Display number of contacts in a workflow delay

[rizq786]

Please bring back the number that was displayed in workflows in a delay. This was very useful to see how many contacts exactly were at each delay and how they were moving through a nurture sequence. 

This was replaced with "Active Contacts In This Action" which to be honest is rather insignificant and does not tell me anything except contacts are waiting. Knowing an exact number allows me to assess how many contacts are there and if I want to change their course of action then what number i am dealing with or if I want to introduce a logic feature and split that delay what number I am working with.

Its unfortunate that hubspot would deem this an irrelevant feature to many hubspot users who use this figure in our nurture sequences and replace it with something that is in fact irrelevant. 

[rizq786]

Hi everyone,

Thank you for your patience and help on this one. Today we added back in the ability to see the total count of objects in a delay or action ⭐ Let me give some more context:

As I explained in the first time I posted here, we removed the count because it can become inaccurate in some situations, and this has caused problems for customers. Now that we have added it back we have made a couple of changes to 1 - make it more reliable, and 2 - make it more clear why it could sometimes be inaccurate, temporarily, in some situations. 

The object counts from 1-99 should always be exact, correct, and updated very quickly/accurately. This is a new fix that we recently made, and you've seen this, we already implemented.

On the other hand, if there are 99+ objects in a delay, we are going to go back to using the previous system, and show that same number using the technology we used before. What should you know about this? There are isolated scenarios where the count can temporarily be inaccurate by a marginal amount. It can become inaccurate if a large number of records enter or exit the action at the same time -- lots of updates to the count are happening all at once, and it can take a little time for them all to process and for the number to update to the correct current count. Because of this we've now added a tool tip explaining this behavior, which states "This is an approximate number. It can become inaccurate if a large number of records enter or exit the action at the same time."

Also, because we heard from you that order of magnitude was the really important piece of information here, we think that it's likely acceptable for this count to be considered an estimate, that correctly reflects order of magnitude, even if it's in the middle of an update and not quite exact for a few minutes as opposed to not giving you access to the number at all. To further address this reality that it should be considered "our best estimation at a given moment," we introduced rounding so that numbers in hundreds are rounded to the nearest 10, numbers in thousands are rounded to nearest 100, and numbers in millions are rounded to nearest 100,000 etc. 

I hope this helps explain why we've made the decisions we've made along the way. Thanks for sharing your feedback and please know whenever you post on the ideas forum, we really are reading and listening!

Best,

Megan

 

[rizq786]

Hi Everyone,

Thank you for continuing to share context on your needs. Today we were able to launch a small update that brings some of this data back with a caveat. 

We found a new way to display the exact count of records, if the number of the records in the action is under 99 records (for example, we can show "53 deals" or "78 contacts"). However if the count is over 99 records, we can only show "99+."

We're still investigating other options, but this was a quick fix we could get out to you ASAP so we focused on that first.

Please continue to share feedback and let me know if you have questions.

Best,

Megan

[rizq786]

Hi Everyone,

I'm Megan, a product manager for the workflows tool. Thank you for taking the time to follow up and let us know how this change is impacting you. For background, here's what happened:

Previously, you could see the total number of records active in workflow actions. For example, if 20 contacts were waiting in a delay, the delay action would display the detail "20 contacts." Unfortunately, after persistent bug reports, we decided this count was too unstable and was causing more harm than help. We therefore removed the specific count of records from actions on August 30th, 2023 and replaced it with the text "Active" when there are records actively waiting in an action. As before, you can still click on the card to open a left side panel to review a list of all of the active records currently in each action. The records shown in the sidebar will be accurate in detail and total count.

That said, based on your feedback, I no longer think this is true "....was causing more harm than help."

My team and I are jumping back onto this problem to see if we can come up with an alternate, reliable solution that meets some of the needs you all are outlining. I will update this thread with more detail when I can.

Thank you,
Megan

[franksteiner79]

Hi @rizq786 

Isn't that the same thing, just named differently?

As a workflow executes in real time and a matter of seconds, the only valid number is the contacts which are currently in a delay. To the best of my knowledge and recollection this has always shown the number of contacts currently "waiting" in the delay step.

Frank

[DominikRich]

Hi @franksteiner79 

yes and since some days this number is not shown any more on the dalys steps. It just says tha there are contacts on the delay step but not how much... 😒

Best regards,

Dominik

[RLicau]

I'm quite sad this was taken away as I'd use it for reporting purposes (no further list or contact view needed). 

[JHall13]

Bring it back!  Now!  This was a feature I used all the time

Spoiler

[BNikolic]

Please bring this feature back to workflows. Pretty much useful from the tracking and reporting perspective.

[OliviaSK]

yeah this seems like a huge oversight. 

Cool, I can go and see each person individually but there is no way to see how many! How is Marketing Ops supposed to see the number of expected emails to go out on the next step? HUGE GAP AREA HubSpot.

[CEastburn]

This really needs to be brought back!

[EKlein2]

Please bring this feature back. It is so helpful and needed!

[spencerbomboir]

Please bring back this feature! I found it extremely helpful to see things at a glance. 

