HubSpot Ideas

catan

Control timeline activity associations to associated objects (contacts/ companies/ tickets/ deals)

Currently, according to this KB article, there are certain set rules for activity associations: 

There are a few exceptions to the above. For example, an exception is that emails sent and calls made from any object record will also be associated to the relevant contacts that were being emailed or called.

 

These rules are not very intuitive for many users. For example, see this thread https://community.hubspot.com/t5/CRM/Associating-contact-activity-to-specific-deals/m-p/308086#M1171...

 

It would be awesome if we could have a toggle that allows users to be able to toggle automatic association of all activities for the associated contact/ company, or specific associated deals/ tickets.

65 Replies
Anonymous
Not applicable

Thank you all for this additonal context. This is very helpful for us to understand the various use cases.

JShaffer
Member

The irrelevant associations really clog up the company and deal records. Not only that, but sometimes they can cause a deal to close incorrectly. If we were able to choose what automatically associates to an activity, that would be much more functional for us. 

OliverWheelie
Participant

Hopping on here. When I'm in a deal, create a new email within the deal, and therein assign a Sequence to a contact, none of the activity shows up in the deal! This is acutely inconvenient and anti-user friendly. I really hope it's high pri. I cannot imagine this is a fringe case I'm talking about here. Thanks.

MariZanchetta
Contributor

It would be great to have the option to choose if I want a specific task or note added to a Deal to be automatically associated with the contacts and companies that are associated with that deal. 

 

Currently, I have to manually check the activities added by the sales team into a deal, and go one by one and associate them with the contacts and companies, as I do have to understand all engagement that has been done with the contact. This takes so much time and it's not productive.

 

Hope you have news on this soon @Anonymous !

 

 

Justin_Anderson
Member

I have a client who's using custom objects and I'm FLOORED that there's no way to enable automatic associations of email threads/notes for objects that are connected. Using custom objects will now create a TON of unworkable manual effort to keep new email threads/notes associated with related Deals, Companies, and other custom objects.


This associations preference would be so easy to turn into a software interface, just turn the chart in this KB article into software with a grid of toggle boxes: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/crm-setup/associate-activities-with-

Chart shows how automatic associations are set up, and a grid of toggle boxes within HubSpot could allow you enable/disable default associations for associated records on new emails/notes/tasks/etc.

Screenshot 2022-08-24 at 9.31.05 AM.png

Justin_Anderson
Member

And in addition to my last post (where I showed a screenshot of a grid where you should be able to decide which objects automatically select activity association):

 

These automatic associations should have the option to NOT associate anything that's defined as "Closed/Won/Lost". 

(Much like the Deal settings with the ** note, but with more control)

 

For these custom objects we NEED the option to automatically associate emails/notes to custom objects. But we need the control to NOT associate them to "closed" objects.

 

So rather than a grid showing a simple "On/Off" checkbox, the grid options should be "On/Only Open/Off" with the Deal+Contact/Company cells defaulting to "Only Open".

MLeFaveur
Member

Bonjour,

Notre activité avec un client n'est pas nécessairement en rapport avec une transaction.

Associer une activité client à une ou plusieurs transactions en cours, de façon aléatoire, n'a aucun sens pour nous aujourd'hui.

Des activités apparaissent sur des fiches transactions alors qu'elles n'ont aucun rapport avec elles.

Il faut pouvoir associer manuellement des activités avec des transactions.

serlim
HubSpot Employee

Hello team!

Adding on to this thread:
The current default behavior for logging activities to tickets is that the activity will only automaticall associate with the associated company. It would be great if we had the flexibility to select which objects we want these activities to automatically associate to 🙂 Currently customers have to manually associate logged tasks/notes etc on tickets with contacts, which is tedious. Thank you!

RebeccaMudler
Member

Yikes! I can't belive this has been an idea and known issue for almost THREE years now (maybe longer?) and with 70 upvotes and all these examples has not been escalated as a higher priority. We just started using the full suite of HubSpot in May 2022. The activity auto-associations and the logic in the KB article is poorly designed and causing huge headaches for our Commercial team. So much unrelated activity across objects and it's gettin harder and harder to shift through. It will cause us to miss something soon (a RFQ, an order, a support request).

 

We agree that having the ability to choose what to associate or having some kind of toggle on/off feature within the associations dropdown would be better than all the manual unchecking or manual linking we are having to do today. Our Sales team is losing faith in the HubSpot tool. Hope this issue gets resolved sooner than later.

