Set Association Labels On Records via a Workflow

[NicoleSengers]

I would love to be able to add in the new association labels using a workflow - rather than needing to do this manually.

this would enable businesses who have contact A who makes a booking and Contacts B, C, D etc who attend a course or an event flagged as attendees. so a business knows which are valuable contacts.

It would also be helpful to be able to use a workflow to send different communications to clients based on their association tag.

[NicoleSengers]

Hi folks! 

If you submitted a request to join the Association Actions beta, your request has been approved (as of yesterday)! We've spent the last few months scaling our systems to ensure they can keep up with all the usage and as a result had to pause on beta additions for a bit. We'll continue to add portals who request beta access and move towards rolling this functionality out to all customers (who have at least one Pro+ hub) towards the end of the year.

Best,

Maggie

[NicoleSengers]

Hi Everyone,

I want to provide an update on a few things:

1. Thank you for all of the feature requests. We're reviewing them and will be determining what we can support later this year. I'm seeing trends in the following requests: triggering workflows based on the application of an association label, applying an association label as part of the create & associate flow and copying associations from one record to another. Please keep the feedback coming-it's helpful for us to ensure we're prioritizing the right thing.
2. We have currently paused on adding new customers to the beta. There has been a ton of enthusiasm for these features and we're making updates to our systems to ensure that everything will continue to scale as efficiently as possible. We will resume adding additional customers within the next few weeks. No further action needed if you've already submitted a request.

Have a great weekend!

-Maggie

[NicoleSengers]

@LukasK we've heard this feedback a few times and I unfortunately don't have a great answer for you at this point. It sounds like you want to create a new record, associate it to the enrolled record and then label that new association. That 100% makes sense and we'll continue looking into how to make this work but I unfortunately don't have a great solution right this minute (but everyone else please chime in if you have an inventive idea).

[NicoleSengers]

Hi @ABeney! I would play around with the enrollment criteria. You could create a list of contacts who were incorrectly tagged and then only run the workflow on that list of contacts. That should make it so that the label is only removed from the right contacts. We'll keep listening on if we need to add further refinements for the label actions. Thanks!

[NicoleSengers]

Hi All!

I'm excited to announce that we have entered a public beta for the following actions:

• Update and remove labels
• Apply label
• Create Association

You can opt in by going to your Product Updates section of HubSpot and looking for "New Workflow Actions for Associations." Check out this Knowledge Base article if you want to learn more. As you test out the actions, please keep the feedback coming! We'll likely expand the functionality later in the year.

Best,

Maggie

[NicoleSengers]

Hi @MGrowth2! 

There's currently a beta open where you can remove and update association labels. We are planning to add in the ability to apply new labels within the next few weeks. You can request access directly in HubSpot by clicking on "product updates" and searching for the private beta referenced in the screenshot below. I will review it within a few days.

Best,

Maggie

 

[NicoleSengers]

Hello! 

I'm excited to announce that we've rolled out two new association based actions into a beta. In the first phase you will be able to remove or update existing labels (demo video) . Adding labels is coming next! Please look for the beta below in the product updates section of your HubSpot portal.   

[NicoleSengers]

Hi All!

I've seen a lot of beta requests come through over the last few days. I promise to post here as soon as we're ready at which point you'll be able to request access via the product updates section of HubSpot. As a note, the first, early adopter phase of the beta will specifically include the ability to remove or update association labels (we'll be adding the ability to apply association labels and create new associations in a second phase). More to come soon.

Best,

Maggie

[NicoleSengers]

Hi All!

There was a question about the notification no longer showing up about the new workflow actions. I promise we haven't given up! I just tweaked the name of the release and that may have hidden it from product updates. All of which is to say we're on track for a private beta in May and I promise to alert you once that beta is ready for you to opt into.

Thanks for all the enthusiasm!

-Maggie from HubSpot's product team

[NicoleSengers]

Hi all! 

I know that everyone on this thread is eagerly awaiting a beta. We're actively working on this functionality and if you want more information of what will likely be included in our first release, I'd recommend checking out the "In Development" notification that went out last week. You can find this by navigating to Product Updates in your HubSpot portal and looking for "New Workflow Actions to Automate Association Processes."

We'll provide another update when we get ready to open up a broad beta.

-Maggie (HubSpot product manager)

[NicoleSengers]

Hello!

I'm Maggie from HubSpot's product team. I'm excited to announce that we're actively working on the ability to manage association labels via workflow. We're hoping to have something in beta for you all to test out within the next few months. 

