provide a more structured and searchable list, as the long list of actions was often perceived as overwhelming and unintuitive. We’ve also made it easier to view your connected apps and their actions, along with browsing for other workflow integrations and connecting straight from the workflows app. If you have specific thoughts about how we’re grouping actions and how they could be improved, please let us know.
We changed the action cards themselves and the layout of the cards with a goal of improving clarity and coherence, and reducing the sprawling nature of the previous design. We’ve heard from many of you that we removed too much information from some action cards, and are working through each of those to ensure we add back crucial components, for example we have now made the trigger card show more of the triggers and filters in the card than the previous design did. Before, to see longer triggers you’d have to click “show more” and now we’ve moved that to the “Show details” pop up - so the same amount of clicks (one) but a different display - we’re continuing to monitor feedback here. One reason for these changes is to improve the reliability of the workflows view. In the old world, with the action cards varying in height and changing height with clicks, the UI could be jumpy and shift with card expansion - making it hard to keep track of where you are in the map and also making it difficult to see more of your workflow steps in a single view. We also have greater aspirations for additional context and help content in the “Show details” pop up, for example it could show reporting information, use case examples, or suggestions. We’re continuing to gather feedback here and your specific examples are helpful.
At the same time, some customers feel we’re also now showing too much information, which is leading to overwhelm. For example the “Ready” status is meant to indicate that the action is properly configured and has no errors, however we’ve gotten lots of feedback that it’s confusing and not helpful, so we’re in the process of removing it.
Branches are specifically getting the most varying feedback. We want to make improvements here and are considering several options and would benefit from your input here.
We have also gotten feedback that the overall look is too faint and indistinct, so we are working on an improvement to add more contrast and easier viewing by adding in more color. Again these are all things we want to make better before we roll this change out more widely, and your feedback is crucial to us making those decisions.
I’d be grateful to hear more from those of you that are sharing here on the topic of "Reorganized action panel, Action card UI changes, Branching changes" and welcome you to schedule time with me to discuss your feedback in more detail. I will reach out to each of you that have commented and ask you to book time with me if you want.
In summary, thanks again for all the engagement, we really do want to hear from you and improve.
Best,
Megan Legge
HubSpot Product
