Value-First AI Daily - Jan 13, 2026

[00:03] **Introduction** Chris Carolan: Good morning Hubspot Nation. It is time to wake up customer platform with your number one unofficial Hubspot updates morning show where we help you discover the platform value you already own. I'm Chris Carolan joined by my co-host Casey Hawkins and George B. Thomas. Chris Carolan: We meet every weekday morning to make sure you're not sleeping on Hubspot's true capabilities. So if you're joining live, drop a hello in the comments and let us know what you're building or discovering in Hubspot today. Uh happy Tuesday, January 13th, 2026. Chris Carolan: How we doing? George B. Thomas: I'm having a hard time remembering the day. Doing good, doing good. Casey Hawkins: The day or the year, George? George B. Thomas: Uh, I think the day. He said it's uh Tuesday. Chris Carolan: Yeah, that was it. Um George B. Thomas: You know, you know it'll be Wednesday because everybody will show up with orange tomorrow. So that'll be easy day, easy day. Chris Carolan: Indeed. That's that's the uh one day reminder notification that we just got. So, thank you George. Um we still got a bunch of updates to go through. Uh Chris Carolan: So I'm going to dive in. Um scary one that that we'll get to, not the first one, but um uh we'll get into it. Assigned teams are now editable in Helpdesk. Chris Carolan: What is it? You can now edit a ticket's assigned teams directly in the Helpdesk workspace. This gives you more control over which teams are responsible for a ticket and where that ticket appears across team views and spaces. Assigned teams can now be changed from the About this ticket panel, inline from Helpdesk table views, through workflows by using rotate record to owner team only, uh not via edit record. Only teams with at least one main team member with a service seat will appear as options. This update brings assigned teams in line with other core ticket properties, making it easier to keep ownership, visibility and team workflows aligned as tickets move through your support process. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Assign teams determine where a ticket appears in spaces, which views see the ticket and which teams are expected to take action. Previously, this value could only be set automatically through routing. This meant that tickets could appear in the wrong spaces, ownership and team visibility could fall out of sync. Admins had little ability to correct or reassign responsibility. Now with assigned teams editable, you can correct misrouted tickets, assign work between teams as priority shift, ensure tickets appear in the right spaces for visibility and collaboration, keep team workflows aligned as you scale. This gives support managers more flexibility and more confidence in how tickets flow through teams. George B. Thomas: And if you like all that you heard, hit that beta, ladies and gentlemen, hit that beta. Chris Carolan: And just in case you weren't aware, we got all these different teams using Hubspot now, folks, uh technical team, billing and accounts. Oh and uh. George B. Thomas: Should say they could have all those teams. Maybe not everybody has that same screenshot, but could they could. Chris Carolan: Yes. We have new, new types of of people using Hubspot nowadays. Chris Carolan: Uh number two. Mobile widgets and app in tents on Breeze Assistant Mobile App. Chris Carolan: Well that's a nice screenshot. Oh widgets. Oh widgets. Oh, we're talking about widgets on the phone here. What is it? With mobile widgets and app intents, Breeze Assistant goes beyond the app screen, bringing your AI assistant right to your home screen and system search. Widgets enable you to ask Breeze Assistant questions, take a picture, access your gallery and files or dictate your new question with a single click. App Intents like iOS Spotlight or Android shortcuts, let you launch Breeze Assistant for specific tasks instantly, right from your phone's search bar or shortcuts menu. These features make Breeze Assistant even more accessible and integrated into your day-to-day workflow. So help is always just a swipe or tap away on Android and iOS. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Mobile widgets and app intent help you interact with Breeze Assistant faster, smarter, and in the moment. Perfect for busy on the go workflows. Sales reps can create next step emails or pull customer insights while heading into meetings faster. Marketers can quickly generate content ideas or check campaign suggestions with one tap away. Everyone gets instant access to AI help, no tapping through menus, no delay. It's Breeze Assistant at your fingertips literally. So you stay productive with fewer interruptions and more immediate results. George B. Thomas: Wow. I I I feel all sorts of some kind of ways about this and I'm not exactly sure how I feel some sort of ways. like I'm I feel like Breeze took a departure away from Hubspot almost for a hot second to just become its own thing. Um then I almost teared up when I saw the word everyone instead of just sales and marketing. Um, I I'm sure that there is a strategy behind the scenes of why they built this app to begin with. And I'm just curious to see where this goes. Yeah, this is interesting. Chris Carolan: Yeah, um probably a conversation for a tech stack show. