The new auto-formatting and validation feature for phone numbers is a step in the right direction.
However, the current integration seems to be missing the mark with regard to user experience. I was unable to find any articles or posts in the Help Center announcing the new auto-formatting feature. The only Knowlege Base article that pops up when searching "phone number validation" is a detailed breakdown of editing default contact properties, and then there is only a reference to the validation and formatting being applied "automatically by Hubspot based on the country code."
This feature is certainly a step in the right direction, but several improvements are needed to improve the user experience and make the feature more functional overall (noting that recent comments on an "old" idea thread are already being discussed here; skip to page 7).
Suggested improvements include:
- Global Setting to Enable/Disable auto-formatting at the account level - currently, the feature is enabled by default with no disable setting available
- Global Setting to assign a default Country Code - currently, the Country Code must be selected manually for every new contact (see screenshot below)
- Bulk edit phone numbers to apply Country Code format & validation -- currently, only able to apply formatting & validation when editing one individual contact at a time OR when adding to new contacts manually added (not via web forms -- this is needed, too)
- Retain "number only" format for export and/or sync to other apps or integrations to remove non-number characters (parentheses, plus sign, spaces)
Default behavior of phone number formatting & validation when creating a new contact:
There are likely other enhancements that other users, especially those not based in the US, would appreciate.