What's New:  HubSpot Product Updates for November 2022

If we were giving HubSpot's November updates a title, it would be "Sales  Reps, We See You."   Three of our top 5 updates will impact sales teams, making Sales Hub more effective.   

Use Playbooks to update properties in associated records

HubSpot's playbooks tools provides guidance on contact, company, deal and ticket records for your reps to reference and create standardized notes when they are meeting with prospects and customers.  

In the past, when a rep used a playbook with questions, those questions could only update properties for the record it was opened on. For example, this meant that you couldn't update deal properties when a playbook was open on a contact record.

HubSpot recognized that users wanted playbook questions that could update properties on associated records, like contacts and deals. This change will allow that to happen.

Playbook users can now also select records associated with the open record and update those properties by answering questions – all without having to leave the contact record to do so.

How does it work?
If a question in a playbook is linked to a property in an object that differs from the record the playbook was opened on, the system will now display a list of associated records and allow the user to choose which record to update. The user will then be able to enter a value and update the linked CRM property when they log the engagement or note.

(For Sales Hub Enterprise and Service Hub Enterprise) 

Recommend playbooks based on contact or ticket property values

Building on the recent addition to recommend playbooks based on Deal Stage, you can set playbook recommendations based on Contact and Ticket properties.  This update helps save reps time looking for the right playbook and adds consistency to your processes. 

This feature can support prospecting by recommending playbooks on contact records using the Lead Status or Lifecycle Stage properties or, in specific support cases, by using the Ticket Status or Category properties.

To start using this feature:

1. Create a new playbook or edit an existing playbook and navigate to the Settings panel.
2. Click "Create Rule"
3. Select a property from the drop-down list
4. Select either "is any of" or "is none of"
5. Select the relevant property value(s)
6. Click the "Save" button

Learn more about using playbooks here.

(For Sales & Service Hub Pro or Enterprise users)

Custom ticket stages in the customer portal

If you use the Customer Portal in Service Hub, you want to read this!  Instead of just "open" and "closed," you can now display custom ticket stage information in the customer portal.  

This addition will allow your customers to get the information they need about their tickets without contacting customer support, saving you and your customer time. 

To setup custom ticket stages in the Customer Portal

1. Go to Hubspot Settings  > Tools >  Website > Customer Portal
2. Under the template section in Customer Portal settings, go to Ticket Status and select the "show customized ticket stages in customer portal" setting.  Save the setting.
3. In the Customer Portal, you will now see additional ticket stage information on the list and ticket views.

If you would like to learn more about creating custom statuses,  you can click here. 

(For Service Hub users)

Field Level View Permissions

Not all individuals in a company need to see information on all properties.  Yet that information should be accessible to those that need it.   With the addition of "field-level" view permissions, admins can control which users and teams can see specific properties.   

This update affects view permissions in the CRM, reports and form submissions.  

You can click here to learn how to restrict view access for properties. 

(For Enterprise users)

Bulk import of sales activities

If your sales team is new to HubSpot or you are migrating to HubSpot, this big update will help make your move to HubSpot smoother.  You can now import bulk sales activities like emails, meetings, calls and tasks to the HubSpot CRM.   

Previously you could only import notes and needed to log these other activities on each record manually.  This was obviously time-consuming and left new users frustrated.  

To import sales activities, you will need to include these activities in your import file.  If you would like to see detailed instructions on importing activities, you can click here.  

(For all users)