HubSpot Ideas

Arne

HubSpot User is Out of Office

We have quite a number of workflows in HubSpot that classify, notify, assign tasks and owners.

If such users are out of office, processes get stuck in the dead end waiting for the users to eg come back from vacation.

We are using rotation in some cases to make sure that eg an initial follow up still takes place by a team member even if the initial user didn’t react in time.

We also added delays of 1 day to make sure the initially selected users had the opportunity to work on a task.

After that delay a rotation takes place.

Bad enough that the first user was out of office, the next that received the task via rotation was OoO as well.

We cannot delay and rotate again and again until we finally find one that actually works on the follow up action.

Please add an option where users (and as a fallback the team lead/delegate) can set themselves Out of Office and define their delegate to make sure that important workflows don‘t get stuck due to absence or at least get delayed by several days until rotation finally found a user.

It’s needed fast, ie before summer vacations start everywhere.
114 Replies
LewTalon
Participant | Partner

@Arne Our team has been working on a new platform that gives HubSpot users/managers better ability to fully control contact/company/deal/ticket assignment including Out of Office status and working hours.

Update 11/18/22: We are now proud to announce we are listed on the HubSpot app marketplace where you can find more information about our solution! 

TBuckley2
Member

I would love to see something like this. In tech support it would be great to give people an automated response outside of office hours with a link to support guides on the web portal.

JSlater
Member

Agreed!  This is a feature that would really tie many things together.

 

In addition, being able to set workflows with the enrolment tiggers, based on times and days of the weeks, would be great. For example, we use Hubspot forms and want to accomondate the lead submissions when teams are in the office/when office is closed.

 

Our goal would be to create workflows with the enrolment trigger set on when form submissions are submitted (based on the time and day of the week). This would then allow us to create workflows to say if the lead submission is between the hours of 08:00 - 18:00 and the day is Monday - Friday (working hours) enrol contacts (submissions) into this workflow with actions to accomondate our process. And then, for another workflow, to enrol contacts (submissions) outside of these times/days (non-working hours) to do a different set of actions to accomondate when the team/user are back in the office.

 

If anyone already has workflow's or another way to achieve the above, please could you comment below.     

laurabren
Contributor

@JSlater we're working on a very similar use case! Would love to hear if anyone suggests something to you that works for your needs.

 

Ideally we could use the workflow settings to only run a workflow within certain days/hours, however the problem with that is that just controls when the workflow *actions* occur, not when the workflow will run/enroll altogether. If we were able to control when enrollment happened (within those windows), we could have two workflows 1) daytime hours 2) overnight hours, and then just suppress them against each other (if in one workflow, don't enroll in the other, and vice versa).

 

We're SO close HubSpot! Help us!

CBergeron
Member

We can use a workflow to make an OOO message, but the contacts must be subscribers.  If they are not, they wont enroll and won receive the message.

I see posts started in 2019.  In 2022, they are still no features for an OOO message.  I think it should be a minimum to have. My 2 cents ;-)))

EJoseph2
Member

Holidays are coming......

Jnix284
Hall of Famer

This would be extremely helpful to make managing automations easier when people are out

SRandoll
Participant

YES! We absolutely need this function!

AGeißinger
Member

really a must have feature...

JHutchinson6
Member

This would be a great feature! 

Routera-LT
Participant

@JHutchinson6  We've built a HubSpot integration that solves this problem! We've just been accepted and listed on the HubSpot app marketplace where you can find more information about the solution! 

WHowery
Participant

We need this capability ABSOLUTELY!

Arne
Top Contributor

April 27, 2019 was the day I had asked for this really needed functionality.

 

In meantime - almost 4 years later - quite a number of customers confirmed that it is needed.

How many years and how many customers later, will this functionality get implemented?

 

Please don't have us wait for another four years.

AMoon
Member

Agreed, this is needed!

TArnoldGZ
Participant

@fiachra_duffy - the main limitation of these solutions is that, in order to create tasks in a round-robin in HS, one needs to re-assign the Contact Owner before creating the task. Our company has a lot of overlapping "teams" and weighted lead distribution. With the teams solution, we would need to remove and re-assign the user from a lot of teams, which creates too much room for user error. The individual solution wouldn't work at all, as the Contact/Company Owner gets assigned immediately before the task is created based on a number of factors (including the source of the lead, how "hot" or urgent the inquiry is, what market the lead is in, the size of the company... the list goes on).

 

The "easiest" solution to implement, I would imagine, is to have Task-triggered workflows. We could then create an OOO workflow for each team member that triggers when a Task is created to [so-and-so] and reassigns it as specified. Simply turn the workflow on when they're out of office and turn it back off when they're back - problem solved.

 

Task-based/-triggered workflows would be immensely helpful, for this and other use cases.

laurabren
Contributor

Hi fellow HubSpotters,

 

Just chiming in that we've been working with @LewTalon and @Routera-LT to utilize their solution to this issue. We're not live yet, but we're very excited about what we've demoed so far. I'd encourage everyone here to check out their tool! We'll report back with an update once we've started using it.

Clwagner
Participant

This is 100% needed. We are looking to bring in all of our customer care reps into HubSpot, but the current way we manage out of office team members is not scalable at all. This thread was originally posted in 2019. What is taking you so long HubSpot?

NMcMahon8
Member

So. Many. Years.... Waiting.


Definitely needed....

MJungbluth
Contributor

Such a function is essential for us too

AGórniak
Member

That would be great to have it!