Bring Notifications Muting Feature to New Activity Feed

[anna_henwood]

In the old activity feed for all notifications, I was able to mute specific events after one or more notification arrived. I'm not able to in the new version.

For example, after Jane opened X email and I was notified, I had the option in the dropdown menu to mute future notifications (or unmute later on). In the new activity feed, this crucial feature isn't there.

Please add this necessary feature to the new activity feed.

[anna_henwood]

Hi HubSpot Community - I am excited to announce that we are bringing back the ability to mute email threads in the Activity Feed. As of today, we are in an open beta for muting email threads. 

If you are interested in getting beta access, please submit your information here: https://forms.gle/AXmyF27vUbG7L7jR7

Thank you,

Scott

[anna_henwood]

Hi HubSpot Community,

We're looking to talk with a few of you about this next week. If you're interested in chatting with the product team about getting this feature added back in, we'd love to connect. Here is a link to schedule some time if you're interested. 

Thank you,

Scott

[anna_henwood]

Hi HubSpot Community - we're reviewing what it would take to bring this feature back into the activity feed.

The activity feed is now grouped and organized by contact, rather than by email thread (like it was before we removed the ability to mute specific activity cards). In full transparency, we need to determine how to handle muting of contacts in the activity feed now that it's possible that a grouping refers to a specific contact rather than a specific email thread. 

Thanks,

Scott

[gelflex-cc]

@anna_henwood  I would love to see what that looks like. Can you temporarily go back to the old version and take a screenshot?

Thanks.

Chris

[anna_henwood]

[gelflex-cc]

@anna_henwood Thank you.  I never saw that and don't often use the full activity feed.  

I agree this is a most useful feature and should not have been taken away.

[anna_henwood]

It's not just offered in the full activity feed. The Chrome extension used to offer it too.

Thanks for agreeing about its usefulness. It really shouldn't be missing given how handy it is, especially for people with limited notification permissions per month.

[gelflex-cc]

@anna_henwood Very cool. I have always had the chrome ext but never used it to full potential.  Can't wait to see what happens and go from there.  I wonder if it is part of a paid package.  I have Sales Starter at home and will need to look. 

[jennyellison]

Hi,

I had been using the Mute Button a lot within the Hubspot Activity Feed, which shows me all the email opens, website visits, etc. that prospects engage in. Once I close a deal, I would mute the email threads with that prospect so I wouldn't keep getting email notifications from existing customers re-opening my initial prospecting emails. I need the Activity Feed to show me activity for pending deals.

The Mute Button now only exists in the pop-up notification, and it goes away so quickly. Can we bring it back to the Activity feed?

Thank you!

[jennysowyrda]

Hi @gelflex-cc and @anna_henwood,

The ability to mute threads from the Chrome extension was removed with the most recent extension update. I appreciate your feedback around why this was useful and have shared it with the team. 

Thank you,
Jenny

[anna_henwood]

Hi Jenny,

- Why was such an essential feature removed?

- Can this much-needed feature come back given its importance?

Also: it's not just the Chrome extension. It's the activity feed everywhere.

[sjudson]

Hi @anna_henwood,

I am the PM on the activity feed and can answer some of these questions:

The "Mute" option was removed for a couple of reasons. Primarily, the behavior around "what to mute?" has fundamentally changed given that the activity feed now aggregates activity by contact rather than by email thread. By "muting" a contact, now any thread from that contact would be muted, which might not be intended.

Secondly, the "mute" functionality had extremely low usage across the board. While we understand it was a valuable feature used by a small group of our users, keeping the "mute" functionality around actually could lead to a more confusing experience given the new way the feed behaves. 

Finally, muting has no bearing on your notification limit for the month. Even if a thread is muted, those activities count toward the monthly 200 limit. The removal of this feature does not actually change what you are eligible to receive in the free version of the tool. 

Hope this helps, but feel free to follow up with any questions. 

Thanks,

Scott

[BobFitz]

I find Scott's comments confusing.  Finally, muting has no bearing on your notification limit for the month. Even if a thread is muted, those activities count toward the monthly 200 limit. The removal of this feature does not actually change what you are eligible to receive in the free version of the tool.

