Associate Records in HubSpot Workflows

With the Bulk Operations module, you can configure templates to add, remove, or replace existing associations in bulk.

In the Bulk Operations module, 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 Contacts to Companies using Name
• Associate Contacts to Deals

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

Under the Step 2, Associate tab, choose the record type you want to associate with, and configure the rules that will create the relationship between the two record types. The below example will associate Contacts to Companies.

For more detail on setting up an association template, see Bulk Associate Contacts, Companies, and Deals in HubSpot.

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, customize the notification email Insycle will send when this Recipe runs. Add recipients, or add context to the subject and message 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." You'll find two options here, the first option will match your Workflow type. If the Workflow is set up for company objects, for example, the option would read "Insycle - Run Company Recipe." If you don't see the Insycle actions, make sure the Insycle app is installed. 

Select the action that matches your object type.

Select your Recipe from the list. 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 associations Recipe will run every time the Workflow is triggered.

Learn more about Integrating Insycle with HubSpot Workflows.

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 ID.

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.

If you receive a "Multiple Sources Matched" error, this indicates Insycle found multiple records that meet the criteria. Try changing the direction of the association to resolve the error.

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 HubSpot'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 we create the custom matching fields that allow us to make the associations.

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.

It means that when Insycle goes to make the association, it is finding multiple records that meet your criteria. Often, this is either because you are using a field that is not a uniquely identifying field (so Insycle will detect multiple records that match the criteria), or you have duplicate records that need to be merged before the association can take place. 

Yes. You can associate 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, like when creating relationships with custom objects or between child and parent companies, the direction may be important.

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, 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.

A Recipe is a series of individual tasks that have been saved as templates and are strung together into a longer, ordered sequence. This can then be automated to run on a set schedule.

Read more about Recipes, and learn Why Data Management Is So Time-Consuming and How Recipes Can Help.

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.

No, Insycle does not currently allow you to access, update, or associate activities. When you merge companies, it would re-associate activities from the duplicate company to the master company, and re-assign contacts and deals to the master.