This content details the launch and ongoing development of HubSpot's new Projects object, highlighting its current capabilities, intended use cases for go-to-market teams, and an extensive roadmap for future enhancements.
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Welcome to another event of the HubSpot
Admins Hug. Um, we're here every Tuesday
at this time. Uh, great to have you
here. Uh, this is our homepage. This is
your source of truth for all of our
weekly events. Uh, be sure to bookmark
this, keep an eye on it, especially as
we're heading into the new year. um make
sure this is this is a part of your plan
for 2026. You are here. We've got Mark
with us. He's going to talk about the
new projects object inside of HubSpot.
Very excited for that. Uh next week will
be our last uh session for the year. Uh
we're going to do a little bit of admin
networking. And before that, uh Diana
and I will give some awards to various
people and do a readout of some of the
stats, just interesting fun facts about
what the uh what the admin hug has been
like in 2025. So encourage you all to
come uh see if your name gets read on on
a slide of fame or something. We have a
couple weeks we're taking off for the
end of the year. Uh and then January
we've got booked already. We're going to
talk about uh HubSpot AI connectors.
Going to dive deep in help desk. Talk
about the new flexible CRM views. Very
exciting. And then this goodbye data
gaps. The team that works on HubSpot's
data model tools. So the data model
overview, data model builder, um
properties, all that stuff is going to
talk about how they're they're closing
the gaps of how different objects have
had different functionalities and
they're we're getting to parody. It's
very exciting. Uh so keep an eye on this
page to know what's coming. Uh this is
our YouTube channel where you can find
recordings of our previous sessions.
We've this one I guess will make 180.
Very exciting milestone. Um so if you
ever want to rewatch or if you miss a
session or if you want to share it with
someone, uh this is your best place to
do that. Um, we have showand tells
occasionally. We are going to schedule
one probably for February. We'll let you
know when that date is fixed. Uh, we
still have room in that one and we are
going to do these regularly throughout
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and relevant as possible. You can fill
out this form or you can always just
reach out to me or Diana directly. We're
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hear from you. Um and then if you want
to see any of these links I just shared
and and several others, uh Diana's put
together this little resource page where
you can see everything uh on a single
spot. So that's all from me. Uh two
minutes of housekeeping, not bad. Mark
>> Oh wait, hold on. You got to unmute yourself.
yourself.
>> There we go. unmuted. There we go.
Everyone can see this? >> Yep.
>> Yep.
>> Perfect. Hey everyone, my name is Mark.
I work on the product management team at
HubSpot. I'm excited to talk to you more
about the project object today. So, just
to get started, I can start by I'll
introduce myself a little bit. I've been
at HubSpot for a little over two years.
I've worked on two other teams before
projects. So, I started out working on
permissions. Then I was working on uh
multi-count management and brands. And
for those that aren't aware, multi-count
management is a set of features that
help some of our our larger customers
with complex organizations to use
separate HubSpot accounts. And now I'm
working on projects. So, it's actually
only been a few months, probably about
three or four months since I started
working on projects. And actually,
HubSpot itself hasn't really been
thinking about projects for for too
long, uh, too much longer than that.
Some fun facts about me. I have a
one-year-old daughter. I live in San
Diego. And some of my favorite things
when I have any free time outside of
parenting, working, I like to do yoga
and I I love to cook. All right, so
let's uh get moving. For some context,
for those that aren't aware, HubSpot
launched the project object at Inbound
of 2025. Inbound was in September of
this past year and is HubSpot's large
one of our our large events where uh
this is the Inerson conference where we
announced some of our our major project
uh announcements. So when we launched
the project object that was paired with
a new Gant view type uh as well and just
to define some things for people that
aren't as familiar with everything with
HubSpot we say project object because
basically HubSpot has these different
data objects that you store data uh
within the platform. So for example
contacts, companies, deals, those are
some of the classic objects that HubSpot
has that refers to them being on what we
call the HubSpot framework. And what we
try to do is then have a consistent
experience with a lot of outof-the-box
capabilities which I'll show some of
them for projects that come with being
an object within HubSpot. And when I
talk about the Gant view type, what I'm
referring to on the screen here next to
this search bar, there's this dropdown
where you can view the data that you're
seeing in different ways. So for a
while, HubSpot's main view type was a
table. And as part of the recent launch,
we've incorporated a Gant view, which is
obviously an important capability when
it comes to project management.
So before I go too much into demoing the
feature or talk about the road map, I
wanted to just talk a little bit more
around what are the use cases that we've
been seeing from customers as they start
to do project management within HubSpot
and then why have we been seeing that
customers want to do project management
within HubSpot. So we've seen three main
use cases for project management. The
first is service delivery. The second is
marketing campaign project management.
And the third is around sales and
account management. And the theme that
you'll see that carries through all of
these is that it relates to project
management for gotomarket teams, which
isn't too surprising because HubSpot's
main users are go to market users across
sales, service, and marketing. And they
have project management needs that it
makes sense that they would want to do
within HubSpot. So let me just go
through these each one by one. Service
delivery has been the most common use
case that we've been seeing from
customers for project management. And I
break this down into three
subcategories. So the first is software
onboarding. The second is professional
services. So shout out to all the I saw
some solution partners on the call uh
who have been really great at giving us
feedback on projects. And the third is
around physical good and production and
delivery. And I put a fun fact here. So
we look at who what seats seat types
that that customers have who are using
projects and about 50% of the active
users of HubSpot have a service seat. So
this has been the most common use case
that we've been seeing and I'll talk a
little bit more around why that's so
common. The second is around marketing
campaign project management. So
campaigns and the new marketing studio
today offer tasks but they fall short in
true project management. And what we've
been hearing is that customers want to
have a more complete campaign project
management software within HubSpot.
