HubSpot Ideas

nina

Auto Rotate, ability to mark user as on vacation or sick to remove/skip them in workflow

We have a pretty big sales team and we require them to respond to leads quickly to them being received. If a lead sits without a response for more than 15 minutes we are not doing our work the way we would like. We use a handful of workflows to distribute leads evenly through an auto-rotation.

 

Right now if someone goes on vacation I have to edit each workflow to remove them that day and then put them back in when they return. 

 

The issue is that this then disrupts the workflow and it assigns back to back leads to the same person or generally doesn't work correctly. If I had some other way to mark a particular user someone as not taking leads that day so that it would skip them or mean I didn't have to edit each workflow automatically this would greatly help both my time spent and the issues my removing them and putting them back in creates. 

94 Replies
lukecro
Participant

This would be really great for the Service Hub for assigning tickets as well.

 

I have a team using Hubspot Service Tickets, where the team members are spread across 10 different countries, and the various work shifts provide around 22 hours a day of coverage 7 days a week...

 

We want to use Hubspot's automatic ticket-owner assignments (round-robin ticket-owner rotation) but need the reps to only be assigned tickets during the days/hours that they're working.

 

Assigning tickets to reps that aren't on shift isn't helpful for the staff or customers, and leads to delays in response times.

 

While having a manager constantly update assignment workflows every day for every shift change undermines most of the advantages of having automation in the first place.

 

Even if ignoring the complications of absensces from vacations and sick days, it seems like there needs to be either a general shift/availability/work-schedule or "currently online" layer available for the ticket-assignment automation -- or at least workflow options that are based on Days of the Week and Time. e.g., "If Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday between 9 am-5 pm EDT, rotate ticket assignments among reps X, Y, and Z. But if Thursday, Friday, or Saturday between 5 pm-1 a.m. EDT, rorate assignments among reps A, B, and C."

 

Some basic logic like that could be useful across multiple hubs (it'd be useful for assigning tickets, contacts, conversations, or deals). 

06119
Member

Yes this would be useful, we use Timetastic to plan holidays which is connected to outlook, for this I would suggest that each user profile has an "away" tab that can be manually selected with a from and to date. then from workflows, you could select user is not "away" to exclude them from any of those workflows. In future it would be nice if this could be tied in with outlook, i.e. when a user selects "all day" in outlook, it is picked up by HS and automatically selects "away" for that user profile. 

MHarpur
Member

Yes, this is really needed for both Sales and also for Service Hub for Ticket auto-assignment. 

This is basic functionality offered in other Support Ticketing platforms e.g. Zoho Desk, where it marks an 'Agent' as offline if they are idle for XYZ time or if they are marked as 'Away', the ticket assignment stops for that Agent. 

 

Managing team members on holidays or suddenly away is very time-consuming in HubSpot, especially when multiple email inboxes are used by multiple teams. It also creates risk in not adding or removing an Agent/User from the workflow at exactly the right times, therefore Tickets then need to be manually reassigned. It's painful!

 

Please review this HubSpot. 

ErikStromness
Participant

Yes

MelissaWilson
Participant | Platinum Partner

This seems like it would be an easy solution to allow a user to set themself as away for a short period of time, but i'm sure there are a million reasons it's not that simple. 😞  I just had to remove someone from 9 lead rotations and have to add them back in a couple weeks.  Sure seems like a useful tool if it could be prioritized. 

PeterW121
Member

@jtremblay Please give us an explanation why is this not being worked on. 

We are all paying quite a lot of money for Hubspot to make our work easier. Needing to manually adjust each time user is on sick or holiday is basically a full-time position for bigger companies. 

Is the reason technical difficulties (if yes, what?) or maybe Hubspot just don't care because this feature wouldn't make more money?

Sorry, for the tone of the message but the lack of any actions is super frustrating. 

spogue
Top Contributor

My solution so far has been to only rotate leads via membership on a team. Then, when someone is out or otherwise unavailable, remove them from the primary team onto an "off" team. This is problematic if you are using team membership in other ways like in reports, but I'm choosing to swap teams as the lesser of all evils regarding this rotation issue.

AndreaBalducci
Participant

Any updates on this?

