HubSpot Ideas

briley

Don't count weekends in weekday only requests

Currently, with the way the system is built out, a sequence set to only execute actions on weekdays will still count the weekends towards the delay. (A 3-day delay on a Friday will send on Monday rather than Wednesday). This doesn't give a lot of time for the contact to respond as they are likely not checking their emails on the weekend, so a follow-up is being sent prematurely in some cases.  It would be great to have the option to not include weekend days in these delays

25 Commentaires
nathans
Participant

Briley, I hope you're referring to workflows? If so, yes please! I need to be able to delay actions by number of weekdays / business days. I want to send a second email two weekdays after the first. Currently (with my workflow set to "Business days only") it will be sent first thing Monday if the first went out late on a Friday, which makes our recipients feel like we're barraging them without giving them a chance to respond.

Workflow delays need to have a "count weekdays only" check box.

mlodge
Membre

I absolutely support this idea. @briley Please send these feedback to your development team. Your note was dated 2018 and we are half way 2019 and no upgrade on this. There should be an option (like a check box) to allow this. Just like you have with emails sent on weekdays only, an option that give you the flexibilty not to include weekdays in the days counted. Thank you for your help!

JTxCBI
Participant

I totally support this idea. The Delay function should be considered an action and respected by the general settings tab of ensuring actions are executed on weekdays.

mlong
Membre

This would be very helpful for multistep sequences.

AndrewRennie
Membre

Totally support this idea.

I've been enrolling contacts into sequences, and if the spacing between each step was two days, and step 1 happened on a Thursday, step 2 would fall on a Saturday. The only option available at the moment is "Send follow-up emails on weekdays only", but If step 2 was a task (like a phonecall), I wouldn't get it until the Monday. However, since weekends are still counted in the sequence, step 3 (the next email) would also happen on Monday - meaning two steps happen on the same day when they're supposed to be two days apart.. Which is quite a big problem for me! 

Like someone mentioned, this post was dated 2018 and it's now 2020. Surely it wouldn't take too much for the development team to add a "count weekdays only" checkbox? Any help on this would be appreciated!

mlong
Membre

We are now looking at the timeline when we in enroll contacts and adjust it on the fly before enrolling to make sure it does not hit on weekends.  It requires a little more time when enrolling, but is a workaround to the issue.  

 

Being able to have the option to count weekend days or not would be very helpful.

AirswiftRob
Contributeur

I agree that this is an essential feature

KarthikC
Contributeur de premier rang

I would like to bump this - but also for workflows

pmurphy
Membre

I would also like to bump this

glencornell
Équipe de développement de HubSpot

Hi folks! Seeing this now, and going to add a 'Sequences' tag so it stays on my radar!

 

I'm planning to dig into this some, but it would be helpful to hear from each of you the different types of problems that you're running into because of this! @AndrewRennie's example is very helpful, and I'm believe there may be some other related problems. These examples will be helpful when considering if we should change the default.

pmurphy
Membre

Thanks for responding @glencornell. For me when I'm setting a time delay in workflows, I want the delay to be able to discount weekends altogether and run business days only. Like if I set it to wait 3 days and a message sends on Thursday, it won't send another until Tuesday or Wednesday, whichever that'd end up being. As opposed to it reading the weekend and going on Monday. 

People may enter my workflows at all sorts of times that may end up leading to it not feeling like a true 3 workday period and feel too rushed in my particular sales/marketing process.

Hope that helps, thanks again

AirswiftRob
Contributeur

My need is similar to @pmurphy except I want to use it for managing internal notifications. When we receive a contact us enquiry I want it to instantly go to sales with 1 and 3 day reminders, avoiding weekends

KarthikC
Contributeur de premier rang

To echo what others have mentioned, how I've seen this play out is setting up a workflow to run only on weekdays, and enrolling contacts on certain weekdays with the intention that follow up emails will go out on specific days. What happens is all the emails and tasks will bunch up on certain days depending on the delay in the WF. I had delays of 3 days, so regardless of which day I enrolled contacts, emails and tasks would end up executing on Mondays and Thursdays, defeating what I was trying to do by enrolling certain contacts into certain WFs on certain days. 

 

So for example, I've enrolled some contacts into a WF on Tuesday with the intention that follow up emails/tasks will happen 3 business days apart. So Tuesday, then Friday, Wednesday, Monday and so on. Sticking with this example, what actually happens is that the follow up emails/tasks execute on Tuesday (start), then Friday, Monday, Thursday, etc. The result is that the follow up actions end up executing sooner than intended because the delay doesn't differentiate between business days and the weekend. And, as already mentioned, the follow up actions end up bunching up on certain days (Monday/Thursday), sending more emails and generating more tasks on those days than originally intended.

 

I realize there's kind of a workaround now that you can select which specific weekdays for actions to execute, but it's just that - a workaround. 

glencornell
Équipe de développement de HubSpot

@pmurphy , @AirswiftRob , @KarthikC  this is all really helpful context.

 

Just to clarify, I'm seeing mentions of Sequences and Workflows here. It sounded like from your examples that you could be talking about both apps.

@AirswiftRob you example in particular looks like a WF-specific issue

@KarthikC  your example in particular struck me as an issue that would impact Sequences more directly, but could also be a WF issue. 

 

I'll go ahead and add a tag here for Workflows as well. Let me know if I'm mistaken!

AirswiftRob
Contributeur

Yep, can confirm that mine is a workflow issue

finn
Contributeur de premier rang

+1

 

One side comment: "weekend" is defined differently in some countries. E.g. in certain parts of the Middle East Saturday and/or Sunday are workdays. To make this functionality really flexible it would be better with 7 checkboxes for each day, and then unchecking would mean those days would not be counted. This way we could have a different setting/sequence for countries with Mon-Fri as workdays and then a cloned sequence for countries where other days are workdays (e.g. Sat-Wed).

 

 

glencornell
Équipe de développement de HubSpot

Hi Community!

 

Sequences logic has been updated so that weekends are not counted towards the delay count. I will remove the sequences tag from this issue, but keep retain the status of "Idea submitted", as it seems a number of requests are related to the delay logic in workflows.

 

Best,

Glen

Simon_Lewis
Membre

Hi @glencornell 

 

Great news re: weekends not counting for sequences. Is there a timeline for the same functionality to be built into workflows?

 

I echo the above; I've created workflows that are driven off pipeline stages, which create tasks for my team to follow up on the opportunity 3 days after the status has changed. I would like a task to be scheduled for Wednesday for opportunities changed on a Friday, however with the current limitations in Hubspot the task is scheduled to be completed for a Monday.

 

Thanks

Simon

radapop
Équipe de développement de HubSpot

+1! It would be great to be given the option to prevent weekends from being counted within workflow delays

Niamh
HubSpot Employee

+1 it would be very useful to be able to exclude weekend days from delays in the workflow tool!