HubSpot Ideas

basil

Timeline Reports

We have a lot of timeline objects on all of our records including custom timeline objects we create via API.

 

It would be great if we could create custom reports for these timeline events. Here is how that would work:

 

1) Choose your data set / cross data set, e.g. contacts or contacts and companies

2) Choose your timeline events e.g. calls, ads activity, or from integrations like GoToWebinar or your custom timeline event from API

3) Create filters e.g. just use contacts with certain properties for that graph

4) Plot this as time series or as aggregate

 

Like that I could plot GoToWebinar attendance frequencies over time for a certain customer segment or plot GoToWebinar attendance per customer segment. That would be extremely valuable.

 

I am sure many people would buy the reporting add on for such a functioanlity.

HubSpot Updates
In Planning
March 07, 2021 05:43 PM

20 Replies
dtavenues
Contributor

22 upvotes, but no replies! This would be a very powerful tool the recent updates to reporting are great but this would be game-changing.

 

CarlyStevens
Participant

Agreed this is game-changing. How can we see if any custom events are having an impact? 

mgriffith
HubSpot Product Team
 
ticketprinting
Member

+1. We really need this feature to be implemented too! Agreed this is game-changing. We have a lot of data in the customer's timeline events. Being able to create reports for timeline events would be awesome.

impulsekring
Contributor | Elite Partner

DEFINITELY need this!!

mjs_bt
Member

Any update on this?  This is critical for meaningful analytics.

JBeatty
Guide | Diamond Partner

@mgriffith It has been almost a year, are there any updates?

BenGro
Participant

Hi HubSpot Team, 
Please give us an update what the current situation here. It was set to "In Planning" 1 year ago. 

- Is this being workd on and is it worth waiting for something here? 

- Do you have workarounds that can help your userbase to reach what was descirbed in this idea? 

Any response is highly appreciated. 

Thanks

dalefknight
Participant

This feature will unlock a range of impactful reporting scenarios for us. In the meantime we're working with workarounds that only solve half the problem, which isn't great.

MFleming3
Member

I think this is now possible through the timeline api in the new version of the api.

 

https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/events/web-analytics

mjs_bt
Member

@MFleming3  -- yes, that does provide timeline data.  Unfortunately, the way that API works makes its usefulness extremely limited.  Specifically, it requires that you pass a single "object" ID (e.g., a contact ID) and it returns timeline events for that object.  You cannot simply request all timeline events, or events from a time period, etc.  You could in theory write a script that iterates over contact IDs, but if your database is at all sizeable, you'll hit the daily API call limit right quick.

MFleming3
Member
The daily API limit for professional tier is 500,000 calls per day and each
call can pull 100 events.

I'd be surprised if most hubspot customers hit the limit.

Each timeline call can retrieve
mjs_bt
Member

Sure, but if you have to pass a single Contact ID to get events, then your issue is how many contacts you have.  We're pushing 300k.  So maybe we could eke it out if we do this no more than once per day, and hopefully stay within the limit given the other systems using the API (Salesforce, ETL, Zoom, whatever).

 

I'd really rather have an ETL provider support this API, rather than allocate my team's time to build and maintain it.  At least one I spoke with explicitly said they don't think they can support it because of this issue.

MFleming3
Member
Ah, I understand better now. Size of DB is a killer (especially if you are
looking at hourly or something).

I'm wondering if you backfill with the API and then use a webhook going
forward?

-Matt

mjs_bt
Member

Exactly.  Webhooks is an interesting idea!  I'll take a look at that.

 

I'd still rather have a proper API for an analytics use case.  Hopefully someone from HubSpot is lurking here...

Jbigs
Member

Can we please get an update on this?

SimonP1
Contributor

This would be wonderful as we currently have no means of reporting on Livestorm webinar timeline events via their Integration.

edde_se
Participant

Great idea!

tomirasanen
Member

This is still needed! @hubspot 

RBCook
HubSpot Employee

Up bump