The third category is sales and account
management. And this has been a couple
of different types of sub use cases. So
when it comes to sales, we've been
seeing some businesses that want to have
a more structured container for tasks
for their sales process. So for example,
like an enterprise sales motion where
you have a group of people who are
involved. You might have a task for
getting an executive involved, a task
for creating a PowerPoint, etc. And the
second is around account plans. So say
you're an account manager in thinking
about an account and you're coming up
with what's the goal for this account
for next year and one of those goals
might be let's up we want to try to
upsell this customer to a new tier or we
want to cross-ell them to a separate
product. Those have a collection of
tasks that you want to track progress on
and we've seen some customers want to
use those projects. A lot of this
relates to how can a project be
associated to some of the other objects
that exist within HubSpot for context.
So now let's go why use projects. Now it
varies a little bit by the use case but
there have been three main themes that
we're hearing around what are the
benefits of bringing these types of use
cases into HubSpot for project
management. The first is customer data
and that is that HubSpot has the context
on your customer inside of the platform.
This is really relevant particularly for
a service delivery, a sales, account
management use case where you're
creating projects that relate to the
associated CRM data. So for example, if
we think about service delivery, when
you're creating a project for onboarding
a customer or delivering a service,
there's some really useful context that
exists on the deal that can help figure
out what are the right tasks for that project.
project.
The second is having the complete lead
to revenue journey within HubSpot from a
both a ease of collaboration and use
ability and the other is from a
reporting perspective. We've
consistently heard from customers that
they're doing their marketing in
HubSpot, they're doing their sales
process in HubSpot and that they're
frustrated that once the deal closes,
they have to move away into another
software to manage that onboarding
process. Now you can do that endto-end
process in one place. And now you can do
reporting that thinks about what's the
complete revenue reporting of this
entire journey.
And the final one is around planning and
executing in one place. This is
particularly relevant on the marketing
campaign side. So we've heard from
customers is that they come to HubSpot's
marketing hub. They're planning, they're
creating their assets, they're running
their campaigns, they're doing their
reporting, but a lot of the times when
it comes to creating the assets for a
campaign, there's different people
involved. It takes time. There's these
planning process to doing that and
there's a planning process to running a
campaign. You have to go speak to
finance and figure out the budget for
your campaign, etc. And what's happening
is that none of that could be really
tracked effectively within HubSpot. And
so we were hearing from customers that
they have to log into HubSpot to do that
to do some of their campaign work. Then
they log into another software to do
some of their planning process. And they
really just want to do it all within one place.
place.
So those are the top three reasons that
we're seeing from customers for why they
want to use projects inside of HubSpot.
I think one thing that I would call out
that you would explicitly see that we're
not focused on. So we're focused on how
can we help these existing go-to market
teams do their job processes better
within HubSpot. What we are not really
focused on is for example take myself.
I'm a product manager. I do project
management for my roadmap for the
features that we build. And we're not
really saying that I'm a target persona
to come into HubSpot. That may change in
the future, but for the time being,
we're really focused on how can we take
the existing types of users for HubSpot
and provide them more value.
So now let's do a demo of how projects
works within HubSpot.
So to start out what I'll just share
with you all to start is that when you
first want to use projects you have to
come to the data model
which is a feature that allows you to
turn on and off objects within HubSpot.
So we'll go to edit the data model and
within it you can see that I have here
that projects is already activated but
if you hadn't yet turned on projects you
would see a little box a card here where
you have to click activate the object.
This is and and just for context,
projects is available to all customers
on all plans. So, everyone is able to do
this. Now, once you activate the object,
projects will appear in the CRM section
of the navigation. This is what we call
a project index page. And this is where
you'll see the projects that you create.
It follows similar patterns to contacts,
companies, deals, etc. So, hopefully
people are familiar with it. You can see
the different view types here. So a
table view is a pretty classic
experience that customers have for
managing objects within HubSpot. But now
new with the uh release of projects is
the Gant view. Uh for context, the Gant
view requires you to have a starter plan
at least. So once you actually create a
project, we'll click into these are all
just fake projects that I have. You'll
be taken into the project record.
Something that we recently released
about a month ago as a follow-up is this
task card. We felt that viewing tasks
within the activity section, which is
another way that you can view act tasks
within a project, wasn't quite as
effective or front and center. So, we
created this task card that shows the
task really right in front of you. You
can expand here to manage some of the
associations between the project and
other CRM data. Just to show some of the
other platform concepts that come with
having a new CRM object, there is now a
settings page. So to access that you
come to settings you scroll down to
objects you click on projects and what
you'll see here is here you can get
access to then go manage the project
properties. So projects have both
default properties as well as custom
properties. So you are now in the pro
properties page where you can click
create property and that's a standard
custom property. We also have the
ability to have pipelines here for
context. So what with pipelines what the
idea here is is that if you have
different types of use cases for
projects. So for example say you have a
project for service delivery another set
of use cases of projects for marketing
campaigns. You might want to adjust what
the processes for that project which you
can do with different pipelines.
Next moving along projects now also
exists within workflows. So if you come
to create a workflow to give two
different types of examples, one of them
that you can do is to have a workflow
that triggers off of a project. So when
a project is created, you could then do
things on top of that. So right now we
don't yet have project templates, which
is something that we're investing in
where you would have the ability to
automatically create a set of tasks when
a project's created. But in the short
term, you could use workflows to be able
to, for example, create a set of tasks
every time a workflow a project is
created. Another good use case for using
workflows is from a service delivery
perspective. Every time a deal is closed one,
one,
let's just
try to do this. If I could do this
quickly. So we want to do deal deal properties
properties
is closed one is equal to true. So now
what this is going to do is have a
workflow where every time a deal
is closed one we then want to create a
new corresponding project. So you can
see that we have actions like create
record. We also have another one for
that is around editing a record but in
this case we would be creating a record
for creating a project.