 

CP22
Member | Diamond Partner

This is a huge issue when a Contact is associated to a Company, which is also associated to several open deals. For a manufacturing rep company that has several open deals (with different manufacturers) with the same prospect/customer, here's what we're dealing with:

 

Contact A is a buyer for Company A (and therefore are associated). Company A has:

  • Deal 1 for Manufacturer X's products
  • Deal 2 for Manufacturer Y's products
  • Deal 3 for Manufacturer Z's products

Sales Rep John logs emails and calls with Contact A regarding Manufacturer X in Deal 1 because those conversations only reference Manufacturer X's products. Sales Rep John also logs emails and calls with Contact A regarding Manufacturer Y in Deal 2, and logs emails and calls with Contact A regarding Manufacturer Z in Deal 3. However, every conversation logged with Contact A is now in all 3 deals regardless.

Beyond that, any apps that pull deal activity feeds have no way to filter this out so it must be done on the HubSpot side. 

 

Seems like a simple fix would be to add a checkbox when associating EXISTING objects to other objects on whether you want activity feeds included, similar to the checkbox when you create a NEW object within another object here

TMyers9
Member

Our company is dealing with similar issues. And, after reviewing a number of other discussions, several others are dealing with this too. Seems Hubspot hasn't done anything about a problem lingering since at least 2019.

AGran
Participant

Hey everyone,

we are thinking about starting a kickstarter campaing to get hubspot under preassure to sort this out!
Super crazy, I know, but hey, if it helps...

Who'd join in with a few thousand?

regards
Alex

SRoberts
Member

This is also a big issue for us. We utilise custom objects heavily and not having activity auto-associate to those custom objects is quite a headache and causes more manual work for most of our teams.

 

One example: we have 2 teams in HubSpot which speak to each other regularly. When Team A email Team B from a custom object, the email is associated to the custom object. The email is received by Team B in their ticket pipeline and is still associated to that custom object. However, when Team B go to reply to that email, the reply does not have the association to the custom object. This means that when the email comes back to Team A it generates a new ticket in their pipeline and they have no idea which records the email is supposed to be associated to!

 

I also agree that it would be tremendously helpful to be able to choose which custom objects get associated automatically and also be able to control filters to stop ativity being associated automatically to Deals or custom objects which are 'closed'.

ABuchthal
Participant

We definitely need the option to change primary association for notes opened from within deals; we need them to always associate with the contacts rather than the companies, and when we're creating a deal within a workflow we'd like to be able to carry the association between the first deal and the note to the new deal and the note as well!

leminhds
Participant

and still no Hubspot member commented on this.... quite a shame

JMartin9
Participant

I can second the sentiment of a lot of the previous comments: THIS FEATURE IS ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL.

 

With the current system it is way to easy to oversee an action that has already taken place because it is stored in a different object. With highly personalized and long-term sales cycles this can be detrimental.

nicoleAH
Participant

We need our chats to log to the associated company. The associated company shows in the chat window. Chat from "Jane, Marketing Director at Company A". So, it doesn't make sense that these aren't logged to the company record as well as the contact record. Most of our companies have multiple contacts and you need a holistic, combined view of their sales & support chats. 

JBradford1
HubSpot Employee

Commenting here for one of my customers: This would be such a great idea to toggle on and off what associates and what doesn't.

There are a lot of times when an associated company doesn't need all the timeline activity from the associated contacts, being able to turn off for instance, tasks, would be great.

CShattuck
Participant

Hello! Chimeing in here because some solutions are definately necessary. We are having emails that should only be associated to a Ticket end up being associated with a Deal because of a shared contact. This is filling up the Deals Activities with unrelated emails. It's  creating a lot of work for our Customer Service team when  emails sent to them are being linked to Deals. Even if they go in and un-associate the ticket with a Deal when it first comes in, any  additonal correspondance on the same ticket is automatically linked forcing Customer Service to unlink every email that comes in. There is got to be a better way to do this. I will write more but I just wanted to get another voice on this important thread so HubSpot will consider looking at a solution to this issue.

itsmaret
Participant

Any news on this feature? It seems like a foundation requirement with Custom Objects to be able to link associated objects' activities. Even if you could set it up in the same way as a Deal (link company/other object activities), would be great!

 

In Custom Object A Records, I want to see activity from associated Companies and associated Custom Object B Records for one of my Enterprise clients.