I also want to share this Knowledge Base article which outlines the ways that you can already use association labels in workflows (for things like enrollment) as it seems like there are a few questions in that space.

Thank you for all of your thoughtful feedback and examples! It helps us make sure that we're building the right thing 😊.

[NicoleSengers]

Hi everyone, I don't have much in the ways of an update on this feature as we are still working through some major blockers. There is a limitation in how we find records to be associated, making it difficult to complete our set of features. We are still working hard on this problem and will have more updates along the way.

@04262 that feature is now live to all so it's no longer in the Beta page.

[NicoleSengers]

@RyGuy the changes we're working through are towards the next set of features I'm referencing, for example, the Set Association Label action. Therefore there wouldn't be much if anything changed to the existing beta functionality. Definitely feel free to message me with details if you'd like.

@jaybaum I just met with our Associations team and discussed that hard limit. No hard decisions were made but we would like to fix that as well and could see traction in the coming months. I would recommend opening an idea on our forum so we can track progress, otherwise we'll hopefully have good news down the line

[NicoleSengers]

@Steiger and others,

As it so happens, today was going to be the day I gave an update as we've made some major breakthroughs recently that we wanted to share with everyone.

The new Data Panel beta feature is currently going through the final weeks of "beta testing" and will soon be available to all customers. We had a rather tricky setback this past month that took our entire team time to sort out but as of this week we've sorted out all the kinks and are back to working on the followup functionality needed for a "Set Association Label" action. While I can't give an estimate (for fear of hitting another setback and dissapointing people), I can say we have a much more clear line of sight to our goal and have many engineers actively working on the solution.

The good news is that this next milestone will include more than just the Association Label action. We are going to have the ability to support more field types and provide finer granularity on the types of records/data that can be pulled into a Workflow.

[NicoleSengers]

@RyGuy Thanks for pointing people in the right direction.

As for lack of functionality, I'm 100% with you, it leaves us wanting more as well. We're working on scaling issues at the moment to bring what we think is the full power of the feature: pull one (or more) values from any object, event, integrator object, without restrictions (within reason in terms of scale). If you have feedback or recommendations, please let us know.

[NicoleSengers]

Sorry about the public beta link not working anymore, everyone. It looks like we had an issue with the way those betas work that prevented us from exposing the new feature in this manner.

For now, please use this form to gain access: https://forms.gle/d44dN9GqW1Zyqer36

[NicoleSengers]

Hi everyone,

Here's a short update from the team. Now that the [Public Beta] Data Panel with associated record data in workflows is open to the public, we've begun working on the "Set Association Labels" action that everyone in this thread has been patiently waiting for. After we complete our exploratory phase for the project, the team will be able to give a rough estimate on when we'd expect to have this ready for our beta testers. Stay tuned for more information.

[NicoleSengers]

@jaybaum sorry, that type of work is not related to the Workflows tool so we're not able to work on that directly. However, I will pass along that piece of feedback to the relevant team and see what can be done about that.

[NicoleSengers]

@NPW Yes, we're planning on adding support for almost every field. The Internal Email Notification is currently being worked on and should be ready in a few weeks.

Sorry to dissapoint about the pace of the setting of association labels, we'll continue to work hard on that and give an update once it's ready.

[NicoleSengers]

Hi everyone,

As we work hard on the Data panel with associated data private beta, I wanted to give another update as there has been some confusion surrounding our current work. While we have not started on the work to automatically apply association labels using the Workflows tool, we are prepping for it. The beta I linked to in my last message refers to a feature that is NOT to apply association labels using our tool. Instead, it allows the use of associated data in fields across the app, much like the "personalization tokens" that can be inserted into many text fields. Read below for more information:

https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-associated-record-data-in-workflows

[NicoleSengers]

Great news everyone, please follow along in this other thread to join the private beta of the Data panel feature:

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Workflow-actions-that-can-update-properties-across-different/idc-p/713251

[NicoleSengers]

Hi everyone,

A quick update based off our last update from January. We had issues come up that delayed us by a few weeks but should now be back on track. To remind everyone, the beta we're working on is a preliminary feature that will allow users to use a lot more HubSpot/external data across many Workflow fields. This is going to be one of our larger project releases in a while and once the (hopefully short) beta period on that is done, we'll then be able to start on the beta for the Associations work everyone in this thread is interested in.

So to reiterate, the beta that's going to go live soon is not directly for Associations work, but is indirectly related and required for us to start that work.

