HubSpot Ideas

ryanfcasey

Workflow delay until task complete

I would love to be able to assign a task in a workflow, then delay that workflow from proceeding until the aforementioned task is completed.

 

Here is my use case:

I have a quote request form that gets filled out. If the contact already has a HubSpot Owner assigned, then the person filling out that form gets an email from their designated HubSpot Owner. The HubSpot Owner also gets an email informing them of the new lead.

 

If they do not have a HubSpot Owner assigned, it sends an email to the contact from me. Next it assigns me a task to assign a HubSpot Owner to that particular contact. What I would like, is for the same email about the new lead to automatically go to the HubSpot Owner as soon as they are assigned to the lead.

 

Rotating leads does not work for us because our sales territories are geographic.

HubSpot Updates
Delivered
February 08, 2021 08:26 AM

Hi all,

 

The ability to delay a workflow until a task is updated in some way, for example - marked as completed, is now live to all workflows customers. Read more about how to use this feature here: https://knowledge.hubspot.com/workflows/use-delays#delay-until-event-happens

 

Please let me know if you have questions or feedback!

 

Best,

Megan

December 23, 2020 03:14 AM

Hi @Otterbot ,

 

Thanks for the question and the details about your use case.

 

The maximum delay time could be used for the purpose of moving the contact to the next step in the workflow, or also for removing the contact from the workflow. The question is in how long you want to wait and what should happen next - as in, at what point in time would you choose to remove the contact from the workflow, in your example?

 

If, for example, you expect a contact should fill out the form within two weeks, and if they don't it's no longer relevant, you could set your max delay time to 14 days. Then, you could follow the delay until event action with an if/then branch. The branch would ask if the contact filled out the form, if so move them along the YES branch to a Send Email action, if not, they go down the NO branch and there are no further workflow actions, effectively ending the workflow for that contact.

 

Does that solve your need? If not, what options or functionality would you like to see added, to better suit the use case? Or, how could we make the available options more clear?

 

Thank you for taking the time to share your questions and concerns.

Megan

 

 

In Beta
November 17, 2020 06:29 AM

Hi everyone,

 

Thank you for your continued feedback. I'm happy to announce that we now have this feature in beta. To set up this use case, you'll now see additional options in the workflow delay, "Delay until event happens" including an option to delay until a task is updated, including for example, until the task is marked complete. This is possible when there is a task action already present in the workflow. 

 

delay until task changedelay until task change

 

If you'd like access to the beta, please send me a direct message with your HubID. Please note, the design may change as we gather feedback from beta participants.

 

Thanks!

Megan

October 06, 2020 06:39 AM

Hi @javieryebenes 

 

The feature isn't yet available, but we're actively working on this project. I'll update here again when we have more information about the timing.

 

Thanks!

Megan

September 01, 2020 05:29 AM

Hi @flippyfloppies & @CCano 

 

Thanks for your input and feedback! We're actively working on adding this additional functionality to the new Delay until event happens action, so we hope to have this available to customers in the near term. Stay tuned to this post for updates!

 

Best,

Megan

In Planning
August 19, 2020 11:53 AM

Hi everyone,

 

Thanks for the post and comments 😀

 

We're currently working on a feature that will enable this requested feature. We've recently released a new type of workflow delay, a "Delay until event happens" action. To build on that feature, we're currently working on adding additional functionality, that will allow you to delay a workflow until a task, created earlier in the workflow, has been completed. Stay tuned to this thread for updates!

 

Best,

Megan

Being Reviewed
April 23, 2020 08:17 AM

Hi everyone,

 

I’m Megan Legge, a product manager for HubSpot’s workflows tool. Thanks for the comments and feedback!

 

This request is similar to another feature, which is currently in planning. That feature is to add a delay to a workflow that waits until something happens, for example, delay until a contact submits a form or views a page.

https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Hold-pause-an-object-in-a-workflow-delay-until-a-condition-is/idi-p/270796/page/2#comments

 

As that feature develops, we're exploring additional capabilities, and one of those is the ability to use this type of delay to wait until a task's status has changed. As more information about this feature becomes available, we'll update here with more information.

