In this tutorial, we will explore how you can create a document approval process within HubSpot using HubSpot-CloudFiles integration. Learn how to create workflows that set up a secure dataroom, collect documents systematically, and organize them into folders stored in your preferred external storage. Create a checklist of these documents, trigger email/Slack notifications upon upload completion. Vet the document and send reminders to customers for any re-upload.

By the end of this tutorial, you can expect to -

The image below shows the expected output. If you have a basic grasp of these concepts, you can expect to finish the tutorial in under 10 minutes.

Refer to the GIF below to have a visual understanding of this tutorial’s expected outcome -

Before you start with the set-up, please ensure you have installed CloudFiles and connected it to your cloud storage of choice.

CloudFiles is available on the app marketplace and can be installed using the standard app installation process. Check out Installation guide for CloudFiles HubSpot Integration.

Login to your external storage of choice such as Google Drive, SharePoint etc. through the CloudFiles interface. This will give you instant access to your external files within HubSpot. The GIF below shows the steps quickly. Check out Quick start for file connector in HubSpot for more information.

In addition to installing CloudFiles in HubSpot, you also need to set an automation user for the workflow to work. This is the integration user that will be used by the workflow actions to pass files into the cloud storage.

To connect an automation user, simply head over to app.cloudfiles.io > Settings > Integrations > Google Drive and login through your google account. What is an 'Automation User' and how does it work? this article explains everything you need to know about the automation user, including what it is, why it's useful, and how it operates.

After connecting the desired storage, we will proceed to create Create Documents Upload Dataroom with shareable link and a checklist to automatically mark the documents upload completion. We’ll be creating multiple workflows for this which is detailed in the sections below -

We will create a workflow to create a document request dataroom with shareable link that can be shared with the customers. The uploaded documents will be stored in an internal folder which will be accessible within HubSpot. This is how the final workflow looks like -

The details of the workflow has been given below -

We will create a contact property that will fire the trigger for document collection workflow. For this, create a single checkbox property in the HubSpot Contact Settings. We have created a property called ‘Request Documents’.

Create a new contact-based workflow from scratch and select the trigger to fire ‘when filter criteria is met’. Set the property as ‘Request Documents’ and set it to ‘Yes’ to activate the trigger as shown in the GIF below.

Create Folder action can be used to create folders in any location on any cloud storage platform from HubSpot flow action. We will use this action to first create the folder that will store the sensitive documents collected from the datatoom. To use the “Create Folder” action, simply click on add button and search for ‘Create Folder’ as shown below. Once you add this action, it will ask you to fill in certain parameters.

This action requires a few parameters. The Library parameter is the desired Cloud storage where you wish to create the folder. Select the desired storage from the drop down field. The Folder name is the name you wish to give your created Folder. We simply use the Company’s name but you can also create a complex text formula variable as well.

The GIF below shows how to populate the Library & Folder name parameter.

We also need to enter values for Shared Drive ID & Path to Destination. These are -

These parameters can be easily copied from CloudFiles app library. Follow these steps -

Check the GIF below for a quick walkthrough of these steps.

For a detailed description of the Create Folder action, refer to the Create Folder detailed guide. Here’s how our final Create Folder action looks like -

The Create Attachment action is used to associate created folder to HubSpot records. Attaching (or associating) our newly created folder is important since this will enable us to see and operate on the folder contents right from the HubSpot record.

To use this action, simply click on add button and search for ‘Create Attachment’ as shown below. Once you add this action, it will ask you to fill in certain parameters. “Shared Drive ID” and “Library” parameters will be same as above.

The “Path to folder” will be the exact and full path of the newly created folder. You can simply copy from the meta data info in the CloudFiles Library using the same steps as specified in the shared drive ID section above.

Here’s how our final Create Attachment action looks like -

A Dataroom is a file portal, where you can request files from your customers. We will use “Create Dataroom” action to create a documents upload portal where customers can upload their requested documents.

To use this action, simply click on add button and search for ‘Create Dataroom’ as shown below. Once you add this action, it will ask you to fill in certain parameters. “Name” is the name of dataroom that appears on the dataroom, “Description” is an optional field that can be used to give additional description for conveying more information.

To read more about this action, visit Create Dataroom Action. Refer to the GIF below to get a visual understanding of above steps.

Here’s how our final Create Dataroom action looks like -

The Create Attachment action can also be used to associate created dataroom to HubSpot records. To use this action, simply click on add button and search for ‘Create Attachment’ as shown below.

After you add this action, you will have to fill 3 parameters. For attaching a dataoom, Library parameter should always be ‘CloudFiles’. Resource type will be ‘Dataroom’ and Resource ID will be ‘New Dataroom ID’ derived from the output of previous create Dataroom action.