I had muted conversations in the past, and when I did that, it did stop counting their clicks counting on the 200 free per month. 

[gelflex-cc]

@sjudson Hi Scott,  

Note, this login in uses a free CRM, I also have a paid sales starter account.

Please clarify - is the 200  notification limit per user or per HubId?

I believe this concept was posted as users are trying to maximize the benefits of their subscription.  In this particular case, expand notifications on a free product. While a starter package would eliminate the notification restrictions, it is not always feasible. As in my individual starter package, I want phone support but this is available at a pro level and beyond my budget. 

It is far more efficient to use notifications and stay within the CRM than to go to email and back to the CRM. I probably do not care when my vendor opens or sends an email BUT I do care when my prospect or buyer does. 

Can you expand on options?

Thanks.

[anna_henwood]

@sjudson and everyone,

I pretty much just dislike the constant notifications I get on all platforms when a recipient opens an email or engages with it.

Why do I need to be notified with interruptive screen popups over and over about an email I stopped caring about a month ago? I can't stop old contacts from accessing my past emails, so it needs to be something I can control from my end.

Sure, the muting feature wasn't used by everyone, but it wouldn't be an issue for them to still have the option. It's not like this feature is shoved into people's faces or that it takes up a lot of space.

I also want to strongly agree with @BobFitz about the notification limit. I noticed the limit was never an issue until the muting option was removed. It really did stop the activity.

[gelflex-cc]

@anna_henwood go into your setting and change where you receive y our notifications. 

[anna_henwood]

@gelflex-cc thanks for the suggestion, but I don't want to turn off notifications entirely. I want to control what notifications appear. That's why I started this feed here. I want the ability to mute old conversations but still receive the ones that matter.

[gelflex-cc]

@anna_henwood sorry, I misunderstood, thought you were receiving notifications in too many places. I used to get them in a notification, in my email, in a pop up.

[jennyellison]

Hello, 

Now not only is the Mute button gone from the Activity Feed, it is now gone from the pop-up notifications as well.

Does this mean there is now no way to mute any individual notifications?

Thank you,

Jenny

[Diesel]

Scott

The big question I have is why "the activity feed now aggregates activity by contact rather than by email thread". Anna's comment:  "Why do I need to be notified with interruptive screen popups over and over about an email I stopped caring about a month ago?" hits the nail on the head. 

Scott - This provides a powerfully underperforming user experience.

I understand that this limitiation might reduce product complexity and impact HS data storage needs but it flies in the face of personalization. 

Anna's response "

In the old activity feed for all notifications, I was able to mute specific events after one or more notification arrived. I'm not able to in the new version. For example, after Jane opened X email and I was notified, I had the option in the dropdown menu to mute future notifications (or unmute later on). In the new activity feed, this crucial feature isn't there. 

I pretty much just dislike the constant notifications I get on all platforms when a recipient opens an email or engages with it.

Why do I need to be notified with interruptive screen popups over and over about an email I stopped caring about a month ago? I can't stop old contacts from accessing my past emails, so it needs to be something I can control from my end.

Sure, the muting feature wasn't used by everyone, but it wouldn't be an issue for them to still have the option. It's not like this feature is shoved into people's faces or that it takes up a lot of space.

[cknordquist]

Wholeheartedly agree.  I manage 500+ employees and 250+ vendors and email strings are many and varied.  Once an issue was resolved, I would mute conversations to reduce the number of pop-ups.   With that feature gone now, they are seemingly unending and quite distracting.  Loved that feature to MUTE the thread!

[PhilOPSCOM]

I just found this out myself.  It's ridiculous that the tech team thought it would be ok to eliminate the mute option.

I have a ongoing development discussion with a 10+ emails and a combined 700+ notifications.  

Bring back the MUTE option please.

[BrianR]

It seems like when there is a feature that works they delete it, and it takes an army of people to get features that are essential put in place... Hubspot, you have created a channel of user input to guide your product so it would be good to listen to what they are saying.