Now right now it's just creating a
project. It's not then creating the
associate tasks. You could do subsequent
actions to create tasks over time, which
I'll speak about a little bit more
later. We're going to have the ability
to have project templates where this can
be a simpler process to create the right
set of tasks when you create a project.
So this is how workflows works with
projects. And finally, we'll pop over to
reports. So projects is now an object
that's available in both single object
reports and custom reports that follow a
similar patterns to every other object
in HubSpot. So if you come to create a
projects are available here. So a lot of
customers what they'll do is they'll
take projects they'll join it with tasks
and then create reports on top of that.
I won't go through the process of
showing you all the reports but you you
can get the idea.
All right. So this is how projects is
currently existing within HubSpot.
Everyone is welcome to use it. It
functions really similar to other other
objects like contacts, companies and
deals. Hopefully it's not intimidating
for people and you all I would encourage
you all to get started and to just try
it out. Now let's go in and talk a
little bit more about the roadmap.
So where we're heading is that we are
really focused on the top two use cases
that we've heard from customers. The
first is service delivery and the second
is marketing campaign project
management. And in order for us to
effectively solve for those two use
cases, we're investing in two categories
of improvements. And you'll have to
excuse me. I'm going to walk upstairs. I
was trying to uh be quiet while my
daughter was asleep upstairs. So, give
me a second while I move up to my my
desk upstairs. Some live parenting and
remote work environment.
Cool. So, just to keep talking. So the
two categories of improvements that
we're investing in are core capabilities
and core experiences. So to speak to
core capabilities, that's really the
biggest area that we have to do better
in. So for those of you who have tried
out projects since it was launched at
inbound, I think what your experience
will be, which is what we've
consistently heard, is that customers
are excited to bring projects into
HubSpot, but that we're missing a lot of
core project management capabilities
that are required for them to be willing
to do so. So, I'm going to go through
some of these we have designs for. So,
I'm going to show you what some of those
designs look like. Others we won't. I'm
happy in the Q&A to speak to any
timelines, any ideas that we have of the
requirements, etc. for these features.
So, for core capabilities, the first is subtasks.
subtasks.
The second are task dependencies.
The third are project templates so that
when you create a project, it
automatically creates an associated set
of tasks. The fourth is status updates.
So you can post a an update for what's
going on with your project. You could
notify your other HubSpot users. You
could send an email to c to customers if
you're doing a service delivery use
case. The next is custom properties for
tasks. So just to make sure that that's
clear. Right now projects have default
and custom properties, but tasks only
have default properties. There's no
ability to have a custom property for a
task. So just to give my own use case, I
use hub projects for my own product
planning just to use the product myself.
I can't put a custom property on a task
like which engineer is responsible for
that task in addition to saying like I'm
running a project but I want to say who
is the designer for this who is the
engineer and and we can't define those
things. Well today the next is projects
in the customer portal. So this is
really relevant for a service delivery
use case. So right now when how how
projects works is it's really just
inside of your HubSpot account. So you
create a project, you have tasks that
you can only assign to HubSpot users.
And this isn't really good enough for a
service delivery use case. When it comes
to service delivery, you need to be able
to share a project externally with the
customer that you're working with and be
able to assign certain tasks to be
completed by those customers or clients.
So, what we're doing is we're
collaborating with HubSpot's customer
portal concept so that for every
customer, you can have a unique URL
where they will be able to log into that
URL and see a project and certain tasks
that are assigned to them, complete
those tasks that doesn't require them to
be invited to your own HubSpot account.
Next, we have time tracking, which is
which will allow you to track the
estimated and actual time for tasks and
have that roll up to the project level.
And then finally for core capabilities
is a workload view so that you'll be
able to visualize across your users
within HubSpot what is the work that's
assigned to them relative to their
capacity and are they at their
allocation or not. So these are all the
core capabilities and when it comes to
the core experiences what we're saying
is what I demoed for you was that
projects exists within the project
navigation section.
What we want to do for the two use cases
is also bring projects into the
contextual experiences that these users
have when they use marketing hub and
service hub. So for projects being in
the CS workspace, this was actually
something that I could I didn't demo but
I can jump in and just show you quickly
actually that would be good to call out.
This is actually already live in our
production environments right now. So if
you come over to the CS workspace, you
can now see that projects,
let's hide this. Projects is now
actually a tab within the customer
success workspace and is the default
recommended object for customer success
uh when it comes to onboarding. So we're
expecting that for many customer success
and onboarding professionals, they will
live out of this customer success
workspace and it's important that
projects integrates into here effectively.
effectively.
The other one that is listed here is
marketing studio. So, for those that
aren't familiar, Marketing Studio is a
redesigned new version of campaigns
within HubSpot. And we are working to
bring projects into that experience for
customers that wanted to take their
project management to the next level
within marketing within marketing studio.
studio.
Okay, only five minutes or so more. I
just want to show you some screenshots
and some details of things that I do
have available. So, what you're seeing
here is Subtask, which we're building
right now. Subtask will be entering into
a beta in January. What you're seeing
here is in our Gant view, you'll have
the ability to create subtasks. And you
can see how there's this third level of
subtasks that are it goes projects,
tasks, and subtasks. You'll also be able
to create and edit subtasks within the
task creation in other places as well
over time.
