Collaborative Product Development: Partner Admin + Client Access Manager

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To help our community of Solutions Partners more easily manage their employees’ access to Client accounts, we worked through an entire product development lifecycle collaborating hand-in-hand with Partners to make sure we were getting things right along the way.

Clearly defining problems, investigating assumptions, and evaluating solutions is a creative, dynamic, and cyclical process which - when done right - results in products that people love. Without the proper input from our Partners, we would undoubtedly have been led astray by our own biases, assumptions, and misconceptions.  

The purpose of this post is twofold:

1. To give a behind-the-scenes view of what this collaboration looks like in practice
2. To acknowledge and thank our Partners who have generously contributed their time and perspective throughout this process

Discovery

In the Discovery phase, we explored questions such as:

1. How are things done today?
2. What’s working well?
3. What’s not working well?

We learned that our Partners have been finding it very difficult to manage user access across dozens or even hundreds of Client accounts. The typical workflow we uncovered was for Partners to ask the Client to add one employee as a super admin and that employee would add the rest of the team (typically as super admins).

This workflow presented challenges for clients who were brand-new to HubSpot since they weren’t familiar with how to add a new user to their HubSpot account, which resulted in service delays. This workflow also presents trust and safety concerns because Partner Employees nearly always receive super admin permissions in Client accounts, even when their role may not require super admin privileges.

Participatory Design + User Testing

In participatory design and user testing, we explored questions such as:

1. Are we thinking about this the right way?
2. What are the most important features?
3. Is our design usable?

During this phase, we were able to identify the most critical features and functionality that we needed to prioritize for our MVP. We learned that the easiest way for Partners to get access to Client accounts would be a re-usable access link that could be shared repeatedly with new Clients and approved in a single click. This idea actually came directly from a Partner we spoke with and led to a full re-work of our initial design!

We also learned that it was crucial for us to add support for adding and removing Partner Employees from the Client account, which informed the earliest version of the Client Access Manager app. Thanks to Partner input, we learned that a common challenge was removing a former employee from all Client accounts and handling any assets (e.g. tasks, reports) that were owned by that employee. This led us to build a brand new experience for Partners to remove their employees from all Client accounts in a single guided wizard!

Private Beta

In a private beta, we explored questions such as:

1. Is it working well in “the real world”?
2. Are you experiencing any issues?
3. What suggestions do you have to improve things?

The private beta was a very exciting and engaging time to talk to Partners about their initial impressions of the new Partner Admin Permission Set and Client Access Manager. Our primary finding was that Partners were generally excited about the approach we were taking, but still had concerns about the Partner Admin Permission Set and whether it would truly provide them with all the permissions they need in Client accounts.

Based on Partner feedback, we have been able to refine and update the permission set to include access to view product subscription and renewal data, access to CRM development tools, and changed the way Partner Admins appear in the Users list.

Stay Tuned!

We’re very proud to hear that the Client Access Manager app is already making our Partners’ lives easier and increasing trust and safety between Partners and Clients. Stay tuned for the following product updates which will only make things better!

• Remove all Employees from a single Client in a single flow
• Re-assign assets to another user when removing a Partner Employee from Clients
• Deactivate and reactivate Partner Employees in Client accounts

Thank you

Finally, the team would like to offer a very heartfelt thank you to the following Partners whose guidance, input, and feedback have been invaluable to the Partner Admin Permission Set and Client Access Manager. While this list is not comprehensive - and we appreciate every single Partner who has contributed to this effort - we felt that these Partners in particular deserve special recognition for the consistent support and feedback they’ve provided.

• Andimol
• Bridge Rev
• Eternal Works
• Hype & Dexter
• Instrumental Group
• Remotish

We appreciate you and couldn’t have done it without you!