Smart contact data parsing - like for biz card readers.

[ET2]

Hi,

I want the ability to highlight a block of contact data and have HS parse the data into the right new-contact fields. The HS email scraper does not always work and/or I have data from another text source; e.g. from the body of a referral email.

If anyone knows of a www.copy2contact.com   type functionality in HS that will do this with smart parsing automatically (not rocket science) please let me know. A hundred bizcard readers can take typical contact data text and put it into contact fields. www.copy2contact.com  does this for other CRM. Some CRM do it. 

BTW, this is not contact forms where users fill in the data. 

Thanks.

[PamCotton]

Hello @ET2 

I will tag some top contributors that may be able to provide more information about your goal.

@thesnappingdog, @DanielSanchez, @Gonzalo we would love to hear your opinion on the @ET2 question.

Thank you!

Pam

[thesnappingdog]

Would your data be coming in through an event (single contact record) or through a bulk import? Im not sure I fully understand your use case. Are you working with business cards or incoming emails/other data?

[ET2]

Hi, The use case is variable. I get some contact info from a colleague in the body of an email, I research and find something in a pdf or on a company's contact us page, etc. It is just a random block of text. It is NOT bulk, not in a form, not in the from field of an incoming email - just random contact info text. Realize that every biz card reader does this. They first OCR the biz card and then there's randomly formatted text. The routine then parses that into contact fields. Note also that the Hubspot AI is trying to do this in a way. It starts with the email from field and then finds and parses randomly formatted text into contact fields. What I want to do (multiple times a day) is specify what text to randomly parse on a one contact at a time basis. 

Thanks,

[DigitalWoods]

Hi @ET2 ,

There's a pretty simple solution to this. Just use the HubSpot mobile app. It has a 'business card scanner' that works quite well. Simply take a snap of the screen and save the contact.

If you're looking for more conventional approach without using a mobile, you can consider using a 3rd party scanning application and then pass the data via Zapier to HubSpot.

Cheers,

Saurav

saurav@digitalwoods.net

PS: Please mark my answer as “solution” if it works for you.

[ET2]

Let me be clear, this data is ALREADY IN TEXT FORM. No scanning is needed. 

[DigitalWoods]

If all the data is already in text form, the reference to biz card readers and OCR is not very relevant. You can give mailparser.io a try. They integrate with Zapier as well as HubSpot, so you can completely automate contact creation on HubSpot.  It won't cover all the use cases you mentioned though.

If your use case varies a lot and involves checking the contact details manually, I think the business card scanner is still the best (and simplest) option. Text form or image form, it'll work all the same.

Best,

Saurav

saurav@digitalwoods.net

PS: Please mark my answer as “solution” if it works for you.

[ET2]

Saurav, thesnappingdog,

I'm coming back to this after trying to ignore it for a while. You've described actual work arounds, but my assertion is that this should be native to Hubspot web version. So many times someone says "contact this person here's their info" or Hubspot does not find and parse name, phone, title in an email. It should be so easy like it was in the 90's in other apps to drop a copied block of contact data onto Hubspot and say "do your best" and THEN let me drag around stuff that wasn't in the right box. I am CONSTANTLY copy/paste copy/paste, and it bewilders me that more teams are not clamoring for this. 

With appreciation for your ideas, dropping out of my workflow, picking up my mobile, taking a shot from the mobile and waiting for that to sync to my web-page is not efficient work flow. 

Gimme a reality check based on your experience, is this just a niche request or more universally needed?