Next, we have status updates. This is
also going to have a beta in January.
And you can see here we're creating a
new CRM card. This is what you're seeing
here is a project preview. They will the
project status card would also be
available within a project record and
you can see how a user has posted a
status update here. What I I'm not
showing the whole process. We are going
to allow you to manually enter a project
status update as well as have AI help
you generate it and have you review it.
You'll then also be able to share this
with external users such as uh your
customers as well as notify other people
within your company that are working on
this project.
Here you're seeing dependencies. We're
aiming for a beta for this in about
April of next year. What you're seeing
is that you can see these lines between
the different tasks, which is a pretty
standard way to visualize a dependency
between tasks as a drag and drop
environment. What this is saying is that
task A is blocking the work of task C.
You can see how this task is currently
blocked. This subtask is blocked. This
task is blocked. So these are some of
the ways that we're going to visualize
dependencies for our customers.
Next, we have templates. So, what you're
seeing here is within the settings page
of projects, we're going to have a new
tab for project templates where users
can create templates. And within that,
you'll be able to predefine tasks for a
given project template. So that when
that template is then used, either
manually or in a workflow, we will
autogenerate the set of tasks that you
would expect. These tasks will also have
a concept of a relative due date based
off of things like the project start
date. So with instead of having to enter
50 task due dates, you can just say,
"Oh, this task will will start about a
week after the project's created and
will finish two weeks after the project
created," which can automate some of
that uh work that you might have to do
to set up a new project.
This I just demoed uh so I won't go too
much more detail. Projects is now the
default object within the customer
success workspace instead of the service
object uh for customers to handle their
service delivery and onboarding process.
All right, that was everything that I
have to go through. I'm happy to go
through a Q&A process now with everyone
uh and answer any questions that I might
be able to.
>> Love it. Amazing. I imagine you were not
able to see the chat during that just
given the nature of a web- based
webinar, but mostly lots of love. People
are so excited about projects being here
and uh everything everything they want
is on your list for next year. So, uh
you you are all all all all your your
plans are validated by this particular
group. Um so, we're going to do Q&A now.
Uh hop over into that panel. Drop your
questions in. Look through the questions
quickly. Upvote the ones you most want
to hear about. We will go most upvoted
to least upvoted and uh get through as
many as we possibly can. Um I'll give
you like 10 seconds here, then I'll sort
it. Uh, I used to I used to promise a
minute and that I could never ever
[laughter] wait that long. Are you
telling me I can't even wait 10 seconds?
Oh, it's killing me. [laughter]
All right, most voted question with 13
up votes from Dale. We really need
subtasks and custom properties in both
tasks and subtasks to make it a viable
solution for us. Is there a timeline on
these pieces making it to the beta
environment? Well, Dale, yes. [laughter]
This question came in right at the
beginning 11:05. So I you just just
answered that. I don't know if there's
more color you want to add. We can move
on to the next one. [snorts]
>> Subtasks we are closer as I mentioned is
going to be ready in January. It's what
our team's working on right now. Custom
properties is something that we're still
figuring out a timeline. Uh and we're
hoping that custom properties we'd be at
some point in the first half of next
year, but we don't have a precise
timeline. When we have custom
properties, they would work on both
tasks and subtasks though.
>> Awesome. So will subtask like from like
a creation view and and and like with
task cues and that sort of thing will
they behave just like a normal task but
in the hierarchy of a project?
>> Yeah. So subtasks are a task. So for
people that are familiar with like our
object concepts as we were talking about
subtasks are a task object. So they will
be manifested in the product in a way
that's cohesive with how tasks work. And
I can actually just for the sake of a
live experience just show you something
that we're working on right now which is
uh just like help you understand that
concept a little better. Uh we right now
are currently building subtask and
you're seeing this within our test
environment. So what I just to help make
that clear when I edit this I'll add a
subtask here. So you can just see like I
didn't show this in this in the in the
PowerPoint, but you can see right here
there's now this subtask component
within editing a task
and we're going to save that. And what's
going to happen here is you can start to
see how there's this what we're doing is
we're starting to flatten the subtasks
into the task. So like when you see
tasks represented elsewhere in the
product with a list of tasks over time
you'll start to see this experience of
where they're sort of con consolidated
into the parent task that you're seeing
and we will be figuring out how these
elegantly get handled through things
like task cues as well over time.
>> Amazing. That's awesome. Um thanks for
showing that. Uh love to see something
in in in the building development
stages. Michelle asks, "Do you plan to
incorporate incorporate time tracking
into projects? We track projects by
hourly billing retainers, which also
function based on hours, either native
time tracking built in or integrations
with existing time tracking apps. We'd
of course want to take it a step further
and manage invoicing as well.
>> Got it. So, yes, we are. That is one of
the top projects that we're going to be
working on. And actually, uh, our
designer is currently working on how
time tracking will function within
HubSpot right now.
The general way that we're thinking
about this is that on the tasks there
will be an estimated time and an actual
time spent property. Those properties
can allow multiple time entries either
in the form of hours or minutes. And
then the idea is that that time would
then be rolled up at the project level.
And then what we're planning to do is to
pair that as I mentioned with a workload
view where you'll be able to say for a
given user what's the both count of
tasks the time that's being assigned to
that user over time. You can enter in
their capacity and then we'll be telling
you are they at capacity or not. In
general we agree with all of you that
this category of resource management is
equally critical to the core project
management use cases a as far as how it
connects into invoicing. So we actually
just built uh the enabled an association
between projects and line items. We are
very interested in figuring out how to
further the connection between projects
and billing. Like as we mentioned the
number one use case that we're solving
for is service delivery. So time tracking,
tracking,
resource allocation, the billing process
of those tasks, we understand how
important those are and are are looking
forward to to making them work really
well over the next year. That's amazing.
