Associate Records in HubSpot Workflows

The following HubSpot objects can be associated in Workflows using Insycle Recipes:

• Companies
• Contacts
• Deals
• Line Items
• Orders
• Tickets
• Custom Objects

You can create associations between:

• Standard or custom objects of different types (such as the cars custom object with deals).
• Contacts, companies, and deal objects of the same type (for example, contacts to contacts).
• One object and many objects (for example, one company to multiple deals). Learn more about making multiple associations.

With the Associate app, you can configure templates to add, remove, or replace existing associations in bulk.

Navigate to RevOps Acceleration > Associate.

Select the HubSpot database and the object in the top menu. Then explore the templates for an existing solution that may be close to what you need.

Insycle offers pre-built templates for HubSpot associations, including:

• Associate contacts to companies using domain
• Associate companies to contacts
• Use existing relationships to associate deals to companies
• Associate line items to deals and copy amount value

In Step 1 under the Filter tab, choose fields and criteria to find records you want to add an association to.

Under Step 2, choose the record type you want to associate with and configure the rules that will create the relationship between the two record types:

• To learn more about setting up an association template using field values, see the Bulk Associate Contacts, Companies, and Deals in HubSpot article.
• To use intermediate relationships to create associations, check out Using Existing HubSpot Associations to Fill in Missing Relationships.

Configure a different template for each set of rules you'll need to make the association across all of the needed records.

To include the association templates in your HubSpot Workflows, you must bundle them together in a Recipe. To create a new Recipe:

1. Click the + button in the right-hand corner of the header bar.
2. Click the Template button to add new templates to the Recipe.
3. Save your Recipe.
4. Click the Review button.

For a Recipe to work in a HubSpot Workflow, it must be saved in Update mode. On the Mode tab of the Recipes popup, select Update, then click Next.

On the Notify tab, select the send option appropriate for your automation: Always send, Send when errors, or Do not email.

Add any additional recipients who should receive the CSV (and make sure to hit Enter after each address). You can also provide additional context in the message subject or body.

On the When tab under Automate, enable your Recipe to run in HubSpot Workflows by selecting the Workflow option, then click Save.

Learn more about Insycle Recipes.

In HubSpot, under Automation > Workflows, click the Create workflow button. In this example, we'll create a Workflow From scratch, but you can insert the Insycle Recipe action into already existing ones.

Select the same object type your Insylce Recipe is for. If your Recipe works with contact records, it can only be inserted into a contact-based Workflow. If working with an existing Workflow, make sure the record types match.

When you click Set up triggers, enter the criteria you want a record to meet in order to trigger this Workflow. You could trigger your association templates to run after a contact fills out a form or after a record is created.

See HubSpot's Set your Workflow enrollment triggers article for more information.

Once saved, click the + on the Workflow to add a new action. 

In the Available Actions panel, search for "Insycle." Select the option that matches your Workflow type. For example, if the Workflow is set up for contact objects, choose the option, "Insycle - Run Contact Recipe." If you don't see the Insycle actions, make sure the Insycle app is installed. 

In the list of available Insycle Recipes, find and select your Recipe. The list will include default Insycle Recipes and those created by your team. You can add any number of Recipes to the Workflow—such as for deduplication, standardization, or decluttering. For complete details of what a Recipe does, review it in Insycle. 

Once you've published the Workflow, your association Recipe will run every time the Workflow is triggered.

Learn more about integrating Insycle with HubSpot Workflows.

Insycle Recipes are compatible with HubSpot workflows that use re-enrollment triggers.

This can trigger a Recipe to run when a specific update to a record is made, letting you make other nuanced changes to the record automatically. For example, if the Lifecycle Stage were updated to Qualified Sales Lead, you could set a “Cleanse Contacts” Recipe to run that will improve the contact data and make it more useful to your sales reps.

Learn more about adding re-enrollment triggers to a HubSpot workflow.

You can view changes by downloading CSV reports from the Activity Tracker. Though there isn't a single report for all of the Recipe templates, you can download individual reports for all of the templates included in the Recipe. All operations that are part of a Recipe will be checkmarked in the Recipe column of the table.

1. The operations are listed in reverse chronological order. As the Recipe step occurs before the individual templates run, it will appear below the templates.
2. The Recipe's Run ID will help you determine which are the related template operations. 
3. You can see what templates are a part of which Recipe by hovering over the Recipe checkmark. This will display the Recipe's Run ID.
4. To download the template reports, click the respective template Run IDs.

A "Failed" Result with the Message "Multiple target matches (x)" or "Multiple sources matched" result occurs when multiple records meet your matching specifications. For example, if you were linking contacts to companies, and Insycle found ten company records with the name "Microsoft," it wouldn't know which Microsoft to establish the relationship with.

There are a few options for resolving this issue:

1. If there shouldn't be multiples of these records you should first go through the process of merging duplicates before trying to create these relationships.
2. If there are supposed to be multiple similar but distinct records, you can add another matching field in Step 2 to make the criteria more specific. A record would have to match both field values to be considered appropriate for making the relationship.
3. You can also use the Filter in Step 2 to narrow the records to be associated.
   
   In the filter popup, you could, for example, add the "Company name" field and set the Condition "contains" "HQ." This tells Insycle to only consider companies for association if the Company Name value includes the term "HQ."
   
