Work flow option: Avoid bank holidays

[bellawu]

Can you implement a feature so that if your workflow is determined by x amount of days follow up, you can set up a rule that will avoid sending emails on any bank holidays, Christmas day, New year etc.

You already have a business days only rule so I guess it's just building on that....

http://ideas.hubspot.com/forums/76407-general-hubspot-ideas/suggestions/4451142-work-flow-option-avo...

[annaishizeki]

Adding to the idea, it would be great to be able to set workflows to avoid actions on holidays in different countries. For example, we would like to be able to avoid actions on public holidays in Japan. 

(Posted on behalf of a customer)

[mitchellkp]

As a Workflow admin, I don't want my emails being "wasted" and sent during downtime. This could be a company specific holiday where we should be available to follow-up or common holidays like Christmas where many people are unplugged and not working.

A way to implement: upload a CSV with dates or have a calendar selector for dates that you want the Workflow to skip. In my case, I think being universal across the Hubspot partition is fine vs workflow by workflow specific. But you could have a WF setting that allows the WF to opt OUT of the vacation skips.

[nmason]

The easiest way to do this wold be to choose "black out" dates for the next 12 months. We wanted to avoid sending emails on July 4th to our US customers, but as it was a Tuesday, it would have been nice to black out Monday to Wednesday of that week. A simple calendar with selectable dates would be ideal.

[zpearson]

I also like the idea of blackout dates in addition to US bank holidays

[alaffin]

I would love to be able to automatically pause workflows on holidays.  We have customers that received our emails on holidays, thought we were working, and then got frustrated when we don't respond right away.  

[mdunham]

Additionally, it would be GREAT if Hubspot had a feature that would pause an email send if another email had deployed to that same contact earlier in the day. We see many unsubscribes because workflow emails and one-off emails coincidentally send on the same day.

[davidamari]

@mdunham ... I LOVE your idea! Maybe you should add that as its own submission? I would totes vote it up! It would be great if there was a setting to pause/delay delivery of an email — or even to set a priority of the type of email being sent — based on the x emails sent to the same contact during the same day to avoid the “fatigue factor” that can sometimes lead to an unsubscribe. 

[cwinkelman]

The idea and concept of having 'black out' dates or whatever it needs to be labeled should be developed by now... great idea over a year and a half ago and we're still talking about it....  Please HS, get this dialed in - just makes sense and makes our business grow better by not looking sloppy.  

Also like the idea from @mdunham and that it is a different request to be voted up.   

[BrianTassey]

I think this would certainly be helpful. A preloaded list of international holidays or the ability to create custom "blackout" days would also be a really nice addition.

[Gondyke]

In addition to a "Global" blackout calendar, it would be very beneficial to set blackout dates on individual workflows. This would allow organizations to better handle region-specific workflows when it comes to regional holidays.

[AlexHodgson]

I'd also like to be able to use Bank Holidays as triggers.

Our customers never remeber to change their call routing for Bank Holidays. It would be great to have a trigger send, for example, 7 days BEFORE [Bank Holiday] send email [Bank Holiday reminder].

Being able to manually set, with Hubspot, a list of dates that are exceptions to normal days might be the way. Then you can also have an option in Workflows to send, not send, or pause for manual triggering, on those days.

[Steve1Day]

Same thought ! please implement this idea Hubspot ! 

[kstewart]

any update on this yet? we are coming up to xmas and I know a whole lot of our clients are going to receive workflow emails, as someone above says, this makes us look sloppy. 

[OlgaK]

There should be an ability to pause workflows on specific days of the year (e.g. public or statutory holidays). Right now timing options include only days of the week and not calendar days.

[ITMarketer]

It would be nice if in workflows there was an option to not send emails during major holidays. Or days that you set in your portal somehow. Now, it's just days of the week and times to choose from but nothing more than that. 

[MeganLegge]

Hi Everyone,

I'm Megan, a product manager for the workflows tool. This request is similar to another on the forum, which requests the ability to "Pause" a workflow. I see overlap with this feature, in that some of the feedback references a need to entirely pause workflows over holidays, etc. to manage external communication when outreach to customers or leads may not be appropriate. As mentioned on that other post, when we’ve researched this request in the past, we’ve found a wide variation in needs, and haven’t yet been able to find the right solution to meet the majority of those needs.

So, if you have a minute, we would greatly appreciate having you fill out this form to provide additional feedback about a pause-like feature and what functionality you'd like to see.

Thank you!

Megan

[mitchellkp]

@MeganLegge they are related but different uses. I see the bank holidays as a "skip" or extra delay based on pre-defined days per year (based on national, religious and local holidays including a longer break like Christmas-New Year's) and done on a partition basis. The WF pause feature is something an admin could hit during a crisis. And then turn back on when appropriate.

Simply turning off a WF doesn't achieve the goal as contracts still progress through steps and but the action is skipped. We want to freeze the contacts where they are and then have them resume when it's a return to a "normal" comms.

This pause has to be WF by WF and for me, relevant just for nurture-based workflows vs internal or form fill based ones.

[Gondyke]

@MeganLegge  Mitchell hit the nail on the head with his reponse. Pausing a workflow is a nice ability to deal with certain situations, but the real request here is to apply a calendar to a workflow or its steps and have the step wait until after a holiday to send an email. Managing a few calendars applied to workflows is a much better (and less work-intense) way to apply that logic than having to manually pause workflows on a certain date and then restart them again.

I've shared the same feedback in the linked form. 

[MeganLegge]

Hi everyone,

Thanks for the continued feedback on this idea, for the ability to prevent workflows from executing on specific dates (for example, on certain holidays).

We're currently working on a feature that adds a new option to the execution time settings. In addition to being able to define days/times for when the workflow should run, you'll soon be able to define specific dates on which the workflow should not run. When a record reaches an action on one of those dates, the action will be rescheduled for the next available date. For example, if a contact is active in a nurture workflow on 12/25/20, but a user has added 12/24/20-1/2/21 as dates to skip, the contact wont receive any nurture emails from that workflow until 1/3/21. These dates can be set on a workflow by workflow basis. 

Please let me know if you have questions. When more details and a beta are available, I will update here.

Thank you!

Megan

[MeganLegge]

Hi everyone, 

In follow up to the most recent update, this new feature is currently in beta.  In workflow settings, you can now define specific dates on which you do not want workflow actions to execute. 

In workflow settings, under "General" select the dates on which the workflow shouldn't execute. When an enrolled record reaches an action on one of those dates, the action will be rescheduled for the next available date. These settings can be configured on a workflow by workflow basis.

add dates in settings

Please send me a direct message, reach out to your HubSpot point of contact, or contact HubSpot support to get access to this beta now. Let me know if you have questions!

Best,

Megan