Um, and it makes a lot of sense because
HubSpot has that stuff in there already.
So, uh, Sarah also asked about time
tracking. Uh, you answered that. Lindsay
wants time tracking, so answered that.
Ally says, "Would like to be able to set
up recurring tasks. Is that something
you're thinking about?"
>> So, recurring tasks are a concept that
already exists within HubSpot. Um, so
today on a task, there's a button that
you can click that makes it a recurring
task. that concept still exists within
projects uh for when you're creating a
test. So I think that I would just say
like that feature already exists. I'd be
happy if you want to like email me and
share where it's working or not working
for you to hear more from you.
>> Great. Um Charlene says, "Can you
trigger transactional emails from
projects similar to tickets i.e. thank
you onboarding email to the client?" I
I
I think that's a one that I would say I
don't have the an exact off the top of
my head knowledge of exactly how
transition transactional emails work in
HubSpot. Conceptually, the use case that
you want to do is something that we want
to enable. So if it's not enabled
effectively, you should follow up with
me. Like I certainly know that you can
have a workflow triggered off of a
project that then has an action of a
marketing email, but I will admit I have
not studied transactional emails
specifically enough to say if there's
something else that's missing. Like you
can just to continue forward like you
could create contact lists of contacts
based off of the associated project
data. So I think the answer to this
should be yes, but if you run into any
challenges you can let me know.
>> Great. Uh Charlene asks, "Is the plan
with projects to compete with other PM
softwares like teamwork with the ability
to see team members capacity on
projects?" You mentioned capacity a
little bit in passing, I think.
>> Yes, we will provide capacity planning
capabilities. In terms of how we think
about our our competition with other
project management softwares, the way I
would personally think about it is that
there are benefits to doing certain use
cases within HubSpot without leaving
HubSpot. And there will be some
businesses that only need a certain
standard set of capabilities for project
management and they will find the value
in using HubSpot's projects for that
purpose and not having to use another
software. There will be other businesses
that have more advanced project
management capability needs that we are
not going to deliver upon. And the idea
is that we want to have both a native
solution and a birectional integration
with ma major project management
software. So there there's flexibility
for you to choose what the right option
is for you. So just to play that example
out, the marketing studio team is both
planning to offer native project
management through HubSpot as well as
having integrations with softwares like
Asauna, Monday, etc. So if you prefer to
do your project management outside of
HubSpot, you'll be able to do so as
well. I love that. And that that to me
just feels like classic HubSpot
technique, right? Like we have a meeting
scheduling tool. We also have an
integration with Calendarly, right? And
like uh if if our native solution gets
you where you need to go, great, use
that. There's a lot of advantages to
that. But if you uh need a point
solution that outfeatures us, we're not
offended and we want your data to to
flow through. So that's that's great. Um
Valerie says, "Additional template use
case developing a project template for
the business development and scoping
process, i.e. connect to task,
playbooks, etc. Template is helpful from
a repeatability standpoint."
That's not a question, but
>> more of a feedback. Yeah. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Yeah. Well, I would just say templates
has been one of the top three or four
features that customers have been asking
us for. It's very understandable that
people have repeatable business
processes that they want to ensure are
both repeated by their users. Like a a
CSM director wants to ensure that their
CSMs follow a standard process for
onboarding a customer and it's just a
huge efficiency thing of needing to have
to recreate tasks every time you create
a project. So we very much understand
the importance of project templates. The
playbooks piece is not something that is
connected into it right now. It's more
so creating a project with the
associated tasks but uh we're it's
something we're working on actively and
really care about as well.
>> Yeah, that's really interesting. Um
because I know playbooks I'm trying to
do this quickly on the fly. Uh can
trigger certain you can insert assets uh
or actions. >> Um
yeah, there's a create a record action.
Looks like projects isn't currently in
the list. I wonder what it would take to
unlock that. That's really interesting.
>> All right. >> Yeah.
>> Yeah.
>> Um if I create a project, this is from
Janette. If I create a project and I
clone it as an almost template, can I
clone it as an almost template before
templates are released? >> Does
>> Does
>> that is a that is a good question. I
would need to test the cloning
functionality because what I'm not sure
about is when you clone a project, will
it also clone the associated tasks that
are part of the project or does it just
clone the property data of the project?
So, I'd say that's what I would go test.
With that said, I could see it being
frustrating to clone if you want to use
the templates of the task, but you don't
necessarily want all of the things that
are within the task from the previous
project to be cloned over. So, if it's
possible, it might not be a very great
experience to do it. What we've been
seeing more commonly as a workaround is
the use of workflows as the workaround
where basically when a new project is
created, you then have a process that
creates all the associated tasks that
you want. That is what I've been seeing
more commonly as the the workaround as
opposed to manual cloning.
>> Makes sense. Michael says, I think I saw
recently that the services object might
be going away in favor of project
object. Is that correct?
We are evaluating the overlap between
the project object and the service
object with the intent of trying to
reduce customer confusion over there are
different options that seem similar and
so how does a customer know which is the
right object for them to choose. We
believe that the project object is the more
more
extensible future direction for managing
work within HubSpot. So we are leaning
towards either renaming the service
object or deprecating the service object
we to be something that reduces customer
confusion. The renaming would be to make
it something more generic that's not
clearly project management oriented uh
or to deprecate and basically those are
the two options that we're evaluating.
