CRM

Jonno_Price
Guide | Platinum Partner
Guide | Platinum Partner

Apr 2022 Association labels rollout - changes to import process

Hello. 

I spend a lot of time managing crm data via exports and imports for clients and I understand the process very well. However this morning I've had unexpected results in a client portal which as far as I can tell is due to the recent rollout (18Apr22) of Association labels

Whereas before if you imported contacts and included a Company ID column - the contact would simply associate to that company as the Primary company (it would replace any existing association) via the import process... Now however, if the contact is already associated to a different Primary Company in HS then it doesn't replace this association. It adds a new company association leaving the previous primary association in place.

So the question is - how do I via import remove the association of an existing primary company and replace it with a new primary company? 

After scouring through all the knowledgebase articles I cannot find how to do so. When following the import process I used before the contacts now have 2 companies associated to them. The old Primary Company, and the new additional company association. I don't want 2 - I simply want to replace the existing. It can be done via the HubSpot UI but what is the process for imports? 

Many thanks in advance.


Jonno Price
Growth London Ltd.
Platinum Hubspot Solutions Partner

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4 Replies 4
jeffvincent
HubSpot Product Team
HubSpot Product Team

Apr 2022 Association labels rollout - changes to import process

Hey Jonno, really appreciate you calling this out. Right now, here's what I'm recommending for users who want to overwrite existing associations as part of an import:

 

If this is a regular part of the process (example: student records being updated with school associations each year), the Import2 team has added support for overwriting associations in an import. Here is a link to their tool.

 

Worth calling out this is also possible via custom integration using our REST APIs. Won't solve the problem for imports specifically, but for anyone chancing across this post from an integration standpoint that is possible as well. Here is the link to our API documentation.

 

The Associ8 team is adding support for removing associations to their tool. If you already have a workflow running post-import, that could be another way to get this done. Link to check out Associ8.

 

If this is part of a more complex migration, can't recommend TruJay enough. Here's their website.

 

We'll continue listening to feedback to determine if native support for this in our import tool is widely needed. Thanks for sharing this pain point!

Jonno_Price
Guide | Platinum Partner
Guide | Platinum Partner

Apr 2022 Association labels rollout - changes to import process

Hi @jeffvincent - was curious to know if other partners / users have been adding their voice to reinstating the ability to bulk manage removing associations as part of native functionality - the way it used to be possible to do prior to the labels rollout?

PS. I've now submitted this as an idea here in case anyone else chances across this post


Jonno Price
Growth London Ltd.
Platinum Hubspot Solutions Partner

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kvlschaefer
Community Manager
Community Manager

Apr 2022 Association labels rollout - changes to import process

Hi @Jonno_Price,

 

Thanks for your feedback! 

You are correct that this is related to the April 18th update. I've surfaced your feedback to the product team, and they are actively investigating improvements to this process. 

While I don't have a timeline for when we have next steps, I will update you as soon as I have more information. 

Thank you again for sharing your thoughts!

 

Best,

Kristen


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Jonno_Price
Guide | Platinum Partner
Guide | Platinum Partner

Apr 2022 Association labels rollout - changes to import process

Thanks Kristen, appreciate the response and good to know it is being looked into. 

Just to add in case anyone else chances across this post: 
- It is possible to replace the existing Primary company via import by adding an Associations Label column with the word "Primary"
- However - where before HubSpot would rremove the existing company association and replace with the new - now what happens is it still leaves the old company associated. So you end up with 2 companies associated - the new one with Primary as the label and the previous company (now with no label) 
- as far as I can tell, there is currently no way to remove the previous company association via the import function. 

Thanks again to you and the dev team (plus Kyle J via LinkedIn 🙂 ) for looking into this. 

Best,

Jonno


Jonno Price
Growth London Ltd.
Platinum Hubspot Solutions Partner

Did my post help answer your query? Please help the community by marking it as a solution.