Hold/pause an object in a workflow delay until a condition is met (delay until an event happens)

[chuckchoi]

Posting this on behalf of my customer! As my customer and I were discussing, we were thinking that it would be helpful to have some kind of workflow pause action. Similar to delay action which holds the objects at the delay step until set time, it'd be awesome if there is a pause trigger that would hold the object to the pause stage until the condition you set is met. With this functionality, you can set a pause trigger: Pause object to this stage until XYZ condition is met.

For example, you can set a pause trigger - Pause contact until contact opened (marketing email name). With this action, any contacts who meet this criteria will just go through the next steps of the workflow, and contacts who do not meet the criteria will stay in that stage until the condition is met. This would be very helpful for the customers who want to use workflows to send email drip campaigns with ultimate goal to have contacts take actions in a marketing email (clicking a CTA, filling out a hyperlinked form, and etc). 

[chuckchoi]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for all your input on this idea! Delay until event happens delays are now live to all customers. Read more about the feature here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-delays

More event types will be added in the future, as this feature evolves. For example, we're currently working on adding the ability to delay until a task's status has changed. Follow along for that development here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Workflow-delay-until-task-complete/idi-p/19246

Thank you!

Megan

[chuckchoi]

Hi all,

Reaching out with a beta update: "Property value changed" events are now available in this new delay feature.

For example, in a deal workflow, you could delay the deal within the workflow, until the deal's stage is set to a particular value.

property value change

[chuckchoi]

Hi everyone,

We've just kicked off a beta for a new feature called a Delay until event happens delay, and we'd love to get it in your hands and get your feedback 

You’ll now be able to trigger subsequent workflow actions, as soon as key engagements like page views and form submissions happen, by using this new type of delay that waits until an interaction, instead of delaying for only a set amount of time.

• In the workflows editor, choose the new delay "Delay until event happens"
• Select a type of event (form submission or page view)
• Create a filter for a specific event
• Set a maximum amount of time to wait

The object will either proceed to the next action in the workflow when they complete the specified event or when the maximum wait time has passed.  In this first beta version, the available events are Page Views and Form Submissions. Additional event types will be coming later.

Please submit your email address and Hub ID via this form to request access, and please feel free to send me a direct message with any follow-up feedback about this new delay!

Best,

Megan

Example workflow leveraging a Wait Until delay

[chuckchoi]

This proposed feature for a delay which waits until either an action is taken, or a maximum number of days has passed, is in planning  I'll update again when there's more information!

[TransparentLeaf]

I have a neat suggestion for workflows. When creating if/then branches, I want to send different types of emails to leads that are in different stages. My workflow is set up to send reminder emails to leads that haven't progressed. However, the leads that have progressed to a new stage should all get the same flow of emails. Currently I have three "yes" braches sticking our and I have to create the same list of emails to all of them. However, a solution would be to create just one list of emails to one "yes" branch and drag the other "yes" braches to merge with that branch. Please see the attached image.

merge

[nicolebrenner]

Hey @TransparentLeaf, this is a great suggestion! I would recommend posting this in our Ideas Forum so that our developers can find it more easily when reviewing other suggestions. Let me know if you have any other questions about the marketing support or ideas forum! 

[TransparentLeaf]

Quite disappointed in your response. You say that it's a great idea and then ask me to post it in another forum after I was asked to post it here by a previous agent. Now it just sits there in the ideas forum.... why tell customers that they have good ideas if the ideas don't get implemented? What is the point of asking me to post it there in the first place?

[nicolebrenner]

Hi @TransparentLeaf, I'm sorry that's been your experience. The reason we have these different forums is because there are different teams moderating each of them. This forum is moderated by team members who can provide technical advice about using the exiting features of the product, but don't actually have any influence over any changes that are made. The Ideas Forum, however, is moderated by the HubSpot Developers. This is the team that decides what direction the product is headed in, and are responsible for implementing these changes. Last year, 137 ideas were implemented from the ideas forum, so they definitely won't just sit there! 

[hubspotmike]

I would like the workflow to pause until some trigger is met in an if/then branch.

The if/then branch would be great if there was some way to tell the workflow to run that test again after some period of time or until the "No" criteria, in this case, became a "yes" The delays function don't necessarily ensure what I need to happen will happen. In these cases I'm just hoping I'm giving the servers enough time to complete the other called sub-workflows I need it to perform before the delay expires.

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Original message with HubSpot support....

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Just to make sure I am understanding you correctly, you are hoping to make the workflow pause between successive workflow enrollments until the previous step is completed before progressing to the next workflow/step.