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Chris Carolan: But what what came to mind is like, uh the concept of which should be known to marketers and customer experience uh where like Chip and Joanna Gains as a as a case study of Oh wow. you build an audience. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Chris Carolan: And then you figure out like you can basically sell, do whatever you want because you've created an experience. George B. Thomas: Yep. Chris Carolan: I'm sure there's a similar effect in in Swiftyland, uh Casey. That's a thing. But like here I'm going to be no wrong. because of the barriers just gone to like technology development. We're going to be in a world where like our whole vertical even down to the phone can be in Hubspot, like if we want it to be, right? And that's in line with Yeah. if I'm working with Breeze and he's having memory and we're building all this knowledge together, like just that whole flow. Like it's not just saved for like the Googles and Microsofts of the world anymore. George B. Thomas: Yeah, can I ask a question now that you just triggered my brain into. Uh, there is a Hollywood and there is a Bollywood and there is a Disneyland. Will there be a Swiftyland like now that you mentioned that, Chris? I don't know, but inquiring minds want to know. Is that a future Casey would go. Yeah. Casey Hawkins: You are right. I mean, look, Travis Kelsey, Travis Kelsey opened like a steak restaurant. I if I could get a table, I would be there. And I'm sure he's not even like involved, like, you know, it's one of those things. Chris Carolan: That's funny. Anyways. back to back to Earth and how about some quote custom properties? I imagined this one yesterday, but we're talking about again. Uh what is it? You can now manage quote properties directly in data management. Chris Carolan: Just like you do for contacts, companies, deals, tickets, invoices, orders, all the other objects in Hubspot. Uh, this includes creating custom properties on the quote object itself. These properties can be leveraged to personalize your quotes or to match your business workflows in a familiar centralized interface. Additionally, modifying quote property definitions will be supported in the public API. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Previously quotes did not directly support their own custom properties. Now, you can tailor your quotes by inserting custom quote properties as personalization tokens, add custom properties to enrich quote workflows or reporting, create rollup or sync properties on the quote from associated objects like deals, contacts or companies. This simplifies quoting, improves data consistency and enables richer automation and reporting. George B. Thomas: Nice. Chris Carolan: Moving on up. All right, are you guys ready for the scary one? Casey Hawkins: I I was wondering which scary one which was the scary. Anyway, go ahead. Go ahead. The scary one. Ask Breeze about product updates. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Might be our last show, folks. George B. Thomas: No, God, no. Chris Carolan: What is it? You can now ask Breeze Assistant questions about product updates and get clear, relevant insights from anywhere in the app. Whether you're looking for what shipped today, what's coming next, or which updates matter most to your role. Breeze Assistant surfaces the most relevant product updates and summarizes what you need to know. Casey Hawkins: What I'm not seeing in this update is the ability to tie an update to the Chip and Joanna Gains or Swifty Land or any of the dorky crap that I do along the way, not our last show. Casey Hawkins: They can't bring this. George B. Thomas: No. Well, and here's the thing too. Let me before you go into the why does it matter, Casey. Chris, I will take you back to the show that we did before this show. And that the US only has 24% AI adoption. You I I would I would want to ask the powers that be what is Breeze adoption rate in the ecosystem of Hubspot? Is it 2%, 7%, 12%? because that's the 2, 7, 12, 98%. I don't know. amount of people who might use this. might. Anyway. Why does it matter, Casey? Casey Hawkins: Keeping up with product updates can be a time consuming process. You think? Casey Hawkins: With Breeze Assistant, you don't need to search, filter or read through full updates. You can ask a question in plain language and get a concise summary of what changed or what's coming. Results tailored to your subscriptions, direct links to learn more or take actions when needed, or you can just follow me on LinkedIn. George B. Thomas: I mean, product team, who hurt you? Casey Hawkins: This reduces friction and makes it easier to stay informed without breaking your workflow. George B. Thomas: Yeah. No, I love this. Chris Carolan: It's a good. I love this. Um It's great and I've been thinking about like who we could add as a fourth, you know, person on the show. And uh yeah, and and so we're going to be testing you Breeze to see how uh how well you you summarize what you need to know. George B. Thomas: Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our new section. Will it Breeze? Casey Hawkins: I was like who can give a more concise summary of one of today's updates? Me or Breeze? And I'm very long-winded, so it's not going to be me. Whoopsie. