Is HubSpot Loosening the Reins? + Managing HubSpot Changes [Part 2]

HubSpot's letting us completely turn off tickets — is this a one-off change or sign of more flexibility to come? Plus, uncover a whole new world of color in HubSpot, and wrap up the work we started last week to take control over changes in your HubSpot instance.

What's Inside:

1. On Your Radar: HubSpot Adds Flexibility for Default Objects - How Far Will They Go?
2. Update Of The Week: Apply Colors to Property Options
3. Admin's Assignment: Take Control of HubSpot Changes [Part 2]

App of the Month: Arrows

This edition is brought to you in part by the company that's making sure your salespeople never have to send a "next steps" email again: Arrows!

Arrows' Sales Rooms empower you to easily create a personalized page for every prospect - giving buyers and internal influencers everything they need to feel confident sealing the deal. And with Arrows' new AI suggestions, it has never been easier to know the most effective content to add to your sales rooms and when to add it!

Learn more and get a free 7-day trial today at Arrows.to

App of the Month is a paid sponsorship from app developers I trust. To inquire about getting your app featured or to learn more, click here.

On Your Radar

HubSpot Adds Flexibility for Default Objects - How Far Will They Go?

Last week, HubSpot announced that we'll soon be able to disable the Tickets object across a HubSpot instance. Anywhere you see 'Tickets' today, including in the global navigation, could be removed with a simple checkbox in the settings.

This change itself isn't really a big deal. It'll simplify things a bit for users in organizations without Service Hub and no use for tickets, but it isn't really an earth-shattering update.

What's more interesting to me is the language HubSpot used in the announcement of this upcoming update:

Last year we introduced the ability to optionally enable particular objects (appointments, courses, listings and services). In doing so, we shifted HubSpot's data model paradigm to one that's more flexible and reflective of your business. In response, a number of HubSpot users alerted us that they wanted additional flexibility to be able to "turn off" HubSpot defined objects.

That last sentence caught my eye. Historically, HubSpot has been very protective of its pre-defined objects and of its global navigation. For example, I can't tell you how many nonprofits have wanted to do something like rename Deals to "donations". But this update tells me two things:

1. HubSpot is hearing the feedback that users want additional flexibility related to core objects
2. They're willing to take action in response

Now I'm curious how far they'll go.

Will they stop at Tickets, or will B2C organizations be able to turn off the Companies object? Will they stop at turning off objects, or will those nonprofits finally be able to rename Deals?

Time will tell...

Update Of The Week

Apply Colors to Property Options

Your flower garden isn't the only thing that's about to get a lot more colorful this spring. Last week, HubSpot announced that you can now apply colors to property options in three ways:

• Colored dots preceding the value of a single-select property (radio select & dropdown select)
• A colored badge containing the value of a single-select property (radio select & dropdown select)
• Colored tags containing the values of multi-select property

Now when you're looking at a list of records in an index view, you can quickly discern valuable information at a glance. And if you've been using emojis in your property options to do this already, you can finally clean those up!

Some use cases for colored properties include:

• Priority rankings
• Buying roles
• Company or contact types
• Status properties
• Sentiment categories
• Deal confidence
• Lead source categories
• Customer, partner, or member tiers
• Level of competitive presence in deals
• Churn risk category
• Accounts receivable status
• Product category interests
• Deal or ticket complexity levels

And that's just scratching the surface!

Note that at the time of writing, this update was listed as a public beta, but HubSpot was not accepting new beta participants. I do think we'll see this roll out more widely very soon.

To get a rundown of all HubSpot's February updates + some practical and creative use cases for them, join me Wednesday, March 5th, for my monthly New & Now webinar!

Admin's Assignment

Take Control of HubSpot Changes [Part 2]

In last week's Admin's Assignment, we set up a system for managing changes to your HubSpot instance. With a simple form and ticket pipeline, you can let your users request changes, fixes, reports and more, then easily manage those requests.

This week, we're going to build a HubSpot Management dashboard that helps your users create tickets and see what's changing in your instance, all in one convenient place. Make sure you've completed last week's assignment first!

Step 1: Create your dashboard.

• Navigate to dashboards
• Click the orange 'Create dashboard' button
• Click 'New dashboard'
• Give the dashboard a descriptive name, such as 'HubSpot Management'
• Allow everyone to view the dashboard
• Click the orange 'Create dashboard' button to save it

Step 2: Add your ticket submission form to the dashboard.

