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)
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
it seems that your requested feature was now added to the HubSpot workflow actions and is called "Delay until a date". At least that is the case in the accounts where I am an active user:
I have already tested the new feature and I quite like it. It works similiar to workflows which are centered around a specific date. The only thing to keep in mind is, that when someone enrolls in the workflow after a certain date step has passed, they obviously skip this date step and are sent to the next action coming after it. If you don't want to exceute an action after a ceratin time has passed then you now have to add a "If/then" branch after the delay and if the date has passed you can for example send the contact to the next delay etc.
Thanks for the heads-up. I'll give it a go. We are using the date-centered options for 6 weekly recurring webinars, I am curious to see how it will function in such an application.
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.
The delay funtion based on object properties in workflows works great for us. But we often have the case, that we need a delay in a contact based workflow, but the date property to wait for is attached to the primary company of the contact (e.g. booking dates for paid subscriptions of customers etc.).
Do you have any visibility, if we will get the chance to access also date properties of attached objects? On most other workflow actions that's possible (enrollement, if/else etc.), but so far not for delays based on dates. As a workaround we copy the date to the contact so far, but as it could change during the delay time we have to check that again at the end of each delay.
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!
This still feels unfinished, as I cannot wait until a datetime property. It will require me to manually submit a fixed time on the date portion of a datetime, instead of waiting for the time portion of the datetime in the property. Huge oversight.