We haven't really figured out exactly
which path we're going to go. What I
would share is that we are already
building features for the project object
that are not available on the service
object. So for example, if you I showed
you that task card that uh exists now
within the project object. It doesn't
exist within the service object. Some of
the features that we've been talking
about uh like subtask dependencies will
only initially be available for tasks
within the project object, although that
can change over time. And then things
like project templates are a templating
feature for projects, not for the
service object. Like in general, we are
not taking all the features we're
building and building them on both
objects with the intent of knowing that
we're trying to move away from the
service object being the object that's
used for service delivery in favor of
the project object. So my feedback to
you would be if you're currently using
the service object, you can think about
what is the path to switch over to the
project object over time without saying
like there's no immediate urgency that
says you're that there's like a specific
date where they won't be supported by
any means. It's more so if you want to
take advantage of what we're doing with
the project object, then you should
start to figure out how that fits into
your your administration plan of HubSpot.
HubSpot.
>> Yeah. And I'll add to that for a while
the the default in the CS workspace was
the services object and that tab was
called services. Now the default is
projects and it's called projects. But
if you have the CS workspace set up and
a services object connected there that
will not automatically change and you
can still select services as an option
for that page. Uh we are not at a phase
right now where any changes are being
forced upon you.
>> That's correct.
So, uh, it's important thing to keep in
mind. Anna says, "Can we start
associating marketing items such as
blogs and emails and sequences to a project?"
project?"
>> Today, you cannot, but what we are
currently evaluating right now is the
assoc is the ability to associate a
project to a campaign. As part of that,
we are going to figure we will have to
figure out do we want to be able to also
associate the project to individual
marketing assets. Uh, is something that
will be evaluated over time. But our
first step that we're going towards is
figuring out how to connect to campaigns.
campaigns.
>> Got it.
>> Uh Shell asks, "What does permissioning
look like? Our end users would be
expected to have more flexibility with
what project properties or project
related forms they can edit and create.
They cannot grant the same access to
other objects and tools inside of HubSpot.
HubSpot.
Today, the permissions for projects
functions the same as other CRM objects.
And just for people who I could just
quickly show it so everyone's aware of
how these things work.
>> So when you come into settings, if you
come to users and teams,
if I edit a user's permissions,
let's start from scratch.
you can see we have view, edit, and
delete permissions. These follow what's
called an ownershipbased permissions
model where for each action you can
either have that set to just their own
projects which is based off of the
project owner property as well as other
custom owner properties their team's
projects or all projects. So these are
how you determine access to projects.
It's worth noting that we also have a
separate set of permissions for tasks
that are worth calling out that have
already always existed for the past year
or so. So for tasks you can set
permissions to view and edit which are
similarly an ownerbased permissions
model. And then the last thing I just
want to mention is that we also support
what's called property level permissions
or controlling property access for
projects. So if you come to properties,
if we come to projects
for every property, you can determine
who are the users that can view or edit
>> Yep. So, um, Shell, I feel like implying
your question is, uh, you there may be
specific, uh, CRM objects you don't want
some of these users to have access to,
maybe deals or or something like that,
and those are those are managed
separately, and that is fine. Um, and
then one other thing I think we should
call out, the field level permissions,
is that enterprise feature?
>> Yeah, that that requires enterprise,
whereas the view, edit, and delete
permissions for projects is available
across all all plans. >> Great.
>> Great.
Uh Valerie asks, "I'm sure this question
is coming. Is a feature similar to the
legacy project template functionality
coming, i.e. customize a template to
your partner portal and deploy into
customer portals?" I am curious in
general the status of this legacy
projects tool, what its future is. Uh
and there are I think a lot of like
preconfigured templates in there just
like from HubSpot. Um,
>> yeah, maybe I'll share my screen because
this is kind of a a niche question that
a lot of people will not know what we're
talking about. [laughter]
>> That is true. Maybe not in this room.
>> Yeah, you all might be the expert users,
so you'll know everything. So, within
this dropdown, there's a feature called projects.
projects.
And when you come here, this looks
suspiciously a lot like the feature that
we are building. So this is what the
feature that we're talking about. There
are two use cases that we've heard for
what this old we'll call this the legacy
project feature. We've heard two use
cases. One is customers are using it for
actual project management which is like
heavily overlapping with the feature
that we just built. The other is that
they're using it to onboard we we are
using it ourselves to onboard projects
onboard customers into HubSpot.
And what we're planning to do here is
first it's confusing that there are two
features that have the same name. So we
are first planning to rename this
feature to not be called projects to be
something that makes a little bit of a
differentiated use case. We want to
encourage customers that are onboarding
their customers to use the projects
feature for project management.
for our own internal teams that are
using projects to onboard our customers
to HubSpot. We're going to migrate them
more towards what our internal teams
have built, which is something called
growth plans.
We are going to figure out there's a
different team that owns this feature
and we will figure out what to do more
>> Great. Fun fact, when I moved to the
HubSpot Academy team almost 10 years
ago, one of my first jobs was populating
the templates in that that that feature
had just released, uh, we had a whole
bunch of checklist things just like on
CMS pages and we were so excited to pull
them into this internal tool and we were
going to change the world and then
nobody ever discovered that tool
existed. So, [laughter] uh,
uh,
uh, when is projects and customer portal
coming? Jonathan would like to know
>> that is something that's an early idea
that we don't have a specific timeline
on. I would say the hope is that in the
second half of next year.
>> Great. Um we have another question about
capacity planning. Just letting you know
we've already addressed that. We have
another question about uh the difference
between the service object and project.
So these are questions that are going to
keep coming up.
And then we have another question.
Debbie is also asking about those
onboarding projects. Uh
so let's see uh
uh
Paul asked about permissions and and
limit views to projects based on owner.
