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.

Automation Touchpoints

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 -

1. Workflow Actions - CloudFiles exposes a variety of workflow actions that show up in all types of record triggered workflows once the app is installed. These actions can be chained together to perform some rather complex operations in cloud drives and things happen in the CRM. Check out the section below for more details.
2. Workflow Triggers - CloudFiles can also trigger your workflows based when things like file view or link creation happen. These can be used to impose security policies on shared files, send notification emails when customers view collateral or send the next collateral based on engagement level. The section below provides more details on these.
3. List Filters -  The triggers above are also available in static and dynamic lists of HubSpot that can be used to complex lead segmentation use-cases. E.g. using the List filters, a marketer can create a list of all the people who viewed a particular collateral for more than a minute and scrolled past 50% of the PDF.
4. Synced Properties - CloudFiles maintains a variety of properties on all records that are auto-updated when customers engage with your CloudFiles collateral. These become especially important when triggering or filtering needs to happen on non-contact records (e.g. deal or companies). 
5. API - Finally, CloudFiles exposes a number of APIs that can be used to perform any action that may not be available as part of the package. This however may require special HubSpot licenses that enable code execution in workflows. For this reason, we plan to expose all this functionality as workflow actions and triggers.

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

Workflow Actions

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.

Workflow Triggers

While workflow actions can be used to 'perform' file related operations, Workflow Triggers & 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.

List Filters

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.

Synced Properties

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.

CloudFiles API

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.