Extending HubSpot CRM

HubSpot has a huge variety of useful tools available for its clients. Among these, the most useful ones, and coincidently, free, is their CRM tool. This tool is an excellent choice for a lot of companies, but especially for startups and smaller companies that are just starting and don’t have a large capital to invest in more expensive CRM software.

That being said, the basic CRM services form HubSpot is actually pretty decent, but there is always room for improvement. Here I will talk about how you can use some of the extensions services HubSpot has available to its clients, and how these can be utilized to maximize the usefulness of the software.

Basics: API and CRM

First thing first, to define API. API stands for Application Programming Interface, meaning this is a set of definitions, protocols, and tools for building software. In layman’s terms, this is the part that communicates between the different components, or between different applications or programs. Since here we are talking about the web-based HubSpot service and its integration with other extensions, the API in question is the service that facilitates the interaction between the various online applications in use.

Now to the good part: I get in detail about the HubSpot CRM Extensions API and how to extend this to include data from other integrations and use these in HubSpot’s CRM.

CRM Extensions API

The CRM by HubSpot allows a great overview of the contacts, including basic contact information, more in-depth information as well as actions that need to be taken. This is all good when you are only using the HubSpot platform. But a real problem can arise when you have other extensions that provide such information, and you heed to have all of these in one window.

So, as you may have guessed it, here is where the CRM extensions API comes in play. It enables integration to surface its own data in the CRM sidebar. This included contacts, companies, deals or tickets. There is an internal connection between this and the HubSpot platform which is for the developer to put together. For the user, this means that any information that is requested for a record will be displayed in the CRM sidebar.

Another point plus is that the integration is able to specify any action that can be taken by the user, and this opens in a modal window that is seamlessly incorporated in the CRM. All of this is done by defining an Object Type, which can be specified by the integrator. These are created in the application in a separate developer’s account, which later communicates with HubSpot CRM and deals with the Object Type data requests.

How to use CRM Extensions?

The first thing you need to do is to create an Object Type. To do so, the developer needs to fill out the separate fields on the Object Type, which are explained in more detail here. The Object Type is displayed to the user by properly arranging the property order definitions by the developer.

The CRM cards can be also managed through the developer tools in HubSpot, meaning that the user can manage the object types both through the API and through the developer tools. There are few options available to the users, such as the creation of an Object type, viewing, modifying and deleting an Object Type.

The developer tools allow the user to create up to twenty-five Object Types. These can be subjected to name changes and other settings management.

One of the most important requests is the data fetch request and this is sent from HubSpot to the appropriate integration that holds the important information. This is happening each time when the user clicks on a HubSpot Object Type involved with the CRM extension such as a contact, company, deal or ticket.

The data fetching is done with a separate request, and the response is what offers the information requested by the user, with up to five Sales Objects. If there are more Sales Objects to be displayed, then the integrator needs to provide a clickable follow-up link to all the Sales Objects.

I can go on with this, but seeing as I’m delving into deeper and deeper “code-mode” and use technical developer’s terms, I’ll stop here and give a proper conclusion and my advice.

What to take from this

The HubSpot CRM is a great tool that enables its users to quickly and efficiently follow the progress with their customers while providing good customer service and support. Sometimes this is enough, but sometimes there are other apps at play that have useful information. Instead of complicating things, HubSpot has offered a solution to this by using CRM extensions.

These allow integration with tools inside the CRM, saving time and efforts while spiking the efficiency. The CRM Extensions API is what makes this possible, allowing dynamically accessing data in the CRM sidebar that has been provided by various sources. This eliminates the need to use several platforms in order to gain insights into contacts, companies, deals or tickets, but you have everything under one metaphorical roof.

The integrations allow several tools with great benefits for the end-user like the CRM extensions API, the Timeline API, and the Webhooks API. Since all of this is fairly technical, and I’ve unsuccessfully tried to explain it in simplified terms above, I will only suggest that you contact a professional team of HubSpot developers that can help you with this and provide expert knowledge and advice on the ins and outs, so you will have a CRM that is simple to navigate, yet providing insightful data and services.