CRM

mortenmoulder
Member

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

At our company, we need to be able to assign properties to our customers/contacts in HubSpot. However, these properties are going to be used much like the products we sell. Many of these products have child products, which are related to each other. Here's an example:

 

Web Hosting

 -> Backup

 

A customer can have Web Hosting as a product, but they can also have Backup together with Web Hosting. They cannot have Backup without Web Hosting, however!

 

We need to be able to make a list based on these products/properties. For example:

"List of customers who has Web Hosting but not Backup"

 

We probably have 500+ products like this, and we need to somehow connect them together. In that case, something like this can occur:

 

Web Hosting Professional

 -> Backup

 

That Backup is not the same as the "Web Hosting" backup, so I can't create a property called "Backup", because many of our products have individual "Backup" children products, that are all different.

 

Therefore my question is:

 

Can I create some kind of "product tree", where one property relates to another (think of them as parent and children)?

0 Upvotes
2 Accepted solutions
MFrankJohnson
Solution
Thought Leader

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

The short answer is 'no'. HubSpot has no native built-in ability to build associations between properties ('product trees' as you call them).


One workaround would be to build a custom property that uses options similar to the following examples:

- Web Hosting Basic
- Web Hosting Basic - Backup
- Web Hosting Basic - Security

 

- Web Hosting Professional
- Web Hosting Professional - Backup
- Web Hosting Professional - Security


This will get you about as far as you can go using HubSpot built-in functionality, and without resorting to a database integration tool that allows you to build (AND MAINTAIN) external associations. However, there is no built-in limitation to prevent you from selecting multiple options for each.

 

Note: Please search for recent posts as HubSpot evolves to be the #1 CRM platform of choice world-wide.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Be well,
Frank


www.mfrankjohnson.com

View solution in original post

MFrankJohnson
Solution
Thought Leader

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

Exactly.


In all cases, we place the integrity of the data squarely in the hands of those performing data entry. No built-in enforcement or validation to prevent selecting 'Web Hosting Basic - Backup' for a customer who didn't subscribe to 'Web Hosting Basic'.


Should work short-term, but can't really endorse this solution long-term -- data integrity will be too weak and it's not scalable beyond a screen-full of multiple checkboxes.

 

If this is a 'must-have', you may want to use a more robust (customizable) CRM solution.

 

Note: Please search for recent posts as HubSpot evolves to be the #1 CRM platform of choice world-wide.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Be well,
Frank


www.mfrankjohnson.com

View solution in original post

0 Upvotes
6 Replies 6
MFrankJohnson
Solution
Thought Leader

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

The short answer is 'no'. HubSpot has no native built-in ability to build associations between properties ('product trees' as you call them).


One workaround would be to build a custom property that uses options similar to the following examples:

- Web Hosting Basic
- Web Hosting Basic - Backup
- Web Hosting Basic - Security

 

- Web Hosting Professional
- Web Hosting Professional - Backup
- Web Hosting Professional - Security


This will get you about as far as you can go using HubSpot built-in functionality, and without resorting to a database integration tool that allows you to build (AND MAINTAIN) external associations. However, there is no built-in limitation to prevent you from selecting multiple options for each.

 

Note: Please search for recent posts as HubSpot evolves to be the #1 CRM platform of choice world-wide.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Be well,
Frank


www.mfrankjohnson.com
mortenmoulder
Member

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

Hi Frank and thanks for the reply!

 

What a shame it's not supported. The biggest problem is, some product trees go very deep. It's not irregular that most of our customers have over 20 total products. Let's use your "Security" product example. In that case, we would have to create these:

 

- Web Hosting Basic
- Web Hosting Basic - Backup
- Web Hosting Basic - Security

- Web Hosting Basic - Backup + Security

 

But let's say they also get SSL (yes, that's a standalone product), then it would look like this:

 

- Web Hosting Basic
- Web Hosting Basic - Backup
- Web Hosting Basic - Security

- Web Hosting Basic - Backup + Security

- Web Hosting Basic - SSL

- Web Hosting Basic - Backup + Security + SSL

- Web Hosting Basic - Security + SSL

- Web Hosting Basic - Backup + SSL

 

and if we add a fourth product, we probably need to add thousands of properties, just so we can differentiate between all our products. In this case, we still need to be able to make a "list of customers who has Web Hosting Basic with Backup but not SSL", so we can push the SSL product.

 

I see you're talking about a "database integration". Is that something we can look into, perhaps? Or is this simply the best solution (concatenating product names)?

 

Thanks a lot

MFrankJohnson
Thought Leader

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

Sorry. Didn't mean to imply product name concatenation beyond one level. As you pointed out, trying to concatenate beyond one level (and using a radio select property type) could prove unweidly.


We use a multiple checkbox COMPANY.property type. One problem with multiple checkboxes is that there's nothing preventing an invalid combination of checkboxes from being selected.
- see image

HubSpot Company Property: Multiple CheckboxesHubSpot Company Property: Multiple Checkboxes

Regarding a database integration ...
Might be worth taking a look at. But, again, even with an off-the-shelf database integration, referential integrity enforcement for the 'associations' between custom properties would need to be maintained external to HubSpot which adds another level of complexity to the solution. We suspect the same would hold true for a custom database integration.

 

Note: Please search for recent posts as HubSpot evolves to be the #1 CRM platform of choice world-wide.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Be well,
Frank


www.mfrankjohnson.com
0 Upvotes
mortenmoulder
Member

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

Hi again and thanks for the reply!

 

I get the idea by using multiple checkbox property types. This could be used indeed, but we have one problem: Customers can have multiple products. It's a paid subscription, so nothing stops a customer from having multiple Web Hosting Basic products or Web Hosting Professional products.

 

If we made all our products 1-2 layered (single main product and main product with child products), we can't differentiate between which products the customers actually have. As explained (though very poorly) in my original post, a customer can have one Web Hosting product with Backup and one without Backup. In the previous example, we could then do:

 

Web Hosting Basic

Web Hosting Basic - Backup

 

This would indicate (if we keep the logic the same), that the customer has both with and without Backup.

 

I like the idea of the multi-checkbox solution. I'll have to discuss that with the team and see if we can come up with a proper solution.

 

Thanks a lot!

MFrankJohnson
Solution
Thought Leader

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

Exactly.


In all cases, we place the integrity of the data squarely in the hands of those performing data entry. No built-in enforcement or validation to prevent selecting 'Web Hosting Basic - Backup' for a customer who didn't subscribe to 'Web Hosting Basic'.


Should work short-term, but can't really endorse this solution long-term -- data integrity will be too weak and it's not scalable beyond a screen-full of multiple checkboxes.

 

If this is a 'must-have', you may want to use a more robust (customizable) CRM solution.

 

Note: Please search for recent posts as HubSpot evolves to be the #1 CRM platform of choice world-wide.

 

Hope that helps.

 

Be well,
Frank


www.mfrankjohnson.com
0 Upvotes
mortenmoulder
Member

Possibility to create relations between properties?

SOLVE

Hi again

 

Funny you say that... Because of our complex in-house solution (works really well, though), we opted to create our own CRM system from scratch. Implemented directly into our in-house solution. Works great, but HubSpot offers so much more in terms of features, that would take too long to develop on our own.

 

We'll stick our heads together and see what we come up with!

 

Thanks