Making promises on when it'll be ready can only end poorly so instead we can give an update on the work and what our current blockers are:

- The initial beta to allow users to use data from many different sources went through the first round of testing and while we found a few major bugs, we've since patched most of them. Once we do a second round of testing, we'll start the private beta (and will invite anyone in this thread to join)

- The work needed for what everyone in this thread is looking for, a way to automate association/association labels, requires the previous feature to go live. Once that's live and stable, the new data sources availability would make it possible for our teams to build out a feature that could use this data for the purposes of manipulating associations

Once the first bullet point is done (and only then) we'll be able to move on the Association work.

As always, we'll try to update this thread and any related threads as we make progress!

[NicoleSengers]

January update:

Hi everyone,

The team has been hard at work for the past few weeks as we finish up work on the beta for our Data access feature (needed for us to start work on the Associations action within Workflows). Know that we're monitoring this thread on a weekly basis (or even daily) so as soon as that beta is ready to open, I'll post a link for those that want to join. We've had positive feedback from our preliminary alpha testing so we expect the beta to go by quickly, meaning even if you don't join this beta you'll have access to the new Data feature shortly after. 

Depending on the amount of feedback we get during this phase we'll start to form (finally) a timeline for the Association feature everyone in this thread has been asking for.

Thanks for all the support and stay tuned.

[NicoleSengers]

Hi everyone,

I wanted to give an end of year update as we've been getting lots of requests for this feature. As we stand, our original estimate is still on track. The related features we needed to finish before starting on this associations request are due to be completed mid January. Once that goes into Beta, we'll work in parallel to both incorporate public feedback, as well build out functionality related to associations within Workflows. 

We'll likely post a link to the January Beta in this thread so unless we have delays, expect great news early 2023

[NicoleSengers]

Hi @emmaboyd we're still actively working on the tangential projects that will make this one possible. We don't have a good timeline but expect to have those other projects done by the end of the year, after which we would be entirely ready to tackle this project.

[NicoleSengers]

We (the team that builds the Workflows editor tool) have a need for this feature as well so we are building all the necessary "building block" foundational features we need to make the association action a reality. We will update this thread once we get a timeline as we still have discovery work to do before we can commit to building it. The exciting news is that the CRM's association capabilities are also growing, making this action even more valuable to build.

[Roeland_RS]

@DStaat thanks for sharing. Found it somewhat surprising to read that Hubspot Ventures invested in your company Hapily. Seems like a bit of a conflict of interest in a way. It means if Hubspot solves these issues directly by allocating development time to them then you lose money - and they lose money indirectly through that. So then hubspot expects customers to pay for solutions made by a third-party to shortcomings 🤔

[ASavoi]

Hi there, when do you think this feature will be live? It's necessary.

[SFoltz88]

@MatthewBoyd I just noticed your reply concerning Integration Glue. I think I'm going to attempt to get a full demo. We're using another 3rd party app in our portal now called Associ8 that does the full functionality of what everyone here is talking about. However, it does seem to bog down when trying to do many associations in a single day. The associations can take beyond 60 minutes to complete through a workflow, and sometimes they don't work. I've had to create loops of workflows with exit triggers in order to get associ8 to function in the way that I need it to.

[DStaat]

@SFoltz88 Hi there! I'm David from the hapily support team. We're the ones who created Associ8! I'm sorry to hear you're having troube using the app. If you'd like some assistance I'd be happy to help!

[Steiger]

@zeke curious if you have any updates on this? I promise I am being patient and I am a product leader so I get it.

Without the abililty to set label associations (AND previously without the ability to grab data from associated objects as we now can in the Data Panel - Yay! ) ,we had to accomplish what we needed with Custom Code created for many thousands of dollars with a Certified Partner. Even so it turns out there are errors in that code and its very finicky and causes confusion and extra steps from our team members. I am facing a choice of spending many monies to have it redone before the teams revolt but if its truly on its way in this data panel I can wait.

Just because i know product teams like use cases: 

- when we win a new deal we create a custom object record that we call a contract which contains a number of data elements telling us about the structure of that customer's agreement with us 

- subsequent renewal and upsell deals need to ingest those data elements to provide proper deal and quote handling

- those subsequent renewals or upsells can result in a contract change, so we may end up with more than one contract record per company but only one of those is marked (via custom field) as active at a given time and this is done via workflow. 

- so when a new upsell or renewal deal is created, we need to copy in the values from the current ACTIVE contract

- I see in the new data panel that we can filter to the last created or the last modified, and this will probably be correct 90% of the time but I can see where a backfill/mass-update or other scenarios mean those activity-based filters could be incorrect

- since this is some legal handling here, we can't tolerate that potential error. but if my workflow creating that contract record can instead set as "active agreement"  assoication label all would be well. Thank you for listening! 

