Deleted Tasks and workflow delays

[JBogard]

I have users who delete tasks that are attached to a workflow delay.  I have the delay triggered to exit when the task has been completed.  A lot of the time the delay is set to exit automatically after 365 days because of the type of tasks we have.  

Is there a way to have the delay exited if the task is deleted as well as completed?  Or is there a better way to do this that I haven't thought of?  I need the delay based on the task deleted and it can't be based on a period of time or a particular date.

[ChrisChin_LLF]

Not exactly sure what you need to do here in terms of followup steps, but am assuming you want to exit the delay so you can immediately do followup steps if the task is deleted. You should be able to do this by selecting "Delay until Event Occurrence" option. This will give you the option to delay until the task stage is deleted / completed or 365 days have passed.

More info on that can be found here: 

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-delays

If my reply answered your question please mark it as a solution to make it easier for others to find.

Cheers!

Chris Chin

Local Leaf Marketing

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[karstenkoehler]

@ChrisChin_LLF could you please elaborate on that?

If a contact is already within a delay that waits for the task to be completed (this would be the standard scenario and a requirement that, as far as I understand from the original post, would have to be met), how would they leave that delay and enter a different "Delay until event occurrence" with different completion conditions?

Vice versa, if one sets up a delay with different conditions, how would a contact move on when a task is completed (and not deleted)?

[ChrisChin_LLF]

This would replace the normal delay for 365 conditions to instead be a "delay until event occurrence" step. Then your primary condition is to go to next step if the event (i.e. if task is completed or deleted), and if it doesn't pass within that within 365 days as the max time in that step for the "delay period" to be 365 days. Screenshot below shows you how you could conceivably set that up to have two alternate exit criteria. 

Doing a little bit of guessing on their config as I'm not in their workflow obviously, but think this gives you the ability to have alternate exit criteria instead of a standard just time based delay.

[karstenkoehler]

@ChrisChin_LLF can you share how exactly one would set up a delay until a task is deleted? I'm not aware of any corresponding configuration.

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @JBogard,

As far as I know, this cannot be solved through the existing workflow delay options. You could of course use fixed delays and check if the task still exists and is uncompleted, but that would mean that a record wouldn't progress immediately when a task is completed.

The easiest option will be, I think, to train these particular users to not delete their tasks but complete them.

Luckily, task deletion permissions are on the way: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Permission-to-delete-activities/idi-p/442562

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Hi all - thanks so much for your feedback. I'm the product manager on permissions here and so far we have delivered delete permissions for CRM Emails and Notes. Next we are working on delete permissions for Calls, Meetings, and Tasks. I'll update here when it's in beta!

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With those, you could simply remove task deletion permissions.

Best regards!