HubSpot Ideas

andrewdavis_SF

Delay until Date & Time Workflow Action

I'd like a way to delay contacts from throwing through to a certain step of a workflow until a specific date. 

 

This came about when we have a micro-nurture running to a specific set of our audience. We are launching a flash deal to our contacts that will last from today for another 8 days. In the micro-nurture workflow - we have an email that provides a different offer. We didn't want two competing workflow offers to go out. So we put an 8 day delay in the workflow as a temporary step. It would be great if I could tell all the contacts to delay until a specific date instead. That way when the date has passed, the action becomes disabled or whatever. 
Other option would be pause workflow (but that doesn't help the previous steps)

Atualizações da HubSpot
June 21, 2023 06:50 AM

Hi @TobiasWi ,

This is a great question. We do want to move in that direction, and have already started expanding access to associated records in other, additional actions with this beta: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-associated-record-data-in-workflows

If you want to join this beta (even though it doesn't directly solve your use case) you can do so from the "what's new" page in your account: https://app.hubspot.com/l/whats-new/betas

 

We haven't yet added the ability to use date properties in delay actions, but it's definitely something we want to work towards. I would be very interested to hear more about your end to end process. I will send you a direct message if you want to book time to speak, or you can outline your use case here. Thank you!

Megan

Status atualizado para: Delivered
September 01, 2022 11:02 AM

Hi Everyone,

 

Thanks for the continued comments and questions. As @isabellweiss kindly laid out (thank you, Isabell!) this feature launched in mid August and is now available to customers. The new delay action allows you to create delays centered around a calendar date (eg. an event happening on 9/15/22) or centered around a date property (for example the "close date" of a deal). Our KB doc has all the details: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-delays#delay-until-a-date

 

Thank you so much for your openness and feedback that helped form this feature, and bring it to fruition.

 

Best,

Megan

 

May 24, 2022 06:02 AM

Hi @RKers ,

Thanks for following up and adding details about your use case. I updated this thread to "In planning" on ‎Apr 15, 2022 because we did start developing at that time and are actively working on it now. We're getting close to a beta, and I think your use case will work really well in the new functionality. If you want to participate in the beta please send me your Hub ID in a private message and I will let you know when it's ready.

 

I will also update this thread with additional status updates.

 

Thanks!

Megan

Status atualizado para: In Planning
April 15, 2022 06:44 AM

Hi folks,

 

I'm Megan, a product manager for the workflows tool at HubSpot. 

 

My team is currently working on date based delays for all object type workflows. These delays will allow you to create delays that are relative to a date in a particular date property (eg. deal close date), or a fixed date (eg. 4/1/22 at 9am). Please follow this thread for updates as the feature moves through development.

 

Thanks!

Megan

Status atualizado para: Being Reviewed
January 19, 2022 10:38 AM

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for continuing to take the time to show your support for this idea through your votes and comments. While today we offer some functionality for date centered automation, for example with date centered contact workflows, which can run automation around specific calendar dates or the values in contact date properties, we're also currently doing research to explore how we can offer more broad date centered automation options that could work in and across all types of workflows. Please follow along here to stay informed of progress.

 

Best,

Megan

Status atualizado para: Not Currently Planned
June 22, 2021 12:26 PM

Hi everyone,

 

I’m Megan Legge, a product manager for HubSpot’s workflows tool. At this time there are no plans to develop this Idea. This is not to say that this idea will never be developed, just that there are no plans to do so at this time. 

 

Today, we offer some functionality for date centered automation, as mentioned in some of the above comments, for example with date centered contact workflows, which can configure automation around specific dates or contact date properties. Additionally, in the other workflows (deals, companies..), there are filters that help trigger automation centered around date properties. For example if you wanted to trigger a deal workflow when a renewal date is 30 days away, you could create an enrollment trigger using the filter operators less than 31 days ago and/or more than 29 days ago.

 

I recognize that these options don't cover all of the use cases outline in this thread, but we hope to dig into this problem more in the future. 

 

Best,

Megan

70 Comentários
willtp
Participante

100% need to this. I'm already trying to create a workaround for not being able to send NPS survey reminders and really need this month property in the workflow to be able to achieve this smoothly.

 

Very frustrating and hopefully addressed soon.

MVinther
Membro

I agree! I need this feature so much, and I see it as a basic feature for automation in general! 

I really hope it wil be addressed soon.

RSerpico
Membro | Parceiro Platinum

I completely agree! It would be great to add this feature as soon as possibile, since it will be very useful for so many activities (for example, setting reminders)!

Hope it will be addressed soon.  

TCoppen
Membro | Parceiro

Bumping this as hit this problem as soon as we started doing a workflow with Hubspot for webinars. Follow up and reminder messages to attend need date tailored delays

mprofile
Colaborador(a)
SarahMayo
Colaborador(a)

@mprofile I'd be happy to stand corrected if I'm wrong about this, but I believe for anyone trying to do a series of recurring webinars, the center-on-a-date-property workflow approach would mean the administrator would have to clone a new workflow for every webinar. I already have a fairly convoluted workflow with branches for each webinar date/time, and enrolling in separate workflows to automate the reminder emails for each webinar seems like it's going to get too messy to maintain properly.

