Mapping Associations w/ Hubspot Sync for Airtable

[aeley05]

Hello there,

I am leveraging our Operations Hub Starter account to set up a sync between datasets in Airtable / Hubspot. Essentially, I am just trying to sync the basic CRM data (companies / contacts).

So far, I have successfully importated data in both platforms, and set up both company and contact syncs with no errors. What I can't figure out how to do for the life of me is to sync associations between the two platforms. Which ever options I choose, it always shows up as a "custom mapping", and never an association mapping. And for example, I am able to choose "Parent Company" within the Hubspot side, but there are no field types in Airtable that this seems willing to sync with.

The post here seems to indicate that the associations being mapped with automatically show up, but I see nothing when I filter for association mappings: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/integrations/connect-and-use-hubspot-data-sync#understand-associations

It was quite easy to establish associations when uploading from a CSV file, and I was able to successfully create contact / company associations, as well as associations between parent / child companies.

Can someone help me figure out how to keep these associations in sync?

[mangelet]

Now that you've got associations available in DataSync with Airtable (as @FransLeys mentioned earlier), I think that should sort things out for you.

Here's a link for you to check out, and it includes an example with Airtable.

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/integrations/association-mapping-with-data-sync

[MBusel]

Not sure if you're still looking for a solution here, but you might want to check out the HubSpot app Whalesync: 

https://app.hubspot.com/ecosystem/39783432/marketplace/apps/whalesync

It supports Associations across tables (like Companies/Contacts) as part of its 2-way sync across HubSpot and Airtable.

[FransLeys]

The Airtable app bu HubSpot got associations support last month. It’s in
the product updates section 🙂

[MBusel]

Hi! Not sure if you've gotten this solved already but wanted to share that Whalesync has a HubSpot x Airtable 2-way sync integration that handles associations out of the box: 

https://ecosystem.hubspot.com/marketplace/apps/productivity/connector/whalesync

[FransLeys]

Unfortunately, this is not something that our Airtable app can currently sync over, or even be allowed to set. It's something that's top of mind for us, but the deep customization possible inside of Airtable makes this a tough nut to crack inside of our data sync framework. With our regular CRMs (think Dynamics, Pipedrive, Zoho,...) we are able to do it, but that's because the associations in those apps are made in a different way.

[aeley05]

Thank you for your response. I understand that it might be a challenge, but given how easy it was to map associations from the upload of the csv output from Airtable, I'm hopeful there is a solution.

I uploaded using the multiple files with associations option. You had an option that allowed me to pick an "association label" which worked well. For example, I have a unique company ID for each contact, which matches the record ID for each company.

if Hubspot was able to just recognize these and associate them (they way you were able to do when I uploaded), that would solve the issue.

Will remain hopeful that this is an option in the future!

[A_4]

Hi @aeley05,

Have you been able to find a solution?

Did you try ByteLine and/or WhaleSync?

[FransLeys]

There's a big difference between how import & sync deal with associations.

For one - they're built by different teams at different times for different audiences. We do realize those audiences are converging so it's something we're keeping a close eye on 🙂  In import, you explicitly tell us what objects need to be associated to what by means of spoonfeeding us the record id's.

In contrast, in sync, none of that is happening, and we actually deduce & replicate associations ourselves on the basis of some universal truths such as knowing what data refers to a contact, and what dataset will be pertaining to companies. This works beautifully for CRMs, but in Airtable we can't assume any of that. Every Airtable database looks exactly the same but underlying it can contain contacts, companies, puppies or whatever. Now as you can see we can easily sync those single tables into HubSpot's respective objects.. but when it comes to keeping associations in sync, that's one level too deep. 

The open challenge for us now is how do we let you, during sync setup, declaratively construct custom associations.