4. In cases where there are multiple target records that could match, you can add Selection rules for picking the appropriate record in Step 2.
   
   You can create rules in the selection pop-up to choose the most recently created record that has an owner assigned.
   

An "Unmodified" Result with the Message "Unmodified, no matching record found (use 'Grid Edit' to troubleshoot)" result occurs when there aren’t any records that meet your matching specifications.

You can examine the data in the unmatched records and troubleshoot using the Grid Edit module. Look at different fields and values to identify why your associate setup didn’t work for the record. Then, decide what match options could work or if some cleanup is needed.

Learn more about reviewing your data using the Grid Edit module.

When using the Associate app, you have the option under Step 2 to Count unmatched records as Failed. When checked, any record where there is no match to create the association will be counted as “Failed.” This will be reflected by a "Failed" Result with the Message "No matching record found (use 'Grid Edit' to troubleshoot)" message in the CSV report.

You can examine the data in the unmatched records and troubleshoot using the Grid Edit module. Look at different fields and values to identify why your associate setup didn’t work for the record. Then, decide what match options could work or if some cleanup is needed.

Learn more about reviewing your data using the Grid Edit module.

When using existing relationships to make associations, a "Failed" Result with the Message "Not related to [record type] through [record type] association" error in the CSV's Result column indicates the record associated to your selected source record type does not have the association you are looking for.

For example, if you are setting up the process to associate deals to companies by looking at the contact records, if a contact doesn’t have a company associated with it, there is nothing to copy to the deals.

Bulk associations require that you have a field that you can use to match the two records. For instance, you might select "Company" for contact records, and "Company Name" for company records. You then use these two fields to associate the two records.

But what do you do if you have no obvious matching field between the two record types that you would like to associate?

This is a fairly common scenario. For example, maybe you would like to associate contacts not only with the company that they work for but with the parent company as well. In this scenario, it is not very likely that you capture the parent company on the contact record, which means that you may have no field to use to match the association. As a result, you'll need to create a custom field for contacts and companies, such as "Custom Parent Company." Ideally, if child companies are already associated with parent companies, you'll be able to pull this data from your company records and populate both custom fields using your CRM's automation features.

Then, you'll be able to use the Custom Parent Company field for both contacts and companies to make the match.

The key is finding a data point that would allow you to match the associations, even if it is only available for one record type. Then you can create the custom matching fields that allow you to make the associations.

It can take a while for Insycle to find and match records if the fields being used to identify the relationship have very long values. The longer the values the longer it takes Insycle to process the data and generate the results. This might come up when using links with long ID numbers, LinkedIn bios, or other URLs with long strings (e.g., https://www.linkedin.com/in/svadin%C3%ADr-n%C4%9Bmec-1234b31a3/).

If the end of the values are all unique you can try and speed this up by using the Match Parts parameter under Step 2, which will limit the comparison to the last several characters.

Or use the Ignored > Text (Substrings) parameter and click the Terms button.

On the Ignored Text tab of the popup, add the common portion of the URL or text string.

If HubSpot indicates that a workflow was completed successfully, but the changes Insycle was supposed to make aren't visible when you look at the record, there are several possible causes.

Our Troubleshooting HubSpot Workflow Issues article provides DIY steps you can take to resolve common issues, including scenarios where a workflow appears complete but changes are missing.

There are a couple of possible causes:

1. The Recipe was not saved to run in Update mode. To check this, in Insycle, open the relevant Recipe, click Review, and make sure it is set to run in Update mode.
2. The data sync to HubSpot may not have finished processing yet. Give it a few more minutes to complete the batch, then check again.
3. The workflow requires certain values to be present for the Insycle recipe to run, and due to another integration or process, the timing of the value populating the record happens after the workflow runs. 

Review these troubleshooting steps for complete DIY solutions to address any of the above issues.

You can use any field in your database to create relationships between records; you just need to figure out which field in each record type will have the same value. For instance, you might select "Company" for contact records and "Company Name" for company records. Or you could use "Email Domain" on the contact, and "Website Domain" on the company. 

Commonly used fields for linking include company names, company domains, and company URLs.

Yes. You can associate records in either direction. 

Though making relationships will work in both directions, consider that contacts to companies is the standard direction, and some features (such as the "If Company is Not Found Create New Company" feature) are only designed to work when contacts are being associated to companies.

In some cases, the direction may be important, such as when creating relationships with custom objects or between child and parent companies.

Yes, Insycle can help manage parent-child associations. For more information, see the Associate or Link Parent-Child Companies article.

Yes. If no matching record is found, you can choose to automatically create a new record based on what is in the source record. Under Step 2 of the Associate app, check the Create new [record] when no matching is found box to enable, then select the field to use for naming the new record.

When Insycle creates a company record during the association process, the Original Source Data 2 property value will be "Insycle Data Management." 

Yes. HubSpot waits for Insycle to complete all templates in the Recipe before moving on to the next action. In this example, HubSpot won't send the welcome email until the association Recipe is complete.

In HubSpot Workflows, simply remove the Recipe action from the Workflow and re-publish it.

No, Insycle does not currently allow you to access, update, or associate activities.