TCoppen
Membro | Parceiro

@mprofile its not the enrolment date that we need its delaying steps within the workflow untill a particular date. At present we run a number of webinars a month across a few brands. Currently we are having to count the days inbetween workflow steps in order to put them in and adjusting for weekends. This is the same even when we reuse workflows. It would be much quicker to just be able to set a delay till date

mprofile
Colaborador(a)

Hi @TCoppen, thanks for the explanaition. With the Date-centric workflow you can just do that! I know this approach has other 'problems'. (you cannot make it recurring - only anually, which is irritating)

 

As the first step you define the date of the webinar (for example) and then you can define dates (for reminders, for sending a thank you, for sending a recording link). Those dates are fixed in time. Not in days, so no counting the weekends etc. 

 

See image:

mprofile_0-1618299706883.png

 

After you run through this flow and it's dates you can change the centered date and all dates will be changed accordingly. So if you organize your webinar on a thursday all the future and the historic dates are centered around the new one.

 

I hope I am making any sense to you...?

 

mprofile
Colaborador(a)

@SarahMayo sorry to say that I cannot correct you on that one :(. It is my main problem with recurring date centric workflows because we also use it for our webinars. But because these webinars are 6 weeks apart we are managing just fine.

 

If you are doing multiple in different overlapping time frames things might get messy very quickly. I would create a flow for every webinar (you already thought about this I can imagine), containing the neccesary reminders (we do 3: -1 week, -1 day, -1 hour), the "thank you participated" email (+1 hour) to the people wo clicked the link (there is no integration with our webinar-software) and the "the recording is available (+1 day) to everyone who registered.

 

And yes, I have to change the date the flow is centered around after everyone went through the last step of the workflow. (warning: in this case you need reencollment turned ON for every enrollment trigger)

BdeMuijnck
Membro

Please let me know when this feature is available, it is a necessary step when making a webinar workflow.

NelsonCaparas
Membro

Is this feature still not available?

BdeMuijnck
Membro

There is one way to do this by automation

  1. To create a list of all contacts registered 
  2. Create a workflow centered around date(see screenshot for reference)
  3. s=Select the email to send in the workflow and enroll your list created in the first step send the email.

The disadvantage of this method is that no emails or other actions can be placed in front of it.

mprofile
Colaborador(a)

Hi @BdeMuijnck ,
That is the method we use. We have a form somewhere on the site where traffic is driven to. People who fill in the form receive a separate confirmation email and are added to one of two lists (=not relevant for this question :)). Those lists are used to enroll them in a workflow centered around a date. -7 days, -1 days, -1 hours they receive a reminder for the webinar. +1 hour they get a "thank you" e-mail with question about NPS and +1 day they get an email sending them to the recording. All can be handeled from one date centered workflow. 

 

What do you mean with your last "The disadvantage .. front of it."?

MGummerson89
Membro

I'd love to see a Delay until Date & Time option added to the workflow actions. I know that you can run a contact automation centered on date, but much of our communication centers around the Deal, which centered on date is not an option. Therefore, I build a lot of communications using deal automations. I want to utilize "Delay until Date & Time" in the automation process to provide us the effeciency of prebuilding our campaigns and automate the sending of our communications. 

 

Please consider adding this functionality! ActiveCampaign has it, so should HubSpot!

YiRui_Chua
HubSpot Employee

Hi team,

 

commenting for a customer here.

While we do have "date-based" workflow, it would be really cumbersome for customers to have to create multiple of such workflows if they are looking to send out multiple emails to the same contact list on specific dates. As such,having date-specific delays in workflow make perfect sense.

Thank you.

Status atualizado para: Not Currently Planned
MeganLegge
Equipe de Produto da HubSpot

Hi everyone,

 

I’m Megan Legge, a product manager for HubSpot’s workflows tool. At this time there are no plans to develop this Idea. This is not to say that this idea will never be developed, just that there are no plans to do so at this time. 

 

Today, we offer some functionality for date centered automation, as mentioned in some of the above comments, for example with date centered contact workflows, which can configure automation around specific dates or contact date properties. Additionally, in the other workflows (deals, companies..), there are filters that help trigger automation centered around date properties. For example if you wanted to trigger a deal workflow when a renewal date is 30 days away, you could create an enrollment trigger using the filter operators less than 31 days ago and/or more than 29 days ago.

 

I recognize that these options don't cover all of the use cases outline in this thread, but we hope to dig into this problem more in the future. 

 

Best,

Megan

ZatAdam
Membro

I would like to see this as well. I am attempting to automate the moving of deals out of both our closed/lost and won stages into an archive deals board at the end of the financial year. I already have data fields to record the date that a deal is placed into each pipeline stage, so pivoting on the recorded closed date i could then pause the automation until the 31st of march to then move the deal into the archive. 

 

 

EGJade
Participante

Oracle Eloqua kicks butt at this type of functionality. True automation is not creating three workflows for ONE zoom webinar - one to invite, one to register them to zoom and one to follow-up after the webinar.  It's ridiculous! It's easier to complete the process outside of HubSpot.

NelsonCaparas
Membro

Totally agree on Oracle Eloqua's waitsteps feature. I'm hoping that feature could be implemented to HubSpot too, within this lifetime. The number of workflows to create for just one campaign just too many and it's getting old; and we can't even create a folder within a folder in Workflow section to at least organize it. Oh well...

AmandaG
Membro

This function would be great for us, we have one event that is absolutely key for our customers, so to set actions in our Customer Success workflow centred on this date is crucial.