CRM

OliviaB
HubSpot Employee
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
2020-11-30 16_06_15-Property settings.png

 

2020-11-30 16_05_51-Property settings.png

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. 

2020-11-30 16_19_56-Unnamed workflow - Mon Nov 30 2020 16_09_04 GMT+0800 _ HubSpot.png

 


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. 


4 Accepted solutions
DColeman7
Solution
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

I tried a few of the options in this post to get a reliablew "Today's Date" property on my deals. I didn't have luck for a long time!

 

However, I finally found a reliable solution which is to create a Scheduled Workflow, rather than adding in a delay. 

 

So before you create the workflow make sure you've chosen "Schedule" in the list. 

 

Screenshot 2022-05-19 at 09.57.00.png

 

And then this workflow worked for me: 

 

Screenshot 2022-05-19 at 09.50.18.png

 

Re-enrollment is on with all conditions. 

 

It updates daily and doesnt seem to slow my account. 

 

Hope it works for you! 

 

Thanks

Duncan

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stuartbalcombe
Solution
Participant | Partner
Participant | Partner

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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 find myself reaching for Today’s date a lot in reporting and other workflows. Here's are a quick example use case of building a custom report to get visibility into onboarding activity.

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DLarsen21
Solution
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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).Set Date to Today.jpg

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NeKing
Solution
HubSpot Employee
HubSpot Employee

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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. 

 

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82 Replies 82
RMietti
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

@boydjk88 thank you for sharing these screenshots.

Could you share how did you setup the scheduling for this workflows?

Thank you!

0 Upvotes
JOpie
Top Contributor

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

You could combine those into one: trigger would be known, unknown; then a if-then for yes and no/unknown. Why the 1 minute delay? 

0 Upvotes
boydjk88
Contributor

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

@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.

JOpie
Top Contributor

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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.

Amevian
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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%).

RMietti
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

Hi @stuartbalcombe 

 

Thanks for colaboration!

Could you send a screenshot or video of this workflows? 

 

Thanks a lot!

0 Upvotes
VRakitski
Contributor

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

Hi there,

I can't figure out why but it doesn't work for me with deals.
Enrollmentt happens once and 'Today's date' is no longer updated. What's wrong?

VRakitski_1-1672728809837.pngVRakitski_2-1672728866123.png

 

0 Upvotes
Amevian
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

From what I can tell, this method no longer works unless you have Operations. . .

deanrenshaw
Contributor

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

That is mega @stuartbalcombe 

0 Upvotes
kvlschaefer
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

This is great! Thanks for sharing this video with us, @stuartbalcombe


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DColeman7
Solution
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

I tried a few of the options in this post to get a reliablew "Today's Date" property on my deals. I didn't have luck for a long time!

 

However, I finally found a reliable solution which is to create a Scheduled Workflow, rather than adding in a delay. 

 

So before you create the workflow make sure you've chosen "Schedule" in the list. 

 

Screenshot 2022-05-19 at 09.57.00.png

 

And then this workflow worked for me: 

 

Screenshot 2022-05-19 at 09.50.18.png

 

Re-enrollment is on with all conditions. 

 

It updates daily and doesnt seem to slow my account. 

 

Hope it works for you! 

 

Thanks

Duncan

Amevian
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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?

0 Upvotes
boydjk88
Contributor

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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.

 

2022-07-25_19-13-23.png

DWoods
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

Thanks @DColeman7. Any reason why the delay wasn't working? 

0 Upvotes
kvlschaefer
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

This is great, @DColeman7! Thanks for sharing! 🙂 


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JGolden
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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.

wmbutler
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

I'm not blown away by any of the shortcomings of Hubspot anymore. I have come to expect mediocrity.

kvlschaefer
Community Manager
Community Manager

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

Hi @JGolden,

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


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ajacobsmeyer
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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. Set Delay.png

GSalazar100
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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.

Screen Shot 2022-06-16 at 7.01.06 AM.png

 

Screen Shot 2022-06-16 at 6.54.45 AM.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Screen Shot 2022-06-16 at 6.59.14 AM.png

0 Upvotes
ajacobsmeyer
Participant

How to create a 'Today's date' date property.

SOLVE

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. 

0 Upvotes