Refer to the GIF below to have a visual understanding of this steps -

Here’s how our final Create Attachment action for Dataroom looks like -

The ‘Add to Dataroom’ action enables you to insert files, folders and file request blocks to your CloudFiles datarooms using a workflow. You can add this action as many times as needed to request the required files.

To use this action, simply click on add button & search for ‘Add to Dataroom’ as shown below. Once you add this action, it will ask you to fill in certain parameters. “Shared Drive ID” & “Library” parameters will be same as above. For remaining parameters, refer below -

Refer to the GIF below to have a visual understanding of this steps -

Here’s how our final Add to Datatoom action looks like -

The Share Attachment action enables you to share attachments using HubSpot workflows. Sharing an attachment is exactly the same as manually creating a sharing link of a file / folder / dataroom from HubSpot record.

To use this action, simply click on add button and search for ‘Share Attachment’ as shown below. This action has only one parameter that can be set to specify the Attachment to be shared. You can derive this from the return value of previous Create Attachment action - ‘New Attachment ID’.

Refer to the GIF below have a visual understanding of this step -

In this step, we will copy the link created in the last step to a contact property. For this, first create a single-line text property in the HubSpot Contact Settings. We created a property called ‘Shared Files Portal Link’.

To copy the shared link to the above property, we will use the Copy Property value action. For the ‘from’ parameter, we will choose the output ‘URL’ of the last action. For the ‘to’ parameter, we will use our newly created contact property.

The GIF below shows the configuration for the Copy Property Value action.

That’s it. Save and activate the flow. Your documents upload process is set. In the next section, we will learn how to create the documents upload checklist.

After setting up the documents upload process, we will create a checklist to keep a track of uploaded documents. This is how the checklist looks like -

To set up the checklist, we'll create a multiple checkbox property in HubSpot contact settings, listing all required documents. As customers upload each document, the respective checkboxes will be marked automatically. When all checkboxes are marked, an email notification will alert the contact owner. Once the checklist is set-up, we will create individual workflows for each document to verify the upload and mark the respective checkbox. Here’s how our final workflow looks like. We will detail these elements in the sections below.

Create a new contact-based workflow from scratch and select the trigger to fire ‘when filter criteria is met’. Set the property as ‘CloudFiles: File received properties’ > ‘File Request Name’ as shown in the image below. Enter the name of the file requested.

Refer to the GIF below to have a visual understanding of this step -

Once the trigger is set, in the next section, we will learn how to create the checklist containing a list of the required documents and how to set-up a workflow to append uploaded document to the corresponding checkbox.

We will create a checklist which will be visible in the contact property. To do so, we will create a multiple checkbox property in the HubSpot contact settings, listing all the documents to be requested from customers. In this tutorial, we've created a property named 'Upload Checklist' and listed three required documents as shown below -

We will now create the action that will mark the appropriate checkbox in the checklist when documents are uploaded. For this, add HubSpot action ‘Set Property Value’. In the Target Object field, select ‘Contact’. Property to set will be the checklist property created above. Once selected, append the required value as shown in the GIF below -

This is how the final action looks like -

Next, we will check if all documents have been uploaded. If they are, we will send an internal notification to the contact owner. To check whether everything is uploaded, we use a simple branch element. To send the notification, we use the ‘Send Internal Email’ action. You can also choose to send a slack notification.

Duplicate the above workflow for other required documents. Just make a simple tweak - append the respective document value to the 'Upload Checklist' property.

After receiving the email confirming the completion of document uploads, you can access the uploaded documents within your HubSpot by navigating to CloudFiles widget > Contact Folder. During document vetting, if a rejection occurs and you need a file re-upload, simply uncheck the document in the 'Upload Checklist' property. This action can trigger an e-mail to customers, requesting the re-upload of the specified document along with the dataroom link.

You can chose to request document re-upload as many times as needed. Once satisfied, you can setup a workflow to trigger an email to the customer telling them the uploads are complete. To do so, you can have a single checkbox property on your contact called ‘Documents Upload Completed’ and trigger the workflow when this changes to Yes.

That’s it! That’s how you can set-up a streamlined document approval process within HubSpot.

To test the document approval process, create a new contact or select an existing contact. Add all the properties related to the approval process created above. Set ‘Request Documents’ property to ‘Yes’ to trigger the workflow. Give it a minute to execute. Refresh the page. You will be able to see the dataroom link in the ‘Document Upload Link’ property and also the folder attachment in the CloudFiles widget in the right side.

Click on the dataroom link and upload documents as requested. Once you have uploaded the documents, you will see the respective checkboxes get ticked. You can check the uploaded documents and mark the upload complete property accordingly to trigger external email to customer.

These steps have been illustrated in the GIF below for a better understanding -