Can I see a list of companies I follow? Or clients I follow?

[wgalvin]

Hi, There have been changes to which companies I manage. I would like to see a high level list of which companies I follow to make sure I haven't missed any.  Do I have to click into each company and client to check if I follow them?

[Mike_Eastwood]

Hi @wgalvin 

By follow do you mean Companies you Own? (to use HubSpot's language)

If so it's easy to Filter a list of Companies, Contacts or Deals to show only the ones you "own" (full instructions).

Is that what you mean?

Mike

[wgalvin]

Thnaks Mike,

Not companies I own. I am "Account Manager" for companies and "Contact Manager" for Contacts. I do not know if those categories make me an automatic "follower". That is why I wan to see a list what I am following - to make sure I am not missing notifications. Also I seem to follow companies where I used to be owner. An overview of what I follow would help me manage that. The alternative is to click into 60 accounts and hundreds of contacts. 

William

[Mike_Eastwood]

Hi William

Can't see an easy way to filter a list of Companies or Contacts you follow.

However, could you set up notifications (full instructions here) to keep on top of things?

-Mike

[wgalvin]

Thanks Mike,

I get all the notifications, which show me that I need a way to manage them. There seems to be no way to manage what I follow, to see an overview of which companies I follow and which contacts. All the "following" has been automatic, all done for me, I can't think of a single instance where I made myself a follower. But has it all been done correctly? I need to know if there are gaps in what I follow. I may be missing companies or contacts.

1) I need to know the rules for automatic following. (For example, is a client manager automatically made a follower?)

2) I need an overview to see all the contacts and companies that I follow. Without that I cannot manage my notifications.

The alternative is to click into every company and every contact to see if I am following them which I don't have time for.  I need a way to verify that I am not missing notifications. Does that make sense? 

[Mike_Eastwood]

Hmmm... I had a rummage around in the back-end and I can't see any way to do what you want using the "following" feature.

So, you may need to add a Custom Property to your Contacts, Companies and/or Deals. 

With Custom Properties you can sort and filter lists (by the property) and export the information if that's useful.

If you have HubSpot Marketing Pro you could automatically copy Custom Property values betweent he Company and Contact.

Would that work for you?

Mike

[charles_richard]

Agreed with wgalvin you guys should add a section where you can see every company / customer that you are following. Just to be able to have a global view of all of them at once and be able to manage them.

Thanks 🙂

[iats72]

I am also in agreement. I would like to be able to view everything that I'm following. We are automatically assigned to follow when we are a contact owner. But I choose not to follow every one of those. We need more control and be able to view these. It would also be nice if the follow feature was not a default setting. The default should be not to follow, then activate the follow option. 

[ReneArbefeuille]

I agree with all of you, and Mike did not seem to understand the usefullness of this request.

The flag "Follow" / "unfollow" does not seem to be a property of the contact/company itself but rather a status. 

So I think it would be very usefull to be able to manage a list of entities that we follow / not follow and easily change the flags for multiple entries.

In my company, I own  all contacts, but don't need to follow those managed by my sales team. rather, I need to assign them the follow-up notifications.

Simple, but HS does not seem so!

Thanks

[MFalloretta]

I also struggle with this! I already receive notifications for every ticket that I'm the owner of or every mention that is made towards me, but there was 1 particular ticket I am not the owner of but wanted to follow so that I could see how the owner handled it, for learning purposes. However, once I enabled follow notifications, my email was blowing up with activities on records, deals, contacts, etc. that I had never manually selected to follow, and I spent more time manually unfollowing all of these records. All I wanted was to follow 1 single ticket. I also feel the default should be not to follow.

[adyer_MBS]

We've had similar issues and gladly upvote this feature.

A few issues/considerations to add to the discussion. Using HubSpot's language (and some additional terms from the thread), but translating for one real-world use case:

• "Owner": this is a property supplied by HubSpot usable in filtering, workflows, etc. This is the person who (for us), ultimately, should be responsible for the overall hygiene of the record — up-to-date properties, correct associations, etc. Could be an overall rep/mgr assigned to an account, or (in some cases) a HubSpot account admin.
• "Custom properties": this is often suggested by HubSpot support and other super-users. It's very useful, but if not monitored closely for scale, can result in record bloat, making the properties so numerous as to be hard to find/interpret, and make exports massive/unwieldy. That said, it's use (at least in our case) is in assigning additional responsible/consulted parties to the record, say:
  • The accounting rep/mgr
  • The supply chain rep/mgr
  • The tech/client support rep/mgr
  • The onboarding specialist
  • ...
• "Following": this could be anyone else in your organization who needs high-level updates on a record, but is not responsible for its upkeep, say: a director who reports on the performance of a rep team, a researcher who identifies record types for specific activity/reporting.

With these is mind, it would make sense for HubSpot to keep these "assignments" distinct and separate. E.G., I would like to be able to customize notifications for both records that I own and those I follow. Currently, these two are conflated in your account/user settings. In the meantime, we have used custom properties (in conjuction with lists, views, workflows, etc.) to work around the current settings, but with the aforementioned issues in mind.

😄

[dsimmons12]

As a product manager trying to track contacts and opportunities for my particular products, it would be very helpful to be see one overarching list of everything I've followed rather than having to manually create a new field to follow a company, contact or sales opp or hoping that everything gets updated and shows up in my notifications. I want to be able to make sure nothing is slipping through the cracks, but I can't do so the way HB organises those followed categories currently (i.e., in not making it a filterable category). It's incredibly aggravating. Can't believe it's there as an option on the record page but not in the contacts, etc. list.