HarvestROI
Contributor | Platinum Partner

We have solved for this using Operations Hub and a master Google sheet. The Google sheet is used as the master "Control" sheet. Basically, you have a list of all users for a distribution group. The list includes their name and internal user option ID. Next to each name is a simple checkbox. Then we created custom JS code that only distributes opportunities to users with check boxes showing eligibility. You just need to uncheck the users who have PTO and recheck that they are eligible when they return.

VPearce
Member

My client needs this please! Tickets are allocated to teams and rotated evenly. If a team member is away we have to remove them from the team

gabimaia
HubSpot Moderator

Upvoting for a customer! 

GWakefield
Member

Hi

 

This feature would be extremely useful as the summer holiday season in the UK is upon us. Is there any progress on this development plan please?

Many thanks

 

Gaynor

SMalsch
Member

We need this also... I think if somebudy is ill or in facation. He/she must be loged out from all options in hubspot and don´t get new options...

Abhivyakti
Member

Any updates on this please?

cazepe
Member

Do Hubspot employees know that there are other companies where employees go on vacation?

 

PSoucek
Participant

For the Sales reps in/out, have you considered assigning to the Sales Team and adding/removing reps as they are available? That would prevent changes to the workflow directly.

 

The ideal would be if every user had an Online/Offline toggle. Then, the "Rotate to Owner" workflow item could have a "Rotate to All" or "Rotate to Online" option. I have a Workflow designed to handle all incoming Service (Cust Support) tickets that balances them by type. Everytime one user is out, I have to remove them from the Service Team then add them once they're back. I don't know if this resets the round-robin/balancing algorithm.  It would be much nicer if each user could mark themselves as Online/Offine. An admin should have rights to change status as well. 

 

Its annoying that this option (sort-of) works in conversations, but nowhere else in HubSpot.

ABlye
Member

Now at my third company that is implementing Hubspot, and this is one of the BIGGEST pain point I experience every time.

It is even more severe now in the new company I am with - we have to rotate/assign leads to reps based on location, as certain licenses come in to play with where our reps can/cannot do business. 

If a rep is out sick or on vacation - I have to remove them from over TWENTY lead rotation opportunities (actually, forty, because we have two pipelines that each have a seperate lead assignment/nurturing workflow), and then manually add them back in to rotation when the come back to the office.

Keep in mind, that has to be done for EVERY rep...
"Oh, Carl, heading out eraly for a dentist appointment? ::starts manually editing workflows::"
"Jesse got a flat tire and will be 3 hours late? ::starts manually editing workflows::"
"Ed is out Thursday and Friday for vacation, and Tom is out Friday and Monday? ::starts manually editing workflows::"

{But then I get sick on Monday and am out through Wednesdau. so Tom is never added back in to lead assignment rotation}

This might be the straw that breaks the camel's (me, I'm the camel) back...

spogue
Top Contributor

@ABlye  Can these users be on teams and then have the Teams on the rotation, not individual users? Rather than changing workflows, you are then just changing their team. Then, even if you're out, its a much easier ask/direction to someone else to add Mary to a team rather than 20 workflows.

ABlye
Member

@spogue each state would have its own team then, and I'd still have to manually add/remove the reps from those teams (seems like if anything, it would be EXTRA work...?) Sharing a screen shot of some of the workflow for reference. (one rep might be licensed in 4 of those states, while another is licensed in 7 states, while another is only licensed in 2 states. One state might have 3 reps that can take leads, while another might only have one rep that will receive all of the leads)

state-lead-assignments.png

PSoucek
Participant

I still see a few problems with this approach:

 

1) Each user can only have 1 Primary team and assignments only rotate to those of the Primary Team

 

2) An admin still has to add/remove users from each Team

 

3) When a team membership is changed, the round-robin rotation resets, so effecively the first member of each team gets more assigned.

 

I have teams in all my assignments and have limited my service reps to the "Fully Trained" team or the "Onboarding" team. I add/remove the on-boarding team to/from assignments as that person gets trained (I only hire one at a time, so this works, otherwise I'd be **bleep**.)

 

What we really need to see is for the individual user to switch from Online to Offiline, or Active/Inactive within the team.