Nov 30, 20203:21 AM - edited Nov 30, 20203:31 AM
HubSpot Employee
How to create a 'Today's date' date property.
SOLVE
I recently discovered this smart way to create and maintain a 'Today's date' property using workflows. This can then be used in reporting, workflows and lists.
To do this you can follow these steps: 1) Create a custom date field property
2) Create a contact-based workflow with the enrollment triggers 'Today's date is known' OR 'Today's date in unknown'. 3) Turn on re-enrollment for 'Today's date is known'. 4) Add an if/then branch action with the trigger 'Today's date is known'. 5) After the NO branch add the action 'set property value' and then set 'Today's date' to the 'date of step'. 6) After the YES branch add the the action 'set property value' and then set 'Today's date' to the 'date of step'. 7) The last steps after the YES branch will be a delay. To do this you will chose 'delay until a day or time' and then choose 00:15 or any other time after midnight.
This workflow will then work in the backround to always make sure each contact has today's date saved as the value on their record. The same can be repeated for company and deal properties.
It really is so crazy that “Today’s Date” isn’t a native value available globally in HubSpot. The workflow outlined in this post is a great workaround though. I recorded a quick video of setting it up, which hopefully is helpful to folks.
I am not sure why it needs to be so complicated. I found a solution that simply changes the date if it is not known or is over a day old. It would be nice if HubSpot simply fixed the issue by providing an option to select todays date (rolling).
There is a new option in Workflows for a SCHEDULED workflow option. If you have the ability to set up a scheduled workflow option here is what the setup should look like now for an EASY Today's Date property for any object.
@JOpie Re: the 1 minute delay -- We've run into issues with our workflows where too many fields are being updated at the exact same moment and Hubspot can't recognize the "new" data fast enough. In this example, the workflow is first setting the "Today's Date" field on the contact, then copying that field to other associated objects. Without a delay, Hubspot might not have processed the updated date fast enough and therefore wouldn't copy any new data over in steps 5-7. So I always add short delays like that into most of our workflows just to err on the side of caution and give Hubspot enough time to process the new data that's being relied upon for later steps in the workflow.
Absolutely makes sense. I have a workflow when deals enter our confirmation stage that has a 1 hour delay: that allows the deal owner to finalise that deal stage (we often have very complex deals) without having the workflow immediately triggered and actions taken that the sales manager didn't want done until all the dots and crosses were taken care of.
Yeah, I started with a 1 minute delay in these scenarios. After a long history and a lot of frustration, I'm now defaulting to a 3 minute delay (and that doesn't even get us to 100%).
Is this method still working for you? Mine is note. The workflow is not re-enrolling the contact into the workflow because the "Today's Date" property becoming known happens while it is still in the workflow. Therefore, it does not trigger re-enrollment. Did something change or have any of you found a workaround for this?
Thanks for providing this alternative solution @DColeman7. I just wanted to post for others reading this that I don't believe a scheduled workflow like this would be an option if you don't have Operations Hub Professional.
I am still blown away by the lack of a basic, referenceable global property with Today's date. I've sank hours over days testing & troubleshooting custom workflows for different record objects...at this point I'm spending more time being a HubSpot Developer than I am doing my actual job.
Incredible that such a fundamental/rudimentary thing has been being asked for for years & somehow hasn't been prioritized. One of many of the small time-sinks in the platform that makes the cost of a more effective tool/platform worth it.
Thank you for your feedback, I would like to apologize for the frustration and the business impact this has caused.
At the moment our best recommendation is to please leave your feedback on the Ideas Forum. Our product team, who monitors the forum regularly, can read your specific use case and understand why this would be a useful functionality or change. It also helps other customers facing the same issue to advocate for its implementation on your behalf by upvoting on the thread as well.
Thank you,
Kristen
Did you know that the Community is available in other languages? Join regional conversations by changing your language settings !
After a bit of struggle to implement this on deal objects, I found that you actually need to set the delay before the action on the 'YES' branch, otherwise it runs the workflow and then delays updating until 12:15, leaving you with Today's Date being one day behind.
Hi @ajacobsmeyer when you set this up, did you have any enrollment issues; I keep getting a 'fatal error' that prevents contacts from enrolling in the WF, here is the test contact, here is the error, here is the WF.
Yeah, unfortunately, I ran into the same issue and forgot to update here. I have tried working with Hubspot support but no one could help me figure it out.