HubSpot Ideas

Jonno_Price

Allow bulk editing or removal of associations via import or the native HubSpot interface

The April '22 rollout of association labels was great and we all love the new super useful labels! However there was an unintended side effect that some of us that work a lot with imports and data management have noticed. 

Whereas before if you imported contacts (multi-object import) and included a Company ID column - the contact would simply associate to that company as the Primary company (it would replace any existing association) via the import process... Now however, if the contact is already associated to a different Primary Company in HS then it doesn't replace this association.

You end up with 2 companies associated to the contact.  It 
adds a new company association leaving the previous association in place. This can cause a lot of mess and confusion - particularly in larger databases.

Whilst you can change the label to Primary for the new company via the import by including an association label column you cannot remove the old association. This used to be such a simple process via native imports.

Example scenario:
- you have a list of contacts who have left their company
- you research their new company details
- via an import you create the new company and you associate the existing contact to their new company (or you associate the contact to the new company if it already exists in HubSpot)

Before Labels rollout - you would have contact associated to their new company and old company removed 

After Labels rollout - you now have the contact associated to 2 companies 😫

HubSpot tech support have advised that solutions are possible by using 3rd party tools like Associ8 or Import2 or by custom API work - however to my mind this should not require additional expense or 3rd party tools. This should be part of our HubSpot package - after all we are not asking for new functionality - we are asking for functionality that used to exist but has now been lost.

PS. more detail in this post

9 Replies
TonyDowling
Contributor | Diamond Partner

This is a great idea, thanks Jonno 

ajkinbrum
Contributor | Partner

Yesssss, great idea! 

LDowdy
Contributor

This is spot on!  As a fairly new HubSpot user/admin, I was very surprised that we cannot simply use an import for existing Sites (custom object) and include the Company Record ID, to associate the Sites to a different Company.  This seems so very basic.  And now I am quite surprised to find that a new feature was implemented that broke the ability to do this.  This would not seem to be difficult.  Simply allow an option to create an additional association OR replace the existing association.  

 

Also, it is surprising that we cannot enforce a one to many relationship for a Company to Custom Object.  We have a  Custom Object created "Sites" where a Company can have many Sites associated to it.  (The Sites are all retail locations for that Company).  A Site is owned by an Account, but in HubSpot we cannot enforce the one to many relationship for some reason.  You can errantly associate a Site to two different companies.   I thought this might have been the reason that the issue above, but now I see that it also happens to others on Contacts.  

  

Dharris4
Member

Having similar issues. Suggested solution would be great.

cl021
Member

Similar idea here, upvote this as well: HubSpot Community - Bulk remove association - HubSpot Community

This solution would save us a lot of time and manual work. Currently, when someone in our database leaves their organization, we have to manually disassociate them. We get 100+ of these per month and it's very tedious and time-consuming.

 

It would be helpful if one of the following options existed:

  • Select all contacts in a list and have an action that disassociates all from their organization
  • An action in a workflow that could disassociate contacts from their organization.

Thank you!

MrBean
Top Contributor

Just here to upvote the dissasociation feature.

RPearce
Member

This idea should definitely be integrated as a standard feature. If you can associate via an import, you should be able to remove associations. It's a no-brainer!

Please add this! 

Tnt
Member

Should be a simple removal from contact view at least. Eagerly awaiting the day HubSpot fixes this...

DStaat
Participant

Hey @Jonno_Price,

Have you tried using Associ8? It can automatically remove associations or association labels via workflow.

DStaat_0-1703093546134.png

 



I'll leave some documentation for both features below if you want to see them in action:

- Remove Associations Automatically Using Labels 
- Remove Association Labels Automatically

Let me know if you have any questions!

Best,

-David Staat