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Uh uh I'm not kidding. We're going to be bringing that on uh at some point, probably tomorrow. Um next on the list, support multiple main teams for full functionality. I was on with the client yesterday and we saw this and I was rejoicing. Uh what is it? Users can now be fully functional members of multiple teams in Hubspot with equal access to routing and workflows across all assigned teams. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Previously users assigned to more than one team could only be full members of a single main team, leading to reduced capabilities and workflow friction for those working across regions or functions. The idea allow users to be primary team members of more than one team has collected 200 plus up votes including 70 plus replies and numerous comments over multiple years. This change removes artificial limitations, improving collaboration and ticket coverage for organizations with flexible and matrix team structure. This update also ensures predictable and transparent routing behavior. Previously many customers did not realize that extra team members were excluded from assignment pools leading to confusion or equitable workflow distribution. By making all team members fully functional, teams can now rely on routing rules and workflow logic behaving consistently. Um also want to just point out that was a really long tech and I kind of did I didn't totally lose the thread, so thank you. George B. Thomas: Yeah. Thank you all for noticing. that that took a hot minute. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Uh fully functional members also known as as what, George? George B. Thomas: Humans. or maybe a whole ass humans. George B. Thomas: Yeah, yeah, for sure. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Let's let's let them be whole ass humans as they're trying to get work done. That's cool. Uh redesigned marketing event record page in private beta. Casey Hawkins: I like these words. Chris Carolan: What is it? The marketing events object now uses the standard CRM record page layout including notes, timeline and CRM cards. George B. Thomas: Wow. Casey Hawkins: Why does this matter? You can now manage marketing events more efficiently and consistent with other CRM objects. This update addresses the frustration of missing standard record page functionalities, improving usability and adoption. You'll be able to log notes, tasks and calls directly on event records, view a comprehensive event timeline, customize record page layout and displayed properties, associate campaigns easily. Chris Carolan: George, I need you to add something to the soundboard like the the music that plays when like a graduation. Oh yeah. So that every time an object like becomes a big boy object like this, we can just. George B. Thomas: We can graduate it. Yeah. I thought you were going to ask for like a Chris Carolan: That yeah. George B. Thomas: Yeah, we can have that but but yeah, I can find the uh graduation march for sure. I used to have it on my soundboard when I did the uh super admin Hubspot Academy Super admin because we would play it at the very end. Yeah. Chris Carolan: Uh and and as I go to click on the beta, uh not accepting new customers at this time. George B. Thomas: Oh yeah, we got one for that. George B. Thomas: See do that breeze. Breeze needs to do that. Chris Carolan: Uh next on the list, Hubspot deal to order association with Microsoft Dynamics sales order workflow. Chris Carolan: What is it? When a Microsoft Dynamics 365 sales order is created in Hubspot either manually or through an automated workflow, the corresponding Hubspot deal will now be automatically associated with a Hubspot order. Uh this sentence needs to be rewritten. Um this new association unifies sales data between Hubspot and Microsoft Dynamics 365 improving consistency and reducing the need for repetitive data entry. Previously, when a sales order was created from Hubspot, the resulting Microsoft Dynamics 365 sales order was only able to be associated with Hubspot deals via an intermediary integration sales order. George B. Thomas: Wow. Chris Carolan: Not complicated at all. Uh, learn more about Hubspot's Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration and I feel like I should uh just clarify the first statement like not actually creating Microsoft Dynamics objects inside of Hubspot. You're just using Hubspot to to create them in the other system. Casey Hawkins: I've never worked with Microsoft Dynamics 365 integration and I hope never to after reading. George B. Thomas: Dang. Chris Carolan: That's fair. Casey Hawkins: But why does it matter, Casey? Casey Hawkins: Automatically synchronizing deal and order data between Hubspot and Microsoft Dynamics 365 allows you to unify sales data across both Hubspot and Microsoft Dynamics, reduce time spent on administrative tasks, ensure data accuracy and consistency across your sales technology stack, minimize manual data entry and human error. Chris Carolan: Uh yeah, that's that's right folks. You can do order data uh in Hubspot now. Um Chris Carolan: Turn off tracking per marketing email. This is the one that's scary to me. Private beta, low impact. Okay, she's going to be fine. Uh what is it? The ability to override your global marketing email open and click tracking settings for individual marketing emails directly in the email editor, giving you control over tracking on a per email basis. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? While Hubspot's global marketing email tracking settings found in settings, marketing, email, tracking provide account wide defaults for your marketing email open and click. Some emails require different tracking configurations. This flexibility matters because privacy sensitive communications, disable tracking for internal updates, partner communications or privacy focus campaigns without changing your account defaults. Compliance requirements, meet regulatory standards or contractual obligations for specific email types, testing flexibility, turn off tracking for test campaigns or internal communications without affecting your marketing email analytics. Reduce friction, no need to toggle global account level settings repeatedly, adjust tracking email by email. George B. Thomas: Interesting. Um historically I would advise humans not to do like an internal newsletter using Hubspot because it would jack up their email analytics. Um that is no longer a true statement. So you could do an internal email send and it not jack up your actual marketing analytics. Interesting. So many other things, but that's where my brain first went. Chris Carolan: Yeah. And is it fair since I'm not uh an email marketer. Um, but I seem to remember a lot of the things that get done to an email in all the links in it. Uh, when you get carried away with that, that can affect uh deliverability sometimes. Yes? George B. Thomas: I think I think if you get carried away with it, but I don't think Hubspot does anything out of the box that does that. Chris Carolan: Right. So this like brings us back to the we just want to send, we just want to make sure the content gets in the inbox. We don't need to track the hell out of it and right? Um, so very cool to see this level um of uh flexibility now in the marketing emails. That's in private beta. Chris Carolan: Formula fields in custom report builder, AI assist and more. Chris Carolan: Lots of stuff going on in this screenshot. Uh what is it? Formula fields can be created directly in the custom report builder letting you transform your data with row level calculations. You can now build new reporting fields on the fly, faster, easier and more intuitive than before. You can see the demo of all the latest updates to formula fields at this Loom demo link. George B. Thomas: Do that. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Turning raw data into insights often required working outside of Hubspot. Formulas remove that friction so you can calculate values like conversion rates, adjusted revenue or discounts without exporting to spreadsheets. This updated beta makes formula building smoother, cleaner, clearer and more powerful. Now, you can build with AI assistance to generate formulas quickly, use common formulas, popular formula templates to start faster, explore the full function library for more advanced calculations. I love formula fields. George B. Thomas: Definitely go watch that loom. Definitely go look at the how does it work. Chris Carolan: I love when they repurpose other visuals like this slide here. Oh yeah. Uh that those visuals help us. doesn't always have to be screenshots. Um, oh my gosh. Look at this. This is the Yeah. George B. Thomas: Again, go to out the how does it work? if you want to know how to do it. If you just come over the update. Chris Carolan: And guys, maybe we can just update this to content enterprise and content Pro while we're at it. Good Lord. Casey Hawkins: Um, formula fields are really powerful, but do like if you want to try them out, give yourself like some space to try them out and some time. George B. Thomas: Mmm. See, now that sounds like you're speaking from um experience, Casey. Casey Hawkins: If you've got 15 minutes, it's not the best time to like learn formula fields. Chris Carolan: But now I'm curious. Like does this mean that content hub, like the people who have upgraded to content hub like do not have access or is this just a typo? George B. Thomas: I think that's a typo because there isn't even a CMS unless they're going back. Chris Carolan: I was just, but last week, I we were trying to do some stuff in content hub and then we're uh pleasantly surprised to find that that portal was still on CMS legacy. uh an easy fix, but there's lots of little things like that, especially when you get to like operations and data hub kind of stuff. Um Yep. So something to be aware of. We've got a sunset roll out here of surveys, public API private beta. Sunset roll out. How about that for a phrase? George B. Thomas: I don't even know. Chris Carolan: Uh effective January 16th, 2026, it's three days. Uh what's changing? We are ending the private beta for the survey's public API and will be removing access to this feature on January 16th, 2026. After this date, the API endpoints for creating, retrieving and deleting NPS and CSAT custom surveys and responses will no longer be available. Casey Hawkins: Um Kyle said on the briefing that this is like pretty uncommon that they like roll back a beta like this. Um yeah. Yeah. Want me to read why it's happening or I mean I I like it. cause that's the vibe I'm getting right now. So as a part of improving the overall survey experience in Hubspot, the product team is transitioning to a new survey editor and data model. Uh, because this new foundation differs significantly from the model using the beta, we're unable to continue supporting the existing API endpoints. Yeah. So in the places I've seen them sunset even like bringing things back like social