Increasing portal speed

[Dedicated]

I want to know if/how portal speed is affected by the volume of workflows therein.

We have a LOT of workflows that are organized in different folders and are functioning as we expect. What is concerning me is that sometimes there are long processing delays before a workflow triggers or between the execution of different workflow steps.

I had asked support whether the volume of our workflows could be slowing down our portal's speed of workflow performance and the response I got was that it would be helpful to consolidate workflows where possible.

On the flip side, in the article, https://community.hubspot.com/t5/GDPR/Optimal-workflow-design-for-multiple-buyer-personas-and/m-p/18...,  I see that the recommendation was to rather have more, shorter workflows that longer, more complicated ones.

My goal is to speed up how workflows get processed and remove anything I can to avoid processing delays while maintaining the functionality that we need.

Will combining workflows (where possible) improve general performance? Is the number of workflows that need to trigger a direct influence on processing speed?

As an example, we have many workflows that trigger when a newly created deal is associated with a company.

• One set of 3 workflows is to get the company name on the deal name (after renaming the deal to be more meaningful to our employees.) We use a workaround because HubSpot does not allow for copying a company property onto a deal property from within a deal workflow. Firstly, a deal-based workflow fires and puts a trigger value onto the associated company. Secondly, a company-based workflow (that allows for re-enrollment on the company's trigger property) copies the company name into a dummy property on all of the associated deals. Finally, another deal-based workflow triggers for deals that now have a value in their dummy property and that are marked as current deals, updating their deal name to have the dummy name property (that was copied to the deal in workflow #2) appended to the end of the deal's existing name. 
• Another bunch of workflows add rollup values on the associated company record so that we can be sure of not creating a second company deal for certain pipelines.  (A company can have many deals of different pipelines but not 2 deals of the same pipeline for any one event.)
• Yet another marks the deal for testing purposes in future workflows, as well as putting the company ID of the first associated company onto the deal (again for testing purposes in case a deal is moved over to a different company by a random user and the wrong company now has the rollup marking of already having a specific pipeline deal (which would cause us to no longer reach out to them.))
• There are probably quite a few more workflows that trigger within each pipeline type.

Workflows that trigger when a deal is created and associated to a company.

Sometimes the workflows fire off in seconds and sometimes not. When all goes well, having 2 separate workflows shooting at the same time, means that the deal is updated simultaneously by both workflows within a second or two. To combine the workflows would mean that the second/third/fourth updating step in one merged workflow would only occur after 3 or 4 seconds on a good day, and after minutes on a bad one. I'm happy to go ahead and join multiple workflows into one larger one with many more steps (where feasible) if that really WILL make a difference in the workflow triggering/running speed, due to the lesser amount of workflows that need to be dealt with by the system. The comment "we have to agree with the core HubSpot recommendation of 'many small workflows'" in the above-quoted post seems to insinuate that it may not be the best course of action to merge workflows meeting different purposes into one longer and more complex one. Does anyone know exactly how volume-of-workflows versus complexity-of-fewer-workflows affects the operating speed of a HubSpot portal?

Also, can anyone tell me whether API calls used more frequently in conjunction with workflows would speed up HubSpot performance or slow it down? (Case in point would be the workflows that add the company name to the end of a current deal's Deal Name property. Here there are 3 workflows firing in order to work around HubSpot workflow limitations. This same thing could be done with an API call from a webhook in one workflow step.) Using the API means there is much less detailed HubSpot history to use for troubleshooting, but if it would make our system's workflows fire more quickly, on a more consistent basis, it would be worth the history loss.

Any concrete advice would be VERY appreciated!

Thanks very much!

[AChubak]

@Dedicated did anyone every give you a concrete answer here? 

[RAdmin]

My workflows are often delayed as well, very few and far between but when my team needs leads it becomes difficult to manually delete contacts that won't sync into a deal stage for 30-45 minutes. 

[PamCotton]

Hello @RAdmin ,  I would recommend connecting with HubSpot Technical Support, as Support is included in your subscription and they will be able to provide real time assistance for this matter, including hopping on a screenshare if necessary to help you solve this delay on your workflows.

Thank you,

Pam

[sharonlicari]

Hey @Dedicated 

Thank you for the detailed information. I'll tag a few experts to see how they managed these types of situations.

Hey @Josh @Daniel_Bleich  @ajchapman20 could you please share your thoughts with @Dedicated? 

Thank you & Happy Friday 

Sharon

[Dedicated]

Hi Sharon,

Thanks so much for tagging those experts!

I'm avidly waiting for some input...