HubSpot Ideas

usmiclow

Automatic Phone Number Formatting

When a phone number field has data put into it, it is up to the User to format it the way they deem appropriate. That is not the most user-friendly or data-centric approach. This is a good way to allow users to enter incorrect or sloppy data and cause possibly difficulty with search results while also affecting adoption. There are many other CRM platforms out there (At least 12 I could find) which will automatically format a telephone number.   Hubspot does not currently have this basic feature.

 

Suggested solution: When a telephone number is typed into a phone field, the number should automatically format to the Contact's standardized country format with a country code in front of it.  So, for US, +1 (555) 555-5555, for UK, +44 5555 555555, etc.  Some countries do not have standardized formats, but widely accepted formats, or multiple formats depending on when the phone number was assigned. I do not know of an easy solution for that, but choosing one format or at the minimum, placing the correct country code in front of the numbers according to the selected country on the Contact or Company would be helpful. Possibly a non-editable drop-down with country abbreviation and code which auto-fills but is still selectable in case of error. This could also help with the calling feature if calling out of the country.

 

An admin User should be able to toggle in settings whether or not the field will auto format with country code. At the bare minimum, as a US based company, it should at least format any 10 digit numbers into standard US format (555) 555-5555.

HubSpot Updates
Delivered
May 19, 2022 02:20 PM

Hello All,

We are excited to announce that phone number formatting is now live to all users. 

 

How does it work?

Phone numbers can now be formatted automatically. Standard formatting and validation will be applied to phone numbers based on country code.

 

Value formatting:

For phone numbers values entered via CSV import or API use the following format: '+18779290687 ext123'

  • This functionality applies to the default Phone Number, and Mobile Phone number properties.
  • To use it, select a country code and enter the phone number in digits only. Formatting will be applied automatically.
  • Existing phone numbers in your CRM that have a country code and are valid will be formatted automatically.
  • If you prefer to not use automatic formatting, you can click "remove number formatting" below the field. This will remove all formatting and allow you to enter any characters. To apply formatting to an unformatted number, click "apply number formatting" underneath the field.

2665fc7e-e8bc-4505-8474-327902fd181c.gif

 

 

In Planning
June 16, 2021 06:14 PM

Hello HubSpot community! 

We understand how important it is to have phone numbers stored in valid formats in the CRM. Since my last update in March 2020, we have renewed our focus to improving our calling specific functionality. We do not have a concrete timeline or details that we're comfortable committing to yet. However, I am moving this idea to the "in planning" stage to better reflect our commitment to this improvement, as we currently are researching and prioritizing the work required to validate proper formatting for numbers stored in the CRM. 

We'll continue to monitor the use cases and needs submitted on this thread and will post updates as we have them. Your patience and continued feedback is very much appreciated as we work towards delivering a solution! 

Thank you as always for your continued feedback and support, it helps us build a better product.

Being Reviewed
March 30, 2020 08:26 AM

Hello HubSpot Community, 

Thank you as always for your continued feedback, it helps us build a great product.

We are constantly evaluating and re-evaluating our priorities and roadmap to deliver as much value to our customers as possible. The request to format and validate phone numbers is a good one, I can certainly see how this would deliver value in many different ways. Based on the comments and use cases you all have listed, we are reviewing this request and its feasibility among other priorities on our roadmap. At this time I don’t have any details around timing or delivery, but thanks to the comments and votes on this post we’re actively looking into a solution.

October 24, 2019 01:18 PM

Hi all! This idea is not marked as Delivered anymore. There was a misunderstanding a few months ago and I reopened it. We are definitely still working on a more holistic solution to this.

There is a bug with the timestamps of the pinned posts at the top of this thread that are making all my comments appear as if they just happened. Our community developers are aware of the issue. I apologize for any confusion this is causing! Please always reference the status at the top left of the main post for the most up to date info 🙂

Idea Submitted
July 09, 2019 03:38 PM

Thank you all for your feedback! The first time we rolled this out, the changes did not not carry through the entire CRM as detailed in your comments. The team is now working on this and so I am putting this idea back to In Planning.

Delivered
March 01, 2019 03:12 PM

I'm pleased to announce that we have implemented automatic formatting for how phone numbers appear across the CRM, as well as a new "Show country code dropdown" configration option for phone fields in Forms! Any continuing inconsistencies should be brought to the attention of our Support team, and any other phone number related requests should be filed as new ideas. Thanks for your feedback!

159 Replies
verheem
Participant

We need the number to be formatted in ways that fit the country of the contact, such as:

AUSTRALIA 

Mobile 0XXX XXX XXX

Landline 0X XXXX XXXX

 

FRANCE

Mobile 0X XX XX XX XX

Landline 0X XX XX XX XX

 

NETHERLANDS

Mobile 06 XX XX XX XX

Landline 0XX XXX XX XX  OR 0XXX XX XX XX

 

fndicu
HubSpot Product Team

Hello All,

We are excited to announce that phone number formatting is now live to all users. 

 

How does it work?

Phone numbers can now be formatted automatically. Standard formatting and validation will be applied to phone numbers based on country code.

 

Value formatting:

For phone numbers values entered via CSV import or API use the following format: '+18779290687 ext123'

  • This functionality applies to the default Phone Number, and Mobile Phone number properties.
  • To use it, select a country code and enter the phone number in digits only. Formatting will be applied automatically.
  • Existing phone numbers in your CRM that have a country code and are valid will be formatted automatically.
  • If you prefer to not use automatic formatting, you can click "remove number formatting" below the field. This will remove all formatting and allow you to enter any characters. To apply formatting to an unformatted number, click "apply number formatting" underneath the field.

