Associating email records to tickets retroactively

[JDutson]

We have a client who uses Tickets extensively for tracking activities / communications with new customers. When their HubSpot account was initially set up the global setting that all associated emails would show on tickets (in the middle activity feed) was turned off. We turned it on for them so that all new tickets show all associated emails, but the setting doesn't work for tickets created before the date we turned the email setting on. There are 100+ tickets from before that turn on date that aren't showing associated emails.

Any ideas on how 1) to retroactively and 2) going forward show all associated email records on these older tickets? We've not been able to find anything yet. We could manually associate emails by going into contacts/companies, but that would take too long and would not solve the issue of getting future emails to automatically associate with the ticket. 

Thanks! 

[louischausse · Accepted solution]

Hi @JDutson 

Sorry for the delay here!

Yes I think you could do something here using the APIs. Something like this:

First, get all emails using the engagement API https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/crm/engagements and identify the sent date as a variable (i.e. emailSentDate) and the company of the associated contact (i.e. emailCompanyOfTheAssociatedContact )

Second, get all the tickets with the objects CRM API https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/crm/tickets and identify their ticketCreateDate and ticketCloseDate and ticketCompanyOfTheAssociatedContact as variables

Finally you could run a matching cal with the association API https://developers.hubspot.com/docs/api/crm/associations that would do something like:

IF emailSentDate IS BETWEEN ticketCreateDate AND ticketCloseDate

AND ticketCompanyOfTheAssociatedContact === emailCompanyOfTheAssociatedContact

THEN associate contact with email

Don't forget to mark my reply as a solution if you are satisfied. If not, do not hesitate to ask me anything!

[jemjudilla]

Hi Louis. Thanks for your post here. Just wondering if you were able to make an API call with those mentioned above and have them return the company name associated with the email? If so, what property name did you use? I've tried company_name since that what I've seen in the list of properties but it's not pulling any data. Maybe I'm missing something? Keen to know your thoughts. Thanks!

[JDutson]

@louischausse , I think there could be a rule that would work. Assume for this rule that "Company" is a client of my client. It would be something along the lines of "every email sent by or to john.doe@Company.com should be associated with Company's ticket that was open at the time it was sent." 

Does that help? Thanks! 

[louischausse]

Can you think of a rule (or several rules) that would match those emails with their tickets?

For instance, "every email sent by john.doe@domain.com should be associated with a ticket that was open at the time it was sent"

If you can't think of such a rule, you won't have any other choice than do it manually

[louischausse]

@JDutson ,

The emails to be synced are they already synced in HubSpot with contacts and/or companies?

If yes, are they the only emails on those company and/or contacts? Or is there other email sent from other teams (i.e. Sales)

[JDutson]

@louischausse , 

The emails in most (perhaps all) cases are already synced with a contact, company, and/or deal.  Depending on the situation, emails are from their customer success / service team (1 person) and some are from the sales team (2 persons max) and some from their COO who helps with sales and customer success / onboarding. Hence the 5 people max number. 

Thanks for your help. 

[louischausse]

Hey happy to help here!

Quick questions in order to assist:

1. The emails that need to be retroactively synced, were sent with HubSpot or with Gmail or Outlook?
2. Was it sent from shared email inbox (i.e. help@domain.com) or personal account (i.e. jdoe@domain.com)?
3. From how many email address was it sent?

The solution may be in a batch upload with the HubSpot Engagement API, but need answers to these questions to confirm

Thanks

[JDutson]

Louis, 

Thanks for following up. The emails that need to be retroactively synced 1) were sent out of the client's company account (via Gsuite, i.e., gmail), 2) they came from individual email accounts (e.g., joseph@companyname.com), and 3) the emails could have come, or been received by, any of 4 or 5 employee's email accounts. They are a smaller company with I'd say no more than 5 different people using HubSpot tickets. So there are 5 or less unique email addresses that would require retroactively syncing/associating emails to preexisting ticket records in HubSpot. 

I'd appreciate any ideas you may have and in the meantime I'll look into HubSpot Engagement API. 

[Josh]

Hi @JDutson,

Is it an option to start the email communication from the ticket record itself and then associate to the other records that would be required?

I'm not sure that this is the best solution, but it's the first that comes to mind.

Josh 

[JDutson]

Josh, Thanks for responding. That is something we've considered, but it wouldn't be ideal and may not all of the client's needs. Particularly, because they would still have older emails that are not synced/associated with their tickets. 

[PamCotton]

Hello @JDutson,

I will be tagging some top experts to share their thoughts, @Josh, @darynsmith, @louischausse  what would you recommend to @JDutson matter?

Thank you,

Pam