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

[gabeharper]

Please add this. Surprised to discover it missing, and is definitely causing friction here.

[Bruno_Petersen]

We are adding today's date on some selected records through the API. It's not a great solution and it does not help with a lot of the reporting and automation needs. 

It is incredibly frustrating that HubSpot does not have "Today's Date" since this is something so obvious. 

[MStefan5]

Yes please, sincerely need this as most reporting hinges on it.

[hzey11]

My company is also in need of this function, any updates on if it's been added to a product roadmap?

[jpalarcon]

it's a must... for reporting, for calculation properties, etc, etc, etc...

[iamathlete]

i completely agree and have had to create two properties and a 3-layered workflow to do something that can be simply solved by allowing dates to be compared to Today.

[GWebb2]

This field is becoming a must have - I have multiple clients asking for reliable, stable date reporting (such as deal aging in days)  and that can only be accurately produced with a dynamic "today's date field" - all other work arounds are unstable.  Please please create this field!

[PhilZ87]

Why haven't we received any update yet on this thread? Constantly we receive the answer in other threads "please add a new idea in the forum" or "please upvote the idea so we can track the interest"

This standard feature has over 130 upvotes and a lot of direct messages without any reply from HubSpot employees. 

Could you at least give us a reason why not even one answer yet? I would even be fine with "Hello customers HubSpot doesn't allow for such a feature because of the way it was programmed. We apologize" At least then we would have closure on this.

But why the radio silence on this basic thing?? Or why not even consider this Idea as "In Planning" for such a long time if this is such a requested feature?

If I'm not mistaking I can't even choose in deal workflows "Date property ... is today" as an option. 

[JoeGlenn]

Why has this not been added? 

[KNault]

any updates on this idea.  this is critical for our service organization.  Additionally, they would like to have the flexibility to exclude weekends.   

[bi_developer]

I've been recommending at the conferences I attend, to avoid Hubspot. Because the lack of this feature is absurd, and the lack of customer support is shameful. The amount of capital resources Hubspot has, but cannot add a simple NECESSARY feature for users? I avoid Hubspot for all reporting now, and if I am forced to use our Hubspot data, I export into a different system.  Over a year of negligence from Hubspot on this obvious feature. Sincere disappointment.

[mvdbree]

Would like to see this added as well!

[MValleskey]

This is one of the most basic features in any SFA tool, its riduculus I have to build a workflow to do this. Why is todays date not a standard properry 

[JoeGlenn]

Can you tell me how to build the workflow? I called HubSpot and they just
told me I can't get that information.

--



Joe Glenn
MortarStone
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[iamathlete]

Sure @JoeGlenn 

Somebody may have a simpler way to do this, but here's my solution.

I created mine in Deals so will use that as the example. I will also explain how I calculate # of days until the event (because Hubspot does some frustrating things in their normal calculation)

1. Create four properties in Deals

      A.  "Today's Date".   Field type should be Date Picker

      B.  "Project Date" (or whatever you want to call this).  Field type should be Date Picker

      C.   "Date Status".  Field type should be Dropdown Select.  Options should be "Future", "Past" and, if you need it "No Date"

      D.  "Days Remaining".  Field type should be Equation.  Calculated Property Type should be Time Between.  Start Date = Today's Date.  End Date = Project Date

2. Create a workflow based on Deal properties

The is where it becomes a little tricky so I'm attaching an export of my workflow.  Here are the basics:

     A.  Trigger = Today's date is known OR Today's date is unknown.  Re-enrollment = Yes

     B.  If/Then = Project Date is known

              B1. If YES (Project Date is known), Set Property Value of Today's Date to "Date of Step". CONTINUE TO C

              B2. If NO (Project Date is not known), Set Property Value of Date Status to "No Date".  END FLOW.

     C.  If/Then = Project Date is BEFORE Today's Date

             C1. If YES (Project date is before today's date), Set Property Value  of Date Status to "Past".

                       C1a. Clear Property Value = Clear Today's Date.  END FLOW

             C2. If NO (Project date is NOT before today's date), Set Property Value of Date Status to "Future"

                       C2a. Delay Until A Day or Time = delay until 12:15am.  END FLOW

The last "Delay until a day or time" allows the workflow to re-run all relevant deals every day so that when you wake up, the Today date has been updated.

One of the challenges of Hubspot is that when you calculate a time between two dates, even though you set a Start Date and an End Date, Hubspot won't indicate that a date is in the past.  For instance if today is August 1 and your project date is August 8, Hubspot will show Days Until Project = 7.   However, if your project date is August 8 and today's date is August 15, Hubspot will still show Days Until Project = 7 (it should be a negative 7 to indicate it's in the past).

In order to resolve that issue, I use the "Date Status" field to indicate if the project date is in the past or future.  If it's in the past, I don't need to know how long until the project, so I clear todays date.

We set tasks based on # days before an event (project) date.  But with Hubspot's way of calculating, it will actually set up tasks to do AFTER the event/project.

I hope this was helpful!  Please feel free to reach out with any questions.  

If anybody at Hubspot is reading this, I hope you can understand the craziness that we have to go through to simply understand how many days before something occurs.

[JoeGlenn]

Thanks so much! I'll give it a try!

--



Joe Glenn
MortarStone
Schedule a Meeting

[efellefred]

i'd like to see this as well, please --we're trying to build some campaigns around how long someone has been a client, to spur a conversation around it being time to update their website.

[HBrii]

Will be nice to have the 'today' choice for workflow and form submissions !

[bi_developer]

Hello Hubspot management,

We've been asking for this "Today's date" feature for over a year. 

How many people asked for "the ability to drag instead of click X" ? I think nobody asked for that, yet it was a prioritized feature in an update?? And this was 8 months ago. When will you prioritize the feature that users are actually asking for??

HUBSPOT UPDATE: Monday, January 11, 2021

We’ve released some new updates we hope you’ll find useful. These updates are aimed to enable you to better interact with your data fields and manipulate them.

Here’s what’s new:

• Instead of clicking "X", you can now drag fields back down into the "staging" area to remove them from the chart.

[Ellesyanna]

Very much needed, really a limitation for using the date/time property fields in lists & workflows.