Trigger a workflow when a property value has been changed
[This has been resolved] It would be wonderful to have the ability to trigger a workflow when a property value has changed. For example, we have leads submit answers on a form, and after a sales rep speaks to the lead, sometimes the rep find out the information our lead selected was incorrect. Once the sales rep overrides the form submission's answer, marketing needs to be notified so we can place the lead in the appropriate follow up workflow to send relevant topics to our leads.
My name is Megan and I'm a product manager for the workflows tool. Thank you for your feedback and votes on this idea! There are a few different needs outlined in this thread, and I'd like to clarify a few things to ensure all are addressed.
Currently Possible: Enroll an object in a workflow, every time a certain property’s value changes. This is applicable when the object, workflow type and property type are the same. For example, enrolling a contact into a contact workflow, every time a contact property value changes.
To do: Use ”Is known" as an enrollment and re-enrollment criteria. When using the property filter is known for re-enrollment, objects can re-enroll in two ways:
The property gains a value after not previously having one.
The property is updated from one value to another. For example, a contact's lifecycle stage changing from Lead to Subscriber would qualify for Lifecycle stage is known. Each time this contact's lifecycle stage is updated, they would re-enroll in the workflow.
Currently Not Possible: Enroll an object in a workflow, every time a property value changes on one of the object’s associated records. For example, enrolling a contact into a contact workflow every time the contact’s associated company has a certain property value update. This isn't possible because filters referencing associated objects cannot currently be used for re-enrollment.
Workaround: For the above example, use a company workflow instead. Enroll the company in a workflow, every time the company’s property value changes. Use the company workflow to copy the company property value to all associated contacts.
Potential Limitation: the value is copied out to all associated contacts, not just certain association contacts. If this limitation is what’s causing a challenge, I’d like to point you towards two other ideas forum posts that more directly discuss this:
A CRM requested feature, which proposes a property mapping system for different objects, to keep certain property values in sync or updating in certain directions. Customers often use workflows to create their own property mapping systems, but a CRM feature of this nature would make this possible without a workflow. This is a feature the CRM team is actively asking for feedback on via this survey. If that feature would better suit your needs, I recommend taking the survey and adding your support there as well!
A Workflows requested feature, with a specific goal of copying values to only certain associated records, but not ALL associated records. This has been recently updated with new information so take a look and see if this idea is better aligned with your need.
Since the original request of this thread is currently possible, I'm going to close this one out as delivered to prevent additional confusion. For requests that are slightly different, please add your support to a more specific ideas thread that already has support/discussion, or create a new one that goes into more detail about your different need/idea.
To clarify: it's already possible to set off a workflow whenever a contact property value changes. To do this, you would set the reenrollment criteria to "[Property] is known." (See this Knowledge article for steps on editing enrollment criteria!)
@anthonyp: You're correct that it's not currently an option to reenroll contacts in a workflow based on company or deal properties—thanks so much for bringing the suggestion to our attention!
I don't believe it's possible for our needs because our property value is already known, and we have sales reps who change the property value to a second, alternate known value. Do you have an way to accomplish this?
For example, say I have a field "Calls" and today the property value is "1" and tomorrow my rep changes the value from "1" to "2". I need the ability to run a list, report or workflow to notify me when the property value changes.
Setting the enrollment criteria to allow reenrollment whenever the property is known will trigger a contact to go through the workflow again every time the property changes. The exception to this would be if the contact is already progressing through the workflow when the property changes, as a contact cannot be in two places in the same workflow.
Thank you so much @katja!! This is working seamlessly for us now! I'm disappointed that I submitted a help ticket on this topic on January 13, 2017 and was told that HubSpot didn't have this feature. I appreciate your assistance!
I have a number field that won't allow me to do this with re-enrollment. Why is this? I have one contact who just stays enrolled and doesn't get re-enrolled when that number field changes.
I don't think the solutions suggested so far capture all possible use cases, and it would be great to have the ability to trigger a workflow based on contact field changes. Let me give you an example that we want to implement:
User exists with an email address
User email address changes—sometimes due to a known issue with how HubSpot associates cookies with emails
We want to get notified when this happens so we can determine when it's appropriate and when it's inappropriate
For example, when our users are on public computers, they sometimes end up changing each other's email addresses due to how HubSpot works with emails and cookies. We want to get notified when that happens so we can look into it.
We need something similar and the suggestion above didn't solve our issue. We would like to have a webhook triggered by any update to any contact, company or deal property on any contact record. Something as simple as adding "changed" to the list of options in many properties, right between "is known", "is unknown", etc.
Can you also create a worflow to trigger whenever a company property changes? For example, if we want to copy a company's phone number into a contact's phone number every time a change to the company phone number is made.
As suggested above, we need an option to both allow reenrolment of contact into a workflow and run a workflow constantly so that it can capture a known property change. For example, if number of employees changes from < 5,000 to > 5,000, then the sales team needs to be notified. Could you please help?
@simonsmith Did you ever find a solution to your problem with email address changes? We are also trying to get notified when a contact's email address changes, but can't quite find a way to get at this information.
I was having this same issue. Managed to figure a work around. I thought I'd post in case it was any use.
The situation:
We band our client in level 1,2 and 3 and have a 'company property' and a 'contact property' to show which level they are at. If the account grows/reduces in size we will update the properties. I built a workflow to try and automate the 'contact property' update once a 'company property' was updated.
I had the same issue that a few people have mentioned in this thread, I needed the workflow to run every time the 'company property' was updated. 'is known' and 'is unknown' didn't solve the problem.
My solution:
I created 3 active lists, one for each of the 'company property' values ('Client Level 1' etc.), I then changed the enrollment criteria for the workflow to 'list membership' and 'contact is a member of 'client level 1' OR 'client level 2' OR 'client level 3', I changed the re-enrollment conditions and ticked each list.
Now, whenever we change the 'company property', the company drops out of one list and into another, triggering the workflow everytime it changes.
Eureka!
You can't beat that feeling when you refresh and it's worked perfectly. It's always harder to write these things out, so I hope that makes sense? Let me know if not.
Ps. I know this is marked up as 'Solved', but the solution didn't work for me and I don't think it worked for everyone, that's why I've posted this.
Hey thanks for your answer ! But I don't really understand how did you make it work in your workflow in order to be able to change the "contact property" of all the contacts concerned by your company, just by changing the "company property".
Please make it so we can trigger based on a property change! Coming from Marketo, this has been one of the biggest pains and all of my work arounds without a doubt miss a majority of the people I am trying to trigger an update for 😞
