Workflow Step Notes

[ndwilliams3]

Workflows can be complex and it would be great it you could add notes to a step to explain what it's doing for other members on the team.

In programming, you leave comments in the code to help explain a function, why not have something similar in workflows.

[ndwilliams3]

Hi all,

An exciting update for this feature! You can now add @ mentions when using comments on workflow actions, which will trigger notifications to the mentioned person.

 

Please let me know if you have any questions or feedback.

Best,

Megan

[ndwilliams3]

Hi Everyone,

Workflow action Comments are now live to all customers 🎉

We're actively working on adding @ mentioning capabilities to this feature, so keep an eye out for that coming soon.

We're also working with other teams as HubSpot to enable a workflow-level commenting system, that's not tied to any specific action, but rather references the workflow itself as a whole. 

Follow up question for feedback: Currently, workflow action level comments will not carry over if a workflow is cloned. If anyone has thoughts about this (is that good? bad? why?) I'd love to hear more from you, please comment or send me a direct message.

Thank you!

Megan

[ndwilliams3]

Hi everyone,

Thank you so much for your input on this idea! We now have this feature in beta: Add a comment to any workflow action.

add a comment

Please fill out this form if you'd like access, and feel free to send me a direct message if you have any questions or feedback to share!

Best,

Megan

[ndwilliams3]

Hello again,

Anyone else interested in providing feedback on our team's plan for the above, proposed feature of adding notes to workflow actions, I invite you to check out some designs & fill out this 3 question survey (it will take only a few minutes of your time):  

https://forms.gle/t2kNJmg9pz7vdQun9

Thank you!

Megan

[ndwilliams3]

Hi all,

I'm Megan, another product manager for the workflows tool. In follow up to Jesse's update above, we've put this feature on our roadmap and are actively making plans for introducing this. If anyone here would be open to answering some follow up questions about their thoughts and ideas for this feature, please send me a direct message 

Best,

Megan

[ndwilliams3]

Hi Everyone,

I'm Jesse Tremblay, Product Manager for our Automation products here at HubSpot. Thanks for all the feedback and ideas in this thread. It's really helpful for us to understand some critical gaps.

We definitely appreciate how complex workflows can become, especially with all the added functionality & use-cases, as well as when collaborating with others. While we don't have a specific solution planned for this now, we are going to review this and figure out where it fits in priority. We will update this thread as we figure things out.

Best,

Jesse

[sarahb1]

I agree, this would be great. I also would love to be able to leverage the description field by having that export with the workflow list export. This would help our team track this info in that field that already exists, but to my knowledge you just have to look in that field, you can't export it with the other metrics.

[gtwright]

Another vote for this.

For us, typically the person building the workflow isn't the same person creating the emails to be sent by the workflow, so being able to add a comment as an "action" on a workflow to indicate placeholders or instructions would be tremendously helpful.

[kfischmann]

Thumbs up from us too.

The ability to add step-specific notes to a workflow would be fantastic, epecially for agencies - we tend to collaborate a lot, so being able to insert notes means context can be conveyed far more easily. Additionally, being able to show a workflow to a more technical client, highlighting the various steps and processes by way of calling out various step notes would be fantastic.

[jimgoldstein]

Please add the ability to annotate workflows. For complex workflows and growing marketing teams, this would be invaluable.  "Description" is not specific enough for multi-tiered/branched workflows.

Thanks

[hvy_weight]

I agree! I switched to Hubspot from Infusionsoft ("confusionsoft") but even with their complex campaigns, you can comment and document your process. Hubspot is a simpler process, but in a chain of more than a few, it can get very confusing and I find myself wasting a lot of time counting stages. A very simple solution to simply allow a description in each box.

[cpieri]

I agree on this completely - I think this would be AMAZING. Workflows get so complex and I would love to be able to leave notes on how/why I am doing things. In addition, you can leave notes to yourself to do something in the future.

[simon2]

This just occurred to me so glad to see it already posted. I was thinking something like a post-it note that can be attached to any step.

[cathylamberth]

I also agree. I think this would be a valuable enhancement. Additionally, a workflow description would be helpful. 

[simon2]

@cathylamberth when viewing a workflow click the More button in the top right, you can add descriptive notes there. 

[turner_bass]

 Yes! My team could definitely use a feature like this right now. Having the ability to notate the process would be immensely helpful. I was just about to make this feature suggestion myself, but I'm glad others are also seeing the benefit.

[Benlosier]

Yes! This and the ability to put workflows in folders. We have so many it is hard to keep track of them all!

[Ben_Caliper]

I agree with this completely. I came from another solution and while the icons stayed the same on the steps for marketers who build the programs, even being able to change the name of the step for human readable purposes was invaluable.

[Gondyke]

Naming or putting a note on the steps inside of a workflow seems to be a standard feature in other platforms. I was surprised HubSpot doesn't offer this yet.

[mattejames]

I would LOVE to see this as well.

[MFrankJohnson]

This is one of those great ideas that simply doesn't need any further explanation. Just do it.

[Along with FOLDERS for workflows!] 🙂

[willsmith]

Rather than searching through and analyzing a workflow to undertand it's purpose - allow a sticky note (or multiple notes) to be attached anywhere in the "blank space" of the workflow that would describe the purpose of the workflow, what is happening in the workflow or instructions on how to improve/adjust the workflow. Currently, a one-line title is the only descriptive allowance. 

[dhayward]

I really like this idea.  One of the pain points in our organization is maintaining accurate documentation as things grow. 

We have some external tools and documents, but as a developer, I really would love to be able to document the purpose and execution of a workflow _within_ the workflow.  Sometimes we have to be a bit "clever" to get the exact behavior we want from the tools... this is all well and good until we come back to it months later and can't remember why we did something a certain way.

I'm not sure how sustainable/responsive free placement of sticky notes would be, but it would be great to at least be able to place a workflow-level description and inline comments at workflow steps, perhaps like Word and similar tools tie a comment to a specific part of the document and allow the comments to show up on the side.

[Merlek]

I would also love to leave notes for myself or someone else for when a workflow is still missing something (an email that needs to be created first, etc) or if there is something that needs to be chacekd. Just so that when I go to look at the workflow with my coworker, I instantly see what needs to be done. 

It would also help avoid situations where you wonder why a workflow was made the way it is, what was the reasoning behind certain steps.

[Anu]

I love this idea. I build very complex workflows and sometimes they are interconnected. I have to label them Drip <ABC> WF(1/3);  Drip <ABC>WF(2/3); Drip <ABC> WF(3/3) to remember the order. Having a description would help others on my team when they add/edit my workflows! 

[cursu]

Great idea, I see many uses for this.