Is there a way to prevent my sales reps from deleting notes and activities?

[DanielK]

Hi Community,

Can anyone tell me if there is there a way to prevent my sales reps from deleting notes and activities?

Thanks!

[MFrankJohnson · Accepted solution]

Q: Is there a way to prevent my sales reps from deleting notes and activities??

Short A: Unfortunately no @DanielK. Currently, there's no built-in (or add-on) HubSpot functionality that will allow this granular level of security.

Longer A:

An alternative solution may be to only allow Sales Reps access to edit contacts, companies that they 'own'. That way, they can only delete notes on contact and company records for which they're responsible.

(see image)

[karstenkoehler · Accepted solution]

Hi @DanielK and everyone,

Good news, this is now possible and in beta 🙂

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CRM | Account Settings

Edit & Delete Permissions for Notes

August 14, 2024

What is it?

Two new permissions, one for edit and one for delete, are being added which can limit the ability for users to edit and delete logged notes across HubSpot. The permissions can be set to the following levels:

• All notes: The user can edit or delete all notes.
• Notes their team owns: The user can edit or delete notes they or their team members created.
• Notes they own: The user can only edit or delete notes that they created.
• Unassigned: The user can edit or delete notes without an owner. This is an additional option when access is set to notes they own or emails their team owns.
• None: The user cannot edit or delete any notes.

Why does it matter?

Today when a user logs a note to HubSpot, any HubSpot user with access to view the note is able to edit or delete that note. This is an issue for customers who have different employees accessing each other's notes, but who have concerns over those notes being modified or deleted. Two new permissions are being introduced to limit access to editing and deleting notes in HubSpot.

How does it work?

Users that have the ability to change permissions for other Users should navigate to Users & Teams where they can edit Users' permissions to determine what access level for editing and deleting Notes that a User should have.

Originally, we will provide the User's Edit & Delete Notes permissions to match their current permissions for Viewing Notes.

Who gets it?

All hubs and tiers

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The beta can be found here. If you're not seeing it yet, you'll have be patient a bit longer or contact your customers success manager:

Best regards!

[JMusser]

Karsten, you have saved my hide on so many occasions. I find myself wondering "if Karsten has weighed in yet" when I look up an issue I'm having, haha. Thank you for the work you do!

[coconnorALPS]

Just checking in on this! Ours is very much an info security concern - currently we have everyone dragging and dropping their emails in a file folder program, for compliance/security reasons. It would be awesome if they could use HubSpot email logging feature. However, we'd need a way to ensure all users except Admins couldn't delete emails.

[DianaGomez]

Hi @coconnorALPS hope you are doing well!

I encourage you to upvote the idea, this way it will have more chances to be implemented in the future.

Best,

Diana

[LColeman0]

Yep - we need this to. In our case, reps even use it to 'play' the system and make it look like they owned a sale before another rep. ANOTHER problem with this is that there is no way to see deletion activity! At least let us see when people delete things!!

[kvlschaefer]

Hi @LColeman0,

Thanks for your feedback. I would recommend posting this feedback to our ideas forum (here). The Ideas Forum is monitored by our Product Team. It's the best place to request features you would like to see in Hubspot. 

Thank you,

Kristen

[AThakore8]

No way to prevent deleting, but you can back up all activities so they can be retreived. Once the reps know that all their actions are recorded (you can also keep track of which user made the edit or delete), it creates a deterrent.  We use Automate.io and back up all activities (notes, etc) to AWS S3. Good luck!

[kvlschaefer]

Thanks for sharing, @AThakore8!

[VexxaConsulting]

This is so much needed!

We are a consulting company developing solutions to a specific business segment, and we have chosen Hubspot as the main CRM platform to integrate our business solutions.

One of the major flaws we experience when we reach out to customers offering the solution is they always ask if their agents will be able to delete the records.

One of our clients also mentioned that they already used Hubspot, and they found a flaw in the activities design which allows someone to just associate the activity with a random object (contact, deal or ticket) and them disassociate the same activity with it original object. That way the activity is formally not deleted, therefore not visible in the trash bin, and nobody can trace it.

Hubspot should really look into this.

[ThiagoF]

I honestly don't understand why it is so difficult to have such a basic feature. There are probably a great market share awasted just because the system allows important information to be deleted...

[AThakore8]

This too is a stop gap solution because there is no way to know when the note was deleted and which day's backup I will need to restore from. Therefore, this is a much needed feature in HS. Especially for users in a regulated industry.

[AThakore8]

YES!!! It works. So do this - Set up your backup with Skyvia. Then if any of the notes/emails go missing, go to the Skyvia backup. Search in Skyvia by Contact ID (last set of digits in the HS URL) to pull up the "Engagements" table. All associated emails and notes appear as engagements. Look at the emails and notes details to locate the one that was whacked. Select it and restore it by choosing "UPDATE". Presto, it re-appears in the Contact activity feed!!! I tested this by whacking a pinned note and re-insering it. If this works for you too, buy me a beer!!! 🙂

[AThakore8]

Guys,

Do a full backup (I can suggest one if you need me to or you can find one by googling). You will always be able to restore the deleted notes.

[ThiagoF]

@DanielK  @mcnest @Joemil @PMP71724

The idea is submited:

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Permission-to-delete-activities-conversations-and-eng...

Some upvotes and comments would help.

Regards,

[ThiagoF]

This is such a important and basic feature for a CRM, specially with Help Desk features.

It would be as simples as a check-box with: "Allow users to delete activities".

It would make Hubspot a much more trustable CRM, because not all the time you (the account manager) want to be checking the trash can, to see what your members have deleted. And also, deleted e-mail records can't be restored at all. The most important of all records. Makes no sense.

[PamCotton]

Hello @ThiagoF there is a new feature that allows changing the user permissions to delete objects as my screenshot below shows more about it.

permission

I hope this new feature helps.

Kindly,

Pam

[ThiagoF]

@PamCotton 

Can you tell us if there is a chance of this ever becoming a feature?

[ThiagoF]

Hi @PamCotton , thanks for your comment. However, what this thread is discussing is "activities and engagement" exclusion, like notes, e-mails, calls, that are recorded inside objects (tickets, deals and contacts). There is an "almost there" scenario, where you could set an agent to have only "View" permissions on tickets for example, so they cannot delete any comments or e-mail registered inside. The only issue with that is that the agent won't be able to change ticket status, otherwise would be the perfect solution.

[PamCotton]

Hi @ThiagoF , thank you for providing more information, 

I would highly recommend you to please post this idea at our ideas forum (here).

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.

Kindly,

Pam

[Joemil]

Hi community,

Do we have any update for this issue?