So yes, that's definitely a thing you
showed that. Uh
will view only seats be able to see projects?
projects?
>> Yes. So how things work are that you
require a core seat to be able to create
or edit projects but you can with a view
only seat you can view projects and we
also tested this recently you can also
comment on tasks. So one use case we
heard was that you might be
collaborating with somebody in your
business on a project who's responsible
for a task but you might not want to pay
for them to have a core seat. So they
can comment on the task. They wouldn't
be able to mark a task complete. that
would require a core seat. But there are
some ways that you can think about when
you're collaborating on a project, who
needs a view only seat versus a core seat.
seat.
And just to know, just to like make sure
it's clear, the customer success
workspace requires a service seat. So
you can use projects in without a
service seat for a service delivery use
case, but if you want to take advantage
of the customer success workspace and
the corresponding features that are
available through service hub, that
would require a service seat. >> Great.
>> Great.
Um, thanks for clarifying that. Hamza
asks, "What type of work should be
tracked in a project versus a ticket
versus a task?"
Well, that's an interesting one. So, the
way I think about this is that I think a
ticket is meant to be a support type of issue.
issue.
I think that a project is meant to be a
set of work that is collab that has
multiple steps that's collaborated
across different individuals and has a
due date.
I think a task is a unit of work where
like the project is a container and a
task is a unit of work. Now, there is a
use case for just like a one-off task.
Like, for example, you might have a task
when you're working with a c with a
company that just says like send a
follow-up or like uh I don't know like
send an email, reach out to the
customer, see how they're doing or
something like that. That doesn't need
to be contained within a project. So, I
think it just depends on what is the
work that you're trying to manage to
figure out what is the right object for
you to use. We see you value in like a
defined onboarding process where
somebody purchases something. You're
trying to complete that work by a
certain date. It has steps like that's
something that belongs in a project with
associated tasks. You might just in your
regular course of work have a task where
you want to check in with a customer
that's unrelated to an onboarding
process. Maybe it's after onboarding is
complete. It's just the day-to-day work
of a CSM. That doesn't need to be a
project. It can just be a task that's
associated to say the company object.
And now a customer might write into you
saying we have an issue and that makes
sense to be represented as a ticket.
That's my personal opinion.
>> Makes sense to me. Uh
Corey says, "I think projects right now
is okay for small projects, but my
company does OKRs for team work plans
and individual work plans, which
requires specific task types,
milestones, projects, etc., and multiple
subtasks, sometimes up to 10, or we use
check sheets. Do you think projects will
ever get to that point? Also, instead of
pipelines having spaces or folders or
lists, again, multiple teams would want
to keep projects separate, but may have
different needs that wouldn't fit into
one project pipeline.
>> I would say yes, our intent is to mature
into that direction. As you saw from the
presentation earlier, a lot of the
capabilities that you're referencing
like subtasks are things that we're
working on. One of the ones that wasn't
included in the presentation that you
mentioned is milestones. Milestones is
is a capability that we view as
important. It's not in our next like
nine-month plan, but I would say it's on
like the 18month plan. So, we will get
to the point of also having milestones
over time. In G, we already have support
for different pipelines that you can
address those types of use cases. So, I
would say yes, in general, we're
building out the capabilities that you
would need to do these more complicated
projects. I think what we have to figure
out as a business of HubSpot is where we
draw the line of like what is the level
of complexity of a project that we will
accept to be managed in HubSpot versus
ones where we say like oh no you
probably should be using something like
a sauna. Uh like just to give it to like
talk that example through like we are
building subtasks with currently a
single level. So you can have tasks that
have subtasks. We also right now have a
limit of 30 subtasks for a parent task.
If you go to a software like uh ASA for
example like that you can have like five
levels of subtasks nested within them
and you could have hundreds or thousands
of subtasks. We are clearly not there
and the question is where how far we
will go is something that we're going to
have to evaluate over time. So certainly
like what you described should be a
standard sophistication of project
management that we want to get to but
there will be a certain point where we
won't be as sophisticated as other
softwares that exist.
Yeah, that makes sense. And as far as
having spaces or folders, Corey, uh,
some of the permissioning stuff I think
might get you there with, you know,
saved views and things and certainly the
CS workspace is even a a level
>> or a small step above that. Um,
>> we also have lists. You can also create
lists of projects if you want to.
>> That's great. [snorts]
>> Yeah, I was going to ask that because
she mentioned folders or lists. So, >> yeah,
>> yeah,
>> there you go. Uh, another
>> I agree. Through through permissions and
views, you should be able to achieve
that type of separation. >> Yeah,
>> Yeah,
Michelle again, is it possible to factor
working hours into reporting similar to
ticket SLAs's? How about adding working
hours to time between calculated properties?
properties?
>> I don't know about the last one, but
working hours. So I think the
how I have thought about it a little. So
okay so working hours like you're gonna
have a task that's assigned to a user
and I think the the question of working
hours comes into how we are assigning
work to individuals. So what we are
going to evaluate when we start to build
some of our resource management
capabilities, we are over time going to
figure out how do we ensure that users
who are assigned work have the time and
capacity to be able to achieve to
accomplish that work. So I think we
haven't totally figured out how that
will mature over time, but that yes,
things like out of office working hours,
your out your capacity for a given day,
and the amount of work you can do, all
that will will factor into us
determining whether you're actually able
to accomplish the work that's been
assigned to you.
>> Great. Jennifer asks, "Will we be able
to track budgets through projects in the future?"
future?"