 

Thank you!

Megan 

37 Replies
CarolineFellows
Member

This is a feature that we would find really useful in our business as well.

 

I am currently designing a workflow where I want the next activity to be assinged when a "Task" is marked as complete. 

 

Our work flow looks like this

User registers, when they meet some predefined criteria they enter the workflow, and a deal is created

A "task" to call our new client is then assigned to one of our team, on completion of that task I want an email to be sent and a new "task" to be assigned, when that "Task" has been completed it triggers the next action.

We can't really predetermine our time spacing for all our tasks as that relies on us getting a hold of the person on the set day which in our industry isn't realistic.

SarahN
Contributor

I agree! It would be really helpful to be able to use a task completion as an enrollment factor. For example, we have steps/tasks to complete after the client answers for their onboarding call. If the client doesn't answer on the first try, we can't automatically set the tasks. We need that first call to happen before the next tasks get set up. 

ediponc
Member

Agreed on this one. There are at least 2 other submissions in this forum requesting this same feature.

gepot
Contributor

 I would also like to have task completion as a trigger for workflows.  In our case it may be used as escalation to management should tasks not be completed on time.

 

AlishaV
Contributor

Yes please. Add task status to workflow enrollment and goal options. Also need task status to be included in lists. 

Buffalo_Bob
Member

I agree.

This would be extremely useful.

jeeshenlee
Contributor

Wish to see this feature implemented on Hubspot as well.

VagaeNatus
Key Advisor

This idea along with some others could be achieved with one very clear thing in Hubspot: task-based workflows. We currently have contact-based, deal-based and ticket-based workflows, why not for task-based workflows? I suggest we bring all the upvote under one big idea. So anybody interesting like us to have workflow depend on the properties of one task, please comment and upvote "Task-based workflows" here: https://community.hubspot.com/t5/HubSpot-Ideas/Task-based-Workflows/idi-p/204852

Andrew3
Contributor

Agreed!

cmaestephens
Member

 Yep, we need this one, too - for our Marketing-to-Sales handoff process!

Andrew3
Contributor

What would be really great is all the capability of worflows and sequences, wrapped into one tool that can referece tasks, deals, and contacts (everything).  It is a little frustrating to have "automation" that is missing a lot of basic automation capability.  

christa
Contributor

This would make workflows for sales teams so much simplier to build out! A much needed feature.

MichiEck
Member

We would also like to use this useful update 

Aware360
Participant

This feature would make things more efficient and seamless, and for the possiblity of using If/Then Branches for their intended use. Also reduce the number of workflows created for 1 specific task...

nickdolan
Member

We are looking for something similar. We have Call Task being assigned to a sales rep and we only want to send out the next email if that call has been made (owned by the completion of the task). If the task has not been completed, then we do not want the next email sent or steps being executed.

pince1
Member

We could really use the ability to create new tasks based on completion of other tasks as well. Our sales process is long, involves multiple parties, and many tasks take an indeterminate amount of time.

 

We have stages with many tasks. For a stage containing 5 tasks, each spaced 2-3 days apart as an estimate, if task 1 takes a long time to complete because we are waiting on action from a client, then we have to manually update the due date of each subsequent task in the workflow. This can be quite burdensome with many contacts.

 

Having task based workflows/triggers would streamline a lot of things for us.

jpapka
Member

Agreed!

brewmjk
Member

With the addition of the service hub, we want to take our process beyond the sale and work with our onboarding and account management team. We also want to ensure that we have a clean handoff in the post-sale phases. There are very specific tasks that need to happen in sequential order, this would automate our management and really cut down on the amount of manual data entry if we can have it dependent on completion of those tasks in workflows.

loripedford
Member

I was super surprised this wasn't already possible. 

Kierstin
Contributor | Diamond Partner

Agree, I was just looking to see how to do this and came accross this post. This is a much needed feature.