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.
Lots of awesome activity on this post this week. Hope you all are enjoying the new capabilities!
@KChristophe Thanks for your question! We are going to add OOO to at mentions in another week or two 😄 So be on the lookout for that update.
@FPalmisano If you have a team in your routing rule, the users on that team that are OOO or away will not be considered eligible for assignment and will not be assigned. Right now, this only applies to channel-based routing (routing from inbox- or Help desk-connected channels and skill-based ticket routing). We are working with automation to bring this same functionality to the 'rotate owner' action so all tickets route consistently but don't have a timeline for that effort right now.
@Arne We plan to expand the current offering to utilize calendar connections and automatically sync OOO blocks if the user has a gcal or outlook connected (the same connection used for meetings). I know you're also concerned about the non-ticket use case for this feature and we are also working with automation to make that a reality, but I don't have any timelines right now. Per your original ask, I won't close this post until we've delivered on the ability for contact and task assignment to ignore users who are away (out of office or outside working hours or manually set to away).
Hey, folx! User Working Hours are rolling out across portals and should be fully live for you by 04/11. If you would like to get the feature early, reach out to your CSM and we can get you unlocked.
We are also working on User Out of Office, and look to deliver that in Summer 2024 for Help desk and Inboxes. If you have need for workflows' 'rotate owner' action to understand and route based on user availability or out of office, then please talk with your CSM or spin up an additional idea forum post just for workflows. Given the many use cases in this post that span multiple products, we won't hold the request open until every last one is served. We will consider this request delivered once we have out of office for help desk and inbox. If you have additional needs outside of help desk and inbox, please open a request on a specific product (workflows) or specific product area (Sales Hub) so that product group can prioritize accordingly.
Do you know if this feature will be available to use in "rotate record" steps in workflows? Our specific use case is contact owner and/or deal assignment. We route them based on who is available and working that day so the leads can be followed up with promptly.
@laurabren Not at this time. We're discussing with the workflows team, but I don't have a timeline.
Good morning, everyone! We are working on building out user working hours, and you can learn more about the upcoming feature here. We anticipate this feature being available for beta in March. At this time, the main focus is conversation or ticket routing and scheduled meetings. Our next priority is to add out of office as well, and that will come later in 2024.
This is an urgent feature for a lot of companies. Workflows are tied to individual salespeople in many cases, and we have to account for automation when they are out of office.
I desperately need a way to assign to a backup person (workflow automation + associated tasks), and then assign them BACK once they are back in office.
It's hard for me to believe this isn't a thing, because how else do you handle someone leaving for PTO? There are plenty of customers who are under that person who are mid-workflow, as well as newly assigned.
I'm in the same situation. My idea is to automate emails when the sales team is not available (after the work schedule) or on weekends and ask the potential client a couple of questions to advance in the pipeline even before the first touch with the sales team but it is not possible to do something like this on HubSpot.
This is such a no-brainer!! Please consider looking into this Hubspot.. We are connected with Google Calendar and it would seem quite simple to do it via the integration.
Option 1 (if you're assigning round-robin to a team)
If you're assigning to a team then should be easy, just move the user out of the team when they’re out of office and they wont be assigned anything. Perhaps create an OOO Team for this
Option 2 (if you're assigning to an individual) If you're assigning to an individual, you could set up a second workflow
Enrolment criteria would be contacts whose owner = person X (the person who is OOO)
Step 1: re-assign owner to whomever is covering for person X
Step 2: alert the new owner
You can create a list of contacts that have completed the workflow if you need to see all those leads
Turn this workflow off when the person comes back to work 🙂
@fiachra_duffy seems like it would work. However, we have way to many work flows to do this and this is too manual. We should be able to set a user as out of office.
@peter_mxtoolbox - it is ultimately up to the product managers and their teams to determine priority of features on their roadmap. The best you can do for now is to upvote it at the top of this thread. 🙂
It's an absolute must have. Not having such a basic feature as auto-reply is like creating a car without wheels: the engine will run all right but it will not get you anywere. Hey HubSpot, you have your CRM running but it doesn't get you anywere, you have no wheels to your engine.
We absolutely need this feature not only for workflows and tasks but also for tickets and conversations.
We are now in the situation when a co-worker didn't know somebody is OOO and re-opened the ticket -> the ticket is stuck until somebody is back.
I use the workaround with changing the team, but when you have multiple forms, channels, inboxes etc - it becomes a nightmare to remember the list of all places where you need to change the team as well.
We absolutely need this feature not only for workflows and tasks but also for tickets and conversations.
We are now in the situation when a co-worker didn't know somebody is OOO and re-opened the ticket -> the ticket is stuck until somebody is back.
I use the workaround with changing the team, but when you have multiple forms, channels, inboxes etc - it becomes a nightmare to remember the list of all places where you need to change the team as well.
There is a big lack of functionality for Out Of Office situation. It's well implemented for Outlook and related services, so it would be great to have the same thing for Hubspot.