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.
Absolutely mandatory feature for us as well. Imagine a client does not get a reply, only because the first team member who replied to their request is now on holiday. We need a TRUE availability management, not only for chat but for the whole system.
I suggest, implementing the availability as a workflow trigger so we can do whatever we want with it. If I were to configure what to do with an open ticket or task if the owner sets themselves to "away", the problem would be solved.
I am very exicted to see this is in Hubspot's planning stage now.
One other way we'd like to use this feature is for marketing emails. Right now, if an email is automated to come from Jessica, but it is a marketing email, and someone responds to that email, we can't see their response until Jessica is back in office. I posted a bit more about this here.
Have a similar issue - once tickets get assigend from the conversations inbox, the person who is assigned is the primary responder to the emails. Our tickets stay open for quite a while and our team does not use personal emails to reply, they continue to use the shared email address. It would be great if the user could set themselves as OOO so that future tickets don't get assigned to them, but also so auto responder OOO notifications can go out when people reply to email threads that are already assigned to them. Since the email is shared across multiple people, it is rare that they would all be OOO at the same time, which is why we wouldn't want a blanket OOO email going out. It only should go out for the person who is OOO even though they all use the same email. This will help clients know what to expect for a turn around time. Hope we can see this happen soon!
Love the topic and think it should really be a priority - here's another similar proposal I had which might help! I see it's in planning - but what is the timeline for it?
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.
@jdemello wrote: 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.
@jdemello thank you for the update! 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.
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.
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.
Would it please be possible to deliver to my initial request from 2019 first. I don´t see me writing this initial request as "another idea" in another section. I am sure you understand that after waiting for such a critical feature for almost 5 years.
I have not been asking for helpdesk or inbox features but for workflow-based rotation to make sure OOO-staff doesn´t get assigned e. g. hot leads that just registered via e.g. forms.
