CloudFiles offers a variety of touchpoints inside HubSpot to automate processes for sales, marketing as well as service teams. In this article, we take a top-level view of these automation capabilities. We explore the various touchpoints and see how each of them could help. Additionally, the article also points to other, more detailed articles that can be used to setup these automations.

CloudFiles primarily provides 5 types of touchpoints for automations. All of these are well integrated into HubSpot workflows to create smooth processes easily. The list below summarizes the 4 touchpoints -

Check out the detailed sections below for more information on the above.

Workflow actions are the most important and sought after functionality that a bulk of our HubSpot customers use. We have exposed a number of modular actions that can be configured using the simple parameters. These actions return specific values that can be then passed to other actions. This type of chaining enables highly customizable processes to be setup with ease.

The snapshot below provides the currently available actions, although we are constantly expanding this list.

As an example, one of the most common use-cases is to trigger the workflow when a deal is created, Create folder in SharePoint (or Google Drive / Box / Dropbox / OneDrive etc..) with the deal name, then associate that folder  to the triggering record. This gives the sales team instant access to the deal's folder when they can start uploading the files.

All of these workflow actions have been detailed in the Workflow Actions category.

While workflow actions can be used to 'perform' file related operations, Workflow Triggers & List Filters can be used to trigger other workflows when customers or internal executives engage with your files. We provide a variety of triggers each of which can be further refined using the many property filters that they provide.

The image below shows the "CloudFiles: File Viewed Event" that can be refined using properties such as file name, time spent, downloaded, content coverage (scroll-depth) etc...

Some common use-cases for these triggers lie in lead scoring and internal notifications for follow-up. E.g. the trigger can be used to send an internal email to the contact owner when the contact views the file for more than a minute and has scrolled passed half the collateral. Immediate and intelligent follow-ups can greatly increase the chances of conversion.

Yet another use-case is to enforce security policies on shared content. Using the "CloudFiles: Link Created" event, a workflow can be triggered whenever an executive creates a sharing link for a collateral. This workflow can use the Update Link Settings workflow action to enforce email authentication or download control settings as per the company security policies.

NOTE: Workflow triggers are only available for contact based workflows due to lack of support in HubSpot API. For non-contact records, see Synced properties section below.

The workflow triggers detailed above can also be used to filter HubSpot lists to segment the contacts based on file engagement. The same events are available as filters in the lists and can be used to create complex segmentation schemes based on reliable engagement metrics.

As an example, a marketer can create a list of all contacts who scrolled past 50% of the collateral and spent more than a minute. This can help pinpoint the next collateral that needs to be sent to the lead to nurture them further into the marketing funnel.

NOTE: List filters are only available for contact based lists due to lack of support in HubSpot API. For non-contact records, see Synced properties section below.

As mentioned above, workflow triggers and list filters are only available for contact based workflows and lists due to lack of support on HubSpot side. For this reason, we have also introduced Synced properties on all types records. These properties are auto-updated when file engagement happens and hence workflows can be triggers and lists can be filtered using these properties even for deals, companies and ticket records.



In case you are looking for properties that are not yet available, contact us and we can add them quiet easily and quickly.

Finally, HubSpot does allow adding code blocks in workflows. Using these actions, one can call the CloudFiles API to run automations that are not possible through the triggers or actions mentioned above. You can get more information about the CloudFiles API here.

Running code blocks in HubSpot workflows might require special HubSpot licenses. For this reason, we usually create workflow actions out of any customer requirements. If you have any such requirement, reach out to us.