Having a dynamic 'today' field in the 'Time between' feature

[Achagnon1]

I'm in the process of setting up calculated properties to use the new "time between" feature in reporting, and realized that, in the 'time between' calculations for properties, I'd like to have access to the option 'today,' which would be a dynamic date set as the value of today's date.

That would allow me to track dynamically how long has it been since a deal has been created ('today' minus 'create date' = how far along we are in the sales cycle up till now). 

[Achagnon1]

Hi @Ruben_tB, appreciate the context. If you are creating properties to use in lists, you can replace it with the filters approach I detail in the video.

In the criteria for each list, you would create a filter like:

`First Order Date` more than `365` days ago AND `First Order Date` less than `730` days ago (for Year 1)

`First Order Date` more than `730` days ago AND `First Order Date` less than `1095` days ago (for Year 2)

etc

Hope that helps - let me know if I am missing something.

[Achagnon1]

Hey everyone! Jeff from the HubSpot product team. Thanks for the upvotes, comments, and survey submissions on this post. It's on me that we haven't responded as much as you would have liked. The Community means a lot, and (believe it or not) we read every comment.

I've been looking into this "dynamic time" challenge for a bit, and I think the solution most of you are looking for already exists - it might just be too hidden. I recorded a quick video walking through what I'm thinking (apologies it's not as "quick" as I'd like). Directions written out below. I welcome your response in the comments on this post - what did I miss? What use cases do you have that I might not be considering? Appreciate your insight.

When I've spoken to customers on this, the common needs are something like: "Fire a workflow when the 'renewal date' is in the next 30 days" or "Show me a report of everyone with a 'birthday' in the next 30 days", where renewal date and birthday are just examples.

To do that, try the following:

- Create a workflow on your object (in my example, Company is where "renewal date" is)

- Set the workflow to trigger "when criteria is met"

- Choose your date property (mine was "renewal date") and then look for the filter option "is less than" (maybe 2/3 down the list).

- In the "less than" filter settings, you can enter "days from now" or "days ago" - which both work off Today's date!

- Then add your other criteria and your action

I'm including a screenshot of the workflow and filter I used below. It's super simplistic - but it should give you an idea.

I hope (for some of you at least) this avoids the need for an intricate set of workflows to set a "Today's Date" property. Let me know in the comments if it helps, or if your use case would require something different. Really keen to learn more. We're interested in solving this problem, but its not at all easy to solve in Time Between properties (I so wish it was!) and I think this Filters solution gets at what a lot of you have been looking for.

Thanks for watching/reading and for your feedback.

Jeff

[Achagnon1]

Hi all!

It's Shay again from the Product Manager on the CRM product team.

Again, thanks to everyone for taking the time to submit, upvote, and comment on this Idea. We’re still reviewing this idea and trying to determine the best way to implement this in HubSpot. Turns out it’s a fairly complex engineering problem. To better understand all of the use cases for this type of field, we've created this survey and would very much appreciate it if you all could take a couple of minutes to fill it out.

Thanks,

Shay

[Achagnon1]

Hi folks,

I’m Shay Jones, the Product Manager on the CRM product team.

Thank you all for taking the time to submit, upvote, and comment on this Idea. We hear you loud and clear, and we agree that this functionality is important. We are currently evaluating if this Idea is feasible and, if so, how our team will implement it. 

Any news about this feature request will be relayed on this thread, so stay tuned!

-Shay

[gcohen]

Yes pleaes. I would love this too.

[bi_developer]

I'm shocked this feature is not supported by Hubspot. This feature is so highly demanded, that it is baked into every coding language in the world. SQL-ers can't live without it. Data scientists and Business Intelligence developers can't live without it. Time Series data (pretty much all Hubspot charts) need it.  

Because Hubspot does not support this, I need to build reports to export data into other systems, and now our C-level team are using less Hubspot and relying on other systems. Hubspot needs to support this immediately.

[Ben7]

Please can this be given priority? It seems elementary and I am also surprised it is not a standard feature. 

[bi_developer]

I have written directly to David Hunt, VP, Global Customer Support, to take a look at this community request.  I wrote him on October 14, 2020. 

Seems like low-hanging fruit that a Dev team could implement in less than one sprint, so all users can make "Time Between" calculations between any datetime property and "Today's Date".  We ought to be able to select the output as milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months.  But I would settle for just milliseconds and then I'll build another calculated column to convert milliseconds into days, or whatever is needed.

[Tlevesque]

That's really missing, not having "Today" remove 90% of the usage I can have from this Time between feature...

And a simple increment/update of a day every 24 hours will be enough for me

[BigeMe]

Yes please

[amtnezschez]

Absolutely agree... This is a must have, and development is so simple... 

[bi_developer]

Our company is using hubspot less and less because this feature is missing. We painfully export the data from hubspot into another system, just so we can use a getdate() feature in SQL and then use datediff() functions to make our calculated reports. We have talked about creating our own internal system to record and monitor Deals, which would make Hubspot obselete for us 😄 

[erica11]

This is needed ASAP

[sossp]

Please.. implement dynamic today-- and also as mentioned by bi_developer:

"We ought to be able to select the output as milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, or months."

Time in between currently switching automatically between hours, days, months and years is really not functional, not reliable and not acceptable. I need to be able to choose the output metric

[cheryllu]

I found this:
https://community.hubspot.com/t5/CRM/How-to-create-a-Today-s-date-date-property/td-p/389836

[bi_developer]

Thanks Cheryllu, I replied to that thread on the workaround solution. Because the workaround workflow is constantly calculating on hundreds of thousands of Contacts (or millions of Deals), like a perpetual for loop, the workflow ultimately breaks down and begins to give incorrect data, and is not a good solution for us.  But it might work for smaller Hubspot accounts with a small number of contacts and deals.

[AdamCrookes]

Yeah, I think this is sorely needed. 

[Insight_Studio]

This would be very beneficial to have - currently trying to calculate a 'Remaining Time in Contract' date - not possible without creating a workflow to stamp all companies with today's date... every day. Pretty inefficient, pretty painful. Would love to see this implemented.

[tommitchell]

This is badly needed - please implement!

[bloosbrock]

Has anyone received a response from HubSpot acknowledging the need for this and when it might be addressed? Thanks

[MissTipsi]

This is a must, been waiting on it for so long...

[woody]

We have waited too long for this extremely basic feature.

Five years ago, I saw the "dynamic today property" feature on Infusionsoft - a much cheaper automation marketing software than Hubspot. I've also worked with many other software (most of them are basic and less professional than Hubspot) but they all developed the "dynamic today property" feature very early.

[pauldudley]

yes please, very accustomed to seeing this in salesforce

[Remarkable]

Any updates on this? It's really holding our transition from SFDC up...