[zeke]

@Steiger and others,

As it so happens, today was going to be the day I gave an update as we've made some major breakthroughs recently that we wanted to share with everyone.

The new Data Panel beta feature is currently going through the final weeks of "beta testing" and will soon be available to all customers. We had a rather tricky setback this past month that took our entire team time to sort out but as of this week we've sorted out all the kinks and are back to working on the followup functionality needed for a "Set Association Label" action. While I can't give an estimate (for fear of hitting another setback and dissapointing people), I can say we have a much more clear line of sight to our goal and have many engineers actively working on the solution.

The good news is that this next milestone will include more than just the Association Label action. We are going to have the ability to support more field types and provide finer granularity on the types of records/data that can be pulled into a Workflow.

[RyGuy]

@zeke are there changelogs of updates/fixes to Beta features available?

I've been enrolled in the Data Panel beta for a few weeks now. I definitely wasn't able to leverage it the way I wanted, but perhaps that was related to some of the kinks you've sorted out.

[jaybaum]

@zeke - amazing to hear! 

Now I would assume you're not the one to bother... but it'd be a perfect time to roll out the aiblity to have more than 10 association labels per object as well (20 or so would be great).

I have a feeling this tool is going to litterally superchage the use of association labels. 

[zeke]

@RyGuy the changes we're working through are towards the next set of features I'm referencing, for example, the Set Association Label action. Therefore there wouldn't be much if anything changed to the existing beta functionality. Definitely feel free to message me with details if you'd like.

@jaybaum I just met with our Associations team and discussed that hard limit. No hard decisions were made but we would like to fix that as well and could see traction in the coming months. I would recommend opening an idea on our forum so we can track progress, otherwise we'll hopefully have good news down the line

[Amevian]

@zeke, any chance we have an ETA on the "Set Association Label" functionality?

[n_costa]

Zeke clearly said that he can't give an ETA in a previous reply.

[Roeland_RS]

@zeke I was pointed to this thread by support. 

But our issue is that when you change association label (for example of a contact in a deal) then it doesn't update the modified date on either the deal or contact record. From my perspective, if you change the association label of a contact on a deal - it should at least change the last modified date on the deal record (i'd say also the contact). I see it as a 'shared' property - relevant to both. If you first associate a contact to a deal or company it also updates the last modified date on that record.  

I wanted to use last modified as trigger for a workflow. 

[RyGuy]

@Roeland_RS this sounds very much like a self resolving issue. Once setting association labels from workflows are added, it is highly likely they will enable it as a workflow trigger. If you must use "last modified date" as a trigger to the workflow, then perhaps just have a workflow triggering off of "Association Label" is Known and set a number property to increase or decrease by 1 as a solution.

But of course, we still have to wait for setting association labels to be available in workflows at all.

[OKillian]

+1

[Cennyddjohn]

I'm assuming this ability to set association labels will apply to contacts>deals as well as contacts>tickets and other associations? Most of our customer interactions / deal generation occurs through the submission of forms, as do tickets, so we often end up with quadruplicate deals / tickets which we have to spend a huge amount of time merging to ensure our conversion data is accurate

I've tried all ways possible via custom properties but cannot square off unless we can have association labels set in contact based workflows so we can segment and identify one deal / ticket from another iwthin the contact based workflow. Any idea when the beta product will be released?

[ALucas0]

I expected the feature to work for associated labels, that if you associated a contact, it would be the same across all deals that the contact was associated with. I.e in my case - a shipping contact for the deal to be shipped to. Dealing with a partner / reseller network this is the same for most deals that one company orders and the manual associatoin is tedius to say the least. 

[ALucas0]

Totally agree - I need to find a way to copy company properties to "New Deals ONLY" and remove the manual steps for the sales and customer success teams. I can't have all deals updated as this has a massive impact on the integrity of closed won deals. This would help solve that

Refer to ticket #13187935

[CaseyWeiss]

@zeke I am new to this thread, and saw you had been providing monthly updates since July. Do you have an August update? Thanks for your time.

[TDochana]

@zeke Would love an update on this! It will make my life much easier!

[04262]

Hey @zeke, I can't find the  [Public Beta] Data Panel with associated record data in workflows on the Beta section. Did you take it out? 
I'm cracking my brain out with this, and this feature will solve it in three clicks.