Find Contacts with no active Tasks scheduled

[#1]

Hi,

I'm trying to filter for contacts with no tasks scheduled. I've tried Next Activity Date is unknown, but that finds contacts that do have active tasks.

What does Next Activity Date and Last Activity Date reflect?

Is there a way to filter for no tasks or meetings scheduled?

Thanks,

Jeff

[#2]

Hi @jhdean,

The "Next Activity Date" and "Last Activity Date" properties refer to the last/next time a note, call, email, meeting, or task was logged for a contact.

You can read more about these here:

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/contacts/whats-the-difference-between-the-last-co...

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/articles/kcs_article/contacts/what-activities-will-update-the-next-act...

At this time, it is not possible to filter contacts by whether or not they have a task associated with them - we do not yet have a contact property that records task activities specifically. However, I can definitely see the use case for this, and would encourage you to post about it on our Ideas Forum here in the Community whenever you get the chance!

May

[#3]

Gotta have this folks.  Reps with 100+ Leads at any given time RELY on Tasks to keep everything sorted for their daily operations / touches. 

Sorting and listing on 'last activity date', 'creation date', or the like just doesn't give a true picture of a lead slipping through the cracks.  Correct me if I'm wrong but a generic Marketing Email (i.e. newsletter or blog announcement) sent to a Contact will update the "last activity date".  This is not a fair representation of the Sales Rep's 'last activity date'.

Contact records do have "next activity date", which factors in future Tasks scheduled.  However, Deals DO NOT have this field...sigh.  So if a Rep is busy, happens to be in the Deal record, rather than the Contact record (it happens!), and adds the next Task...the Rep MUST remember to now add the Contact to this Task, while having a sandwich in one hand and a phone in the other...it's not going to happen folks.

It seems that adding a Task to a Deal does not automatically associate to the Contact(s) linked with the Deal.  Thus, 

The biggest challenge I see right now with Reps is having to work out of Contacts AND Deals...where you work with Contacts that have not had their Opportunity defined yet (early in the sales cycle) and working with the obvious Deals (pushing them through the stages).

However, these two HubSpot 'entities' do not have the same style of "next steps" functionality.  Yes, they both have Tasks, but the linkage is manual and Deals doesn't capture the next Task Date, while Contacts does.  We can't figure out how to keep things from falling through the cracks...too many different variables.

I'd rather see a feature to:

1) turn off the creation of Tasks at the Deal level (i.e. force the Contact Task, so reporting on missing Next-Tasks is possible), or

2) feature to auto-associate the Contact with a Deal Task (so reporting on missing Next-Tasks is possible, at the Contact-level)

3) add "Next Activity Date" to Deals, OR

4) add the field "Next Task Date" field to all records...which still doesn't address the fact that you couldn't easily report on an Opportunity with no next Task created.

Where do Reps work from when they have high volumes of leads?

[#4]

You can actually easy find deals without a task. Simply create a filter where "Next activity date" : "is unknown". Good luck!

[#5]

Hi Jeff,

If I right understand want your asking here you want to find all your contacts/companies that have no open tasks against them is this right?

If so this is possible to do you just need to build a workaround which happy to explain if you haven't already worked this out or have the answer to it.

Dwain

[#6]

Dwain,

I would love to know this work around to finding contacts with no scheduled tasks.

Thanks!

Rebekah

[#7]

I would also love to know the solution for this!

[#8]

Hi @Dwain, 

We would love to hear more about the workaround you have figured out. Can you share it here? 

Thanks,
Jenny

[#9 · Accepted solution]

Firstly, you will have to excuse me as I’m not the best at explaining things just good at solving them.

How to find all leads with no “OPEN TASK” this can also work for deals, meetings and so on.

Steps:

1. Create a Property field under a “contact” or company if you wish as a “Checkbox” for this I’m calling it “NAME” you can call this whatever you want. We call it “lifecycle filter” as this is what we use it for. Place the types of activities you need to filter i.e “Open Tasks”

2. Create a 'Company workflow'. Call it 'open tasks / live tasks' the enrolment trigger would be 'Task status' is any of In Progress, Not Started, Waiting or Deferred then press the + for the next step. Set property value 'Property Type' Contact 'Property to Set' NAME 'NAME' Open Task. Then turn on and enrol all your contacts

3. You then need to complete another workflow in 'contacts' doing the same thing just in case people have placed the task on one and not the other.

4. You then need to do the same workflow for a deal, same reason as above if you're using deals.

5. Once you have completed this you will have all your companies' open tasks marked as 'Open Task' in your field named 'NAME'

6. The final stage is to build an active list stating 'contact properties' NAME is none of 'Open Task' this list will have everyone in your database with no open tasks

7. From here you can create a task and assign them to people or simply do as you need to. You can see by my screengrab above, I filter open tasks and open deals.. it takes time to set up but once it's set up you can run your pipeline more effectively.

Note - It won't let me add the screengrabs

I hope this helps - if you need any more help to let me know and I can arrange something to help you further.

Dwain

[#10]

Thank you very much for this Dwain!

I implemented it as well and I think this approach works as workaround to find the companies withouth tasks.

I added some more enrolment criterias so that companies get enrolled whenever something changes in their open task status or a new company gets created.

Cheerz,

Maurice

Active Task Workflow

[#11]

Hi Maurice,

Great work I'm glad it helps you out, I have open deals in mine too as I've built a custom lifecycle for the company.

Dwain

[#12]

Is there any way to do this with Queues?  i.e.  Show tasks that are not in a queue?

I was thinking of using queues to prioritise and categorise work.   

eg  Proposal Queue

or

Important (High Value) Proposals Queue

or 

Hot, warm, cold etc

I just can't think of a good way for reps to use hubspot efficiently without deals falling through gaps.  

Should they live on the task screen?  The queue screen?  I can't find much info on this, and so would love to hear how companies are using hubspot in practice.  

Thanks