social agent from prior from public to private beta. Like they're doing lots of development to like rework and refactor this stuff, which is a good thing. Um, so uh, makes sense. Uh, so down to speed up, I think is something. George B. Thomas: Mmm. Chris Carolan: Maybe. Just maybe. Chris Carolan: And then delete or mark notifications as read on mobile. We we mentioned that yesterday. Um Uh there's just a few more that uh we're we're on the list from I think like January 6th-ish. Good session with Casey yesterday covering the and for conditional scoring. Um Let's see here. So many. Remember 30 updates last week. Improved copy and paste in Hubspot content creation tools. Uh, inline text editing. This is the one I want to to see and just see if like inline text editing for website and landing pages, private beta for the elevate theme only. Chris Carolan: What is it? Inline text editing lets you click directly into text on the canvas and type, delivering a true wig editing experience. A contextual floating rich text toolbar brings formatting controls directly into the canvas. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Copy edits are one of the most common actions in the editor, yet editing through the left hand side panel is often slow, confusing and click heavy. Inline editing removes that friction, making copy updates faster, more intuitive and easier to do in context. George B. Thomas: Man, as soon as that works on all themes. Mmm, that'd be dope. Chris Carolan: Yeah. And then I think the major thing here if you're saying, oh, I've always been able to to do that, uh the elevate theme here uh is the difference, I think. Um, so good to see some parity there. Uh, object prioritization in import. That one is one that stood out to me in the Monday morning briefing yesterday. Chris Carolan: What is it? The object selection step of import now calls attention to the objects you import the most. If you're new to import, we'll highlight popular objects. Oh, I bet you will Hubspot. Casey Hawkins: Interesting. Chris Carolan: Why why does it wants here. Like like I didn't even have to like think about it, right? Contacts are even deals. Casey Hawkins: Look at the next look at the next one down. Look at the next screenshot. Chris Carolan: Oh, thank you. Casey Hawkins: Because Max and Kyle most both made the exact same joke and said this is Chris Carolan's portal. This is a screenshot. Branding. Um, why does this matter? Hubspot Smart CRM provides you with a variety of objects. You can manage and store data across your entire customer experience quickly and easily. As we've added more objects into Hubspot, we've been committed to ensuring that these objects are available within imports. But we also know that most customers aren't importing across the entire data model. Instead, they have two or three objects that they're routinely targeting through imports. By bringing your frequently imported objects front and center on the object selection step, you can stop searching for objects and move on with your import more quickly. Chris Carolan: Love to see it. But yeah, uh if we're doing a lot of importing. Maybe there's something else that that uh we could get to improve in the process. Uh, another big one. Massive, I think is is the right word. Company life cycle stage properties is now live. What is it? Each life cycle stage on the company object now has four new company properties that track the company's progression through its life cycle, including date entered stage, date exited stage, latest time in stage and cumulative time in stage. Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? These properties help you understand how companies move through your sales process, allowing you to optimize your strategies and improve conversion rates. You can now use these properties to create reports and track and analyze company progression more effectively, automate workflows based on time spent in each stage. Um, those properties existed on contact records, but now they're on company records. Chris Carolan: So you mean our company and our contacts might have different life cycle stage designations? Casey Hawkins: I don't know if that's exactly what this is saying, but it's not that's not what this is saying at all. Why else would I need it? Why else, right? If I got on the company on the contact and the company is syncing with contacts. George B. Thomas: Well, some people don't focus on the humans, they focus on company/accounts. The keyword in there was reporting, by the way for that for that update, but anyway. Chris Carolan: Yeah. Flexibility to handle each object the way it needs to be handled uh for your business, not the way that Hubspot said it's supposed to be handled. Um, I think that's it for today. I think we're caught up. Um, George B. Thomas: Nice. Chris Carolan: Remember folks, you probably already own the solution you're looking for in Hubspot. Sometimes you just need to wake up to it. Join us tomorrow morning live at 7:30 a.m. Central or catch us anytime on Spotify, Apple Music and the profoundly Hubspot updates blog. Drop your biggest takeaway in the comments. And let us know what capabilities you want to wake up to next. Until then, I'm Chris Carolan. Casey Hawkins: I'm Casey Hawkins. George B. Thomas: And I'm George B. Thomas. Chris Carolan: And this has been Wake up Customer platform. Now go build something amazing. Have a great day everybody.