This is not currently an explicit function of HubSpot and typically I would recommend adding delays (as you have already done) to accomplish this goal. The other alternative - which I will admit is not as clean as simply adding delays and may create too much work - is to create if/then branches after each workflow enrollment with the deciding factor being whether or not the contact has completed the workflow from the previous step of the workflow. If they have not yet completed, it then they could be filtered down a pathway that imposes a 5 minute delay. However, while this pathway should work it will ultimately only save a few minutes here and there when running workflows.

[GLacroix]

Excellent idea, having to repeat delays and exact same action/task is an administration overhead/nightmare when a simple if action is met repeat until complete.

[533853]

Agree, really need this feature. Continually adding delays and repeating the workflow build isn't a good use of time and the workflows can become so big they are hard to manage (and impossible to see the full view of everything!)

[Hawk-Steve]

Words taken straight from my mouth. Agree to this feature request

[ricky_brown]

This is a great idea, I would like to see some form of advanced delay system added in workflows.

[rachaelshaw7]

Hi Everyone,

An idea similar to this seems to be in planning.
It asks for branches to be reconnected to the main branch once an exception is dealt with - in most cases this would negate the need to clone branches over and over again - since this feature is in planning you could vote and request the branches connect to any section not just the main branch

Vote here:

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/IF-branches-reconnection/idi-p/11322

Rachael

[rachaelshaw7]

Hi Everyone,

An idea similar to this seems to be in planning.
It asks for branches to be reconnected to the main branch once an exception is dealt with - in most cases this would negate the need to clone branches over and over again & would enable you to reconnect the NO branch to above the criteria agian - (since this feature is in planning you could vote and also request the branches connect to any section not just the main branch)

Vote here:

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/IF-branches-reconnection/idi-p/11322

Rachael

[cursu]

Yes, this owuld be useful in so many ways! we have workflows that wait for an anwser from the API. The only way we can do it now is to include a time delay. We had cases were the response via API came seconds later... it is hard to nail down the time delay and be customer focused too.

Example:

- Customer submits form

- call to api to assign to sales rep

- delay - 10 minutes

- email to customer to let him know who the sales rep in his area is...

[AileenG]

This is almost critical for my team.  If someone is out a day or more, the daily tasks build up and it is impossible for them to catch up.  Can we implement this sooner than later please?

[Kob43]

I agree with AileenG

[alisab5]

I agree with AileenG

[gowago]

I was speaking to support already. We want to use workflows including if/then branches with a function that only moves onto either ways (no/yes) as soon as the criteria has been met - often happening with a delay. Let me give you an example: 

A new Deal moves into the Pipeline. A task is created & a notification is sent out. 

Now there is a call to be made by operations (optimal within 30 min of entering pipeline). I know i can include a delay of 30 min but this unfortunatelly doesn't solve my issue. 

What happens with a delay: if the call is made within the delay set - the workflow works as intended. BUT and now comes my issue, if the call is made after the delay set - nothing happens. Since the delay passed and the workflow continued on. 

This either could be resolved in creating a loop within a workflow or building a loop with different workflows. Both is currently not allowed by hubspot. 

Why do we need loops or these kind of workflows: because we want to have deals moving through our pipeline automatically depending on certain actions and steps completed. 

I hope that you guys see the need for that issue. There are similar ideas posted! 

And by the way these are people asking for the same thing! 

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Lists-Lead-Scoring-Workflows/Start-over-workflow-step/m-p/279208

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Lists-Lead-Scoring-Workflows/Workflow-if-then-condition-improvement...

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/If-Then-will-delay-or-loop-until-conditions-are-met/i...

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/Lists-Lead-Scoring-Workflows/Go-To-A-Previous-Step-In-the-Workflow/...

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/CRM/Is-this-workflow-possible-in-Hubspot/m-p/294440

[JohannaC]

By the way, ActiveCampaign have that implemented (the option to loop exactly like you've drawn it), I've seen it in a demo.  That's a MUST HAVE feature in my opinion, if Hubspot wants to stay on top...

[jchandler1]

The ability to pause the workflow would be extremelyy helpful for call lists. My team can get overwhelmed from having too many contacts loaded to be able to reach in a certain amount of time and they get backlogged.

I understand that there will a pause sequence feature coming out in beta so I was wondering if that feature will be available for workflows, too.

[-Sanne-]

It is a great idea to be able to put a workflow on hold before it moves on to the next step. Or make it possible to add a loop if it doesn't meet certain criteria yet, it keeps on checking daily or weekly if it meets the criteria and only moves on down the other branche (YES or NO) if it does. I am struggling with a workflow that is super simple but doesn't work because these option is not available.

[Chrintz]

We also have many use-cases for this. 

If a contact is going through a workflow of different emails, it is relevant to hold them for say up to 5days or until they open an email or perform a certain action.