2665fc7e-e8bc-4505-8474-327902fd181c.gif

 

 

BWashburn
Member | Partner

While this is a nice feature, I'm not sure how it is helpful for larger volume accounts where the bulk of the contacts come from form submissions. Contacts can still type any formatting they want. I wouldn't consider this to be "delivered."

RMercer
Member

I agree this is not 'delivered'. We have contacts that enter their number any number of ways:

 

  • 555-555-5555
  • 555*555*5555
  • 1-555-555-5555
  • 15555555555
  • (1)-555-555-5555
  • 555.555.5555
  • 5555555555

Etc. 

 

verheem
Participant

I can see that some sort of formatting is applied to a number when typing a new number into the field. However, the formatting is not as per the Australian convention. How can I change this?

 

Michel

claratan
HubSpot Employee

Hi team, thanks for delivering the feature! I can see that the phone number formatting & validation has been applied to all Object Records. Posting this feedback on behalf of a customer, it would be helpful if we could have the same formatting and validation added to the "Phone Number" and "Mobile Phone Number" fields in form submissions as well. This will help ensure the cleanliness of data coming in through forms, and help avoid situations where we have unusable data for calls or SMS marketing.

nlafakis
Top Contributor | Elite Partner

Whew! Glad to see that this post has gotten attention since it's inception.

 

Conversely I'm sad that this still hasn't happened. Even with upgrading to OpsHub and getting all the neat tools there still isn't any functionality to automatically format/reformat the phone number field. Even within the "Fix Formatting" options, it only looks at Name and Email, it doesn't take into account improperly input/formatted phone numbers.

 

It would be sick to have this tool up and running in the near future as it's quite the hinderence when it comes to us using an integrated SMS service which needs to have the numbers formatted properly. Doing this manually right now and it's quite the pain.

KristaMerlo
Member

We are literally having this issue now! We brought on an integration company that neglected to tell us that the phone numbers needed to be in the correct format before importing... would have been a nice to know before hand so now we're stuck with gross data. I'm hoping Hubspot can create a "bulk" update for phone number data. I'd be very surprised if this was an impossible task to complete. Also, would be great when creating a new account that the format be auto populated based on the country information. 

 

Are there any updates on this from Hubspot? I see the last response from May 2022.

 

Thanks! 

KNickolay
Participant

Hi! Did this portion of the request get implemented? "An admin User should be able to toggle in settings whether or not the field will auto-format with country code." Thanks!

Think19
Participant

The mobile phone numbers for UAE are not auto formatting correctly. They should come as +971-xx-xxx-xxxx but are coming as +971-x-xxx-xxxxx. The telephone numbers are coming fine as +971-x-xxx-xxxx. Could this issue be fixed?

SBradt
Participant

Agreed wholeheartedly. My main issue comes into play with the inconsistency of auto-formatting when entering contact information. Sometimes it formats, sometimes not and when it doesn't, why do I have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the country list to find the US, which should be my default. 

 

Also, on the Outlook sales plug-in, when you view contact in the sidebar, it doesn't show any separators in the phone numbers, which is a pet peeve of mine, because it makes them extremely hard to read and extremely easy to misread. 

 

e.g. 

SBradt_1-1681570347156.png

 

 

langus
Member

Appreciate the dev team here, and also want to add my voice to chorus requesting to solve this before bad data ever enters the database: please add on phone number validation to lead capture forms. I'm sure with a global product that this is trickier than it sounds. Thanks for your consideration!

lionheart56
Member

The ability to have an organizational standard and bulk set phone numbers to a default country would be fantastic. I do appreciate the advancement of doing it one-by-one

MChirico
Member

Hi @fndicu can you please tell me how to do this? 

We have sales hub professional and this isn't working for us, is there an instructional?

 

Regards

 

verheem
Participant

Some auto-formating now works, but here in Australia we need two different ones:

 

One for LANDLINES:  +61 # #### ####

One for MOBILES:  +61 4## ### ###

 

Ideal: The system recognises the number input, deletes the leading ZERO, recognises the landline vs mobile (all mobile numbers start with 4, the landlines never start with 4) and formats accordingly. 

WSharpe
Participant

Does anyone know if it is possible to have the Number Formatting with Country Code on the HubSpot mobile app? A lot of people enter contacts on the Mobile App and the numbers are not formatted correctly because this feature is not in place. 

Hafras
Member

It should be a given that one can choose which dialing code is adopted as default. It makes no sense for a company in Germany for our number to be supplemented with the UK dialing code! Either leave the zero as it is, or the system changes it to +49, but +44 just means even more manual work for us.

I don't understand why there's a forum post on this topic with so many comments and nothing has been done about it!

SBradt
Participant

Hafras

 

Per your comment "I don't understand why there's a forum post on this topic with so many comments and nothing has been done about it!" It is apparent that you have not spent much time on the Hubspot forums - Also known as the graveyard for ideas. They  offer this as a place for customers to make suggestions, but it seems to be all about appearances. There is rarely a response or a change made as a result. Save yourself the agravation and don't even bother. You'll just be disappointed

NDewey
Participant

Yes please!!!!!