>> That's a good question. We are like as
we've thought about some of the things
like time tracking uh we're trying to
figure out what default properties we
want to support
for now like this the earliest ones
we're thinking about you know like
estimated time actual time spent. We've
been debating whether we should have a
property on a project like allocated or
budgeted time for example. Uh that would
then bring up questions of like should
we start to have properties that relate
to costs and billing like should we have
like your hourly rate for example?
should we say whether the task is
billable or not. I think we're figuring
that out over time and it will continue
to evolve. Projects have the ability to
have custom properties. I think like the
general HubSpot philosophy would be like
we have default properties but you
should be able to customize the objects
with custom properties however you'd
like. In the short term that exists for
projects there are already custom
properties which I demoed. Tasks don't
yet have custom properties but it's
something we want to work on. So maybe
we will have default properties for
budget and things like that. We're still
figuring that out, but if we don't, we
should be supporting the ability to set
custom properties.
>> Great. Uh Melissa says, "How do we turn
on projects? I miss the steps in
HubSpot." Um I will share my screen real
quick just because I have a portal that
they're not turned on in, which I think
is valuable. So if you come to data
management, go to your data model. Um
this is you can see your data model
here. Uh there's this edit. Well, I'm
getting on boarded. Um, you can edit
your do data model. Projects will be
listed here in CRM objects and it'll
probably look like this for you and you
just click that activate object button
and confirm that you want to activate it
So,
uh, oh, it looks like Diana answered
that written also. Great. Uh,
will subtasks have custom properties as well?
well?
subtasks will have the same custom the
the custom properties will only be
configured at the task level uh like at
the task object level and they will just
carry forward into the subtask because
subtask and task parent tasks are the
same object. They're still task objects.
So basically once we enable you to
create a custom property for the for
tasks it will just be the same custom
property for both parent tasks and
subtasks. We decided to not have
separate custom prop basically we chose
not to have separate property schemas
between parent tasks and subtasks.
But I think what you're asking for is
like will we have custom properties for
subtasks? Yes, we will once they're made
available for parent tasks.
>> Yeah, that makes sense to me. So similar
to like parent and child companies, a
child company isn't a different kind of
object with different properties. It's
it's a relationship between two objects
of the same type.
>> Exactly. That was the the major
architecture decision that we thought
through when we were introducing
subtasks is whether we want them to be a
separate object or not from parent tasks
and we chose no. So instead the way we
would articulate that is that subtasks
are a same object association between
tasks meaning a subtask can only be
associated to its parent tasks and the
rest of the associations of how a task
relates to contacts etc is managed
through a parent task.
>> Great. Um, we are running short on time
here. We're going to fit in a couple
more. Uh,
>> oh, this is a feature request, not a
question. Uh, overall percentage
complete in the Gant bar as tasks are
being completed or at least an option to
customize between days or percent
complete or both.
>> Nice. That that makes sense.
>> Um, and then
will you be able to do subtask? How many
layers of subtasks? You mentioned this
for now. Just one, right? There there
can only be one level of subtask beneath
the tasks and our initial limit is 30
subtasks for a single parent task. We
are open to feedback as the features get
into beta of where that works or doesn't
work for customers and I would always
hub product team means that friends. So
um as these betas come available opt
into them there will be an option to
give feedback and that is that is so
helpful. It's you can you can opt in and
you can test it out and you can let them
know and that'll all be for for Mark and
his team just put in one repository.
They can see all the feedback aggregated
and pick up on the patterns of what
people are saying
>> and that's the best way to actually then
get a conversation too because we we get
we have a a Slack channel that whenever
you post those survey responses we
automatically see the survey and I
actively review that look at the
feedback and reach out to people to
schedule conversations to learn more.
So, if you have feedback on any of the
betas or projects, I'd love to hear it.
Great. Um, there is a long tale of
questions with one or zero up votes. Um,
and I'm just kind of glancing through a
lot of these we've already touched on. Um,
Um,
oh, any news about projects API? Do you
guys have any API?
>> Yeah, the project. So for for context
for the group when we launched at
inbound we did not yet have an API for
projects that has since been built is
available in uh our public API
documentation and so it's available now
[snorts] uh
great I think that is probably
sufficient I will export out the whole
Q&A and share it with Mark and his team
the chat also so you guys can dig into
this. Uh there's a lot of questions
here. We're just uh out of time. Uh so
thanks so much Mark for coming. If if
people want to follow up with you, your
team, what's what's the best way for
them to Diana has dropped your LinkedIn
into the chat. Is that is there anything
more than that?
>> I'll just also put my email address.
You're welcome to share any feedback
with me, questions you might have, and I
can try to help you out.
>> Amazing. Um well, thank you so much for
being here. Thanks everyone for coming.
Uh really excited about the projects
tools. So glad we were able to share it
with all of you. Um we will see you all
back next week for our last session of
the year. Please come. We'll have some
fun facts and stats to share. Then we'll
do some networking. And Mark, thanks so
much for being here.
>> Thanks Mark.
>> Thanks for having me.
>> Bye friends. See you next week. [music]
to the admin. No flash of facts and a
whole lot of love. We get it done
or all in choice. [music]
Add spies and lift their voice.
Fixing fields [music] and hacking time.
Making magic with no headline. [music]
[music]
Tiana brings fire in a crew that's here
to lift you higher. We swap the winds
and share the pain. No one [music] solo
in this game. It's the admin hug where
legends walk in from chaos to clarity.
That's how we win.
Dirty got a challenge accepted. Portal
Quick fix queen kings [music] custom
coded everything. Tabs open. Coffee
strong. You've been solving all along.
We've got the knowhow. We've got the
map. Leaving hub product [music] to
chat. You're not just heard. You help
shape the tools. Admit rewriting all the
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