• Navigate to forms and locate the form you created in last week's Admin's Assignment
• Hover over the form and click the 'Actions' button, then click 'View'

• Click 'View form' in the pop-up
• Copy the URL for your form (it'll begin with share.hsforms.com)
• Navigate to the dashboard you created in Step 1
• Click the orange 'Actions' button in the top right, then select 'Add external content' from the dropdown
• Click 'Other content'
• Add a descriptive title, such as 'Submit a HubSpot Request:'
• Add the copied form URL

• Click the orange 'Add button'

Step 3: Create and add an open tickets report.

• From your dashboard, click the orange 'Add report' button in the top right, then select 'Create report' from the dropdown
• Select 'Single object'
• Select 'Tickets' as your data source, then click the orange 'Next' button in the top right
• Select the properties you'd like, then click the orange 'Next' button in the top right (you only need 'Ticket status' to build the report, but additional properties will show when you click the report to see the list of tickets, so you may want to show other information as well)
• Change the chart type to 'Summary' (the icon with a 1 in a circle)
• Change the 'Create date' filter to 'All data'
• Click 'Advanced filters' and add filters for 'Pipeline' is the ticket pipeline you created last week for this purpose and 'Close date' is unknown (note if you fill in an expected close dates before a ticket closes, you should use another filter such as ticket status to filter out closed tickets)

• Click and drag the 'Count of Tickets' property into the 'Displaying' box
• Then, click and drag the 'Ticket status' property there too

• Click the orange 'Save' button in the top right
• Give the report a descriptive name, such as 'Open HubSpot Tickets by Status' and ensure it's being added to your new dashboard, then click 'Save & add'

Step 4: Add a report that shows completed tickets over time.

• From your dashboard, click the orange 'Add report' button in the top right, then select 'Create report' from the dropdown
• Select 'Single object'
• Select 'Tickets' as your data source, then click the orange 'Next' button in the top right
• Select the properties you'd like, then click the orange 'Next' button in the top right (you only need 'Internal Request Type' and 'Close date' to build the report, but additional properties will show when you click the report to see the list of tickets, so you may want to show other information as well)
• Change the chart type to 'Column'
• Switch the 'Create date' filter to 'Close date' and choose a time period you'd like to report on
• Click 'Advanced filters' and add filters for 'Pipeline' is the ticket pipeline you created last week
• Click and drag the 'Count of Tickets' property into the 'Displaying' box
• Click and drag the 'Close date' property into the 'Displaying' box
• Click and drag the 'Internal Request Type' property into the 'Displaying' box
• Change the Frequency if you prefer
• Click 'Display options', then change the 'Stacked' dropdown to 'Standard'

• Click the orange 'Save' button in the top right
• Give the report a descriptive name, such as 'Completed HubSpot Tickets Over Time by Type' and ensure it's being added to your new dashboard, then click 'Save & add'

Step 5: Add a changelog report.

• From your dashboard, click the orange 'Add report' button in the top right, then select 'Create report' from the dropdown
• Select 'Single object'
• Select 'Tickets' as your data source, then click the orange 'Next' button in the top right
• Select the properties you'd like, then click the orange 'Next' button in the top right (I recommend including Ticket name, Internal Request Type, Close date, Ticket status, and Ticket description)
• Change the chart type to 'Table'
• Change the 'Configure table' dropdown to 'Unsummarized data table'
• Switch the 'Create date' filter to 'Close date' and choose a time period you'd like to report on
• Click 'Advanced filters' and add filters for 'Pipeline' is the ticket pipeline you created last week

• Click the orange 'Save' button in the top right
• Give the report a descriptive name, such as 'HubSpot Changelog' and ensure it's being added to your new dashboard, then click 'Save & add'

Now you have everything you need to take control over the changes happening in your HubSpot instance. Not only will you have fewer issues being caused by your users, you also have new tools to help you prioritize your tasks and communicate your important work to stakeholders across your organization.

But don't stop there!

Once you've got this foundation in place, feel free to add anything else that would be helpful. From internal notifications to automatic prioritization to more reports on your dashboard, the sky is the limit!

I publish this newsletter to help HubSpot admins navigate the firehose of HubSpot updates and tips to get exactly what they need to make an impact. If you find it helpful, please subscribe and help spread the word!

Happy HubSpotting,

The Orange Admin