[CHawkins]

Upvoted! I've encountered this issue as well, and found a somewhat inconvenient workaround to determine the number of contacts in a workflow delay: You can click on the "Active contacts in this action" link, which allows you to select all contacts by checking the checkbox at the top. This action will provide you with a count of the listed contacts.

The only downside is that if the count exceeds 50 contacts, you'll need to scroll to the bottom of the module to "load" all the contacts to obtain an accurate count.

I've recorded this video demonstrating this workaround I hope you find it useful!

[rizq786]

Yeh but its an unnecessary step that has to be taken for a feature that was readily available before. Although appreciate the video with the workaround. When we are here trying to streamline automation, we are ending up adding extra steps to the process and if you have over 100k records enrolled then check all is not going to help! 

Hubspot just restore that number in workflows please.

[OliviaSK]

@CHawkins HI! Miss working with you!
Thank you for the tip, but yes unfortunately for the workflows I am using we have thousands in the delay steps so this is a lot of scrolling. Alas, this is technically a work around but doesn't solve all the issues with this. HS please take time to think this one through. 

Would love to have actual reporting or list filters where I could use criteria that were helpful. It would be awesome to pull lists on people who completed the workflow AND also only made it to "XYZ" step.

Use cases: Seeing the total helps Ops identify if the correct number of people are moving through the workflow. 

It also allows us to see what is upcoming in the next email and the expected number of sends. 

Without this there is no other way that HS can provide a way to audit or admin people within the workflow. 

it would be so much more helpful to report or create lists of people in a current wait step so we can track total counts as mentioned above but in a reporting structure. 

especially when marketing is updating workflows for nurtures as an example. we sometimes add emails at a later time and not everyone receives all the emails since they have already completed the workflow. 

Today Ops has to do some spreadsheet magic. I pull a list of people who completed the workflow and then pull another list for each email that was sent of recipients to match up the difference and that would be the group of people who need to receive the new emails. Instead of doing that, it would be great to just pull the list with all the criteria filters I need for workflow filters.

EX: we created a nurture with 5 emails and people completed the workflow. However, marketing added 5 new emails to that nurture (workflow) and wants all the people who finished the workflow but DID NOT receive the new emails added so they can essentially launch that portion of the new nurture with people who already completed the workflow

secondly, in this example, this is where being able to add people back to a workflow at a certain step would be HUGE. Another idea I need to updvote somewhere.

[06163]

Upvoting this one. Super disappointed that Hubspot would think it is OK to remove this count. Not having access to this data poses a negative impact to our business. Unacceptable. We often have 100's of 1000's of contacts enrolled in workflows at any one time, and knowing where these contacts are sitting in a workflow is key. There is no acceptable workaround.

[JBarbosa0]

There is no point in removing this feature. It was the ONLY way I could measure my worflows for nurturing purposes, now I need to scroll (if I have 1000 people on the delay imagine the time it takes...) to know how many people are waiting.

This completely ruins the way I manage my workflows, Please undo this update ASAP.

[rizq786]

@06163 totally with you - its a nightmare right now for all the active workflows I have right now
@JBarbosa0 literally no point and honestly not exactly sure what was acheived by taking that feature out

[MeganLegge]

Hi Everyone,

I'm Megan, a product manager for the workflows tool. Thank you for taking the time to follow up and let us know how this change is impacting you. For background, here's what happened:

Previously, you could see the total number of records active in workflow actions. For example, if 20 contacts were waiting in a delay, the delay action would display the detail "20 contacts." Unfortunately, after persistent bug reports, we decided this count was too unstable and was causing more harm than help. We therefore removed the specific count of records from actions on August 30th, 2023 and replaced it with the text "Active" when there are records actively waiting in an action. As before, you can still click on the card to open a left side panel to review a list of all of the active records currently in each action. The records shown in the sidebar will be accurate in detail and total count.

That said, based on your feedback, I no longer think this is true "....was causing more harm than help."

My team and I are jumping back onto this problem to see if we can come up with an alternate, reliable solution that meets some of the needs you all are outlining. I will update this thread with more detail when I can.

Thank you,
Megan

[rizq786]

@MeganLegge I appreciate your time taken to explain the reason for the removal of the showing an actual number in the delay but happy that given the feedback on this thread, you understand the importance of it to many of us in how we use it in our workflows, strategy and reporting. 

We look forward to a viable solution that will meet all our needs! 

Riz

[06163]

@MeganLegge thanks for the update. Yes please - fix the issue rather than remove the feature. Clicking on the "Active" text to view contacts is useless in most instances of our business. I currently have hundreds of K contacts sitting in delay steps. It is literally impossible to load them all and then tally them up.

[OliviaSK]

@MeganLegge 
Thank you so much for watching and responding back to us (the users). It is not often users are listened to or at least responded to on issues/features that matter to us. 

I can understand a lot goes into development and that HS was considering the accuracy of the previous feature, but it really has now left us in the dark. Look forward to seeing the update here on this idea!

[JNelson95]

It was a very unnecessary change, even an unstable (but relatively close) number is better than no number at all to be honest - now I don't have any guage into how many people are in the workflow. Also I'd love for the list of people in the delay to be listed in order of "remaining time in action" - I never understood why the list of contacts in delay were sporadically ordered in literally no order that I can identify.