Value-First AI Daily - Mar 18, 2026

[00:00] **Introduction** Speaker: Music.

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[00:37] **Opening Remarks** Speaker: Music.

[00:48] **Wake Up Customer Platform** Speaker: Music.

[00:54] **Wake Up HubSpot** Speaker Chris Carolan: Good morning HubSpot Nation. It is time to wake up Customer Platform with your unofficial HubSpot updates morning show where we help you discover the platform from value you already own. I'm Chris Carolan joined by my co-host Casey Hawkins. We're here every weekday morning to make sure you're not sleeping on HubSpot's true capabilities. If you're joining live, drop a hello in the comments and let us know what you're building in HubSpot. Today, uh, happy Wednesday, March 18th, Casey, how are you doing?

[01:42] **Remembering Orange** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Happy Wednesday. We are in orange. Everyone remembered. Uh, at 5:30 this morning I thought to myself, I better not forget. I'm gonna be so mad if I forget.

[02:02] **Orange, For Sure** Speaker Chris Carolan: I mean, while I was opening up stream yard, I definitely did one, did one of these, uh, to make sure I had orange on. Um, for sure. Super important.

[02:17] **Critical Stuff** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Uh, critical stuff over here.

[02:20] **Vibe, Folks** Speaker Chris Carolan: It's a vibe, folks. It's a feeling. It's the ecosystem that we're in. Um, and I'm gonna share my screen so we can get into some updates.

[02:39] **News List** Speaker Casey Hawkins: I have six.

[02:43] Speaker Chris Carolan: I have five.

[02:45] Speaker Casey Hawkins: Five. Uh.

[02:47] Speaker Chris Carolan: Good, good, good. But before we jump in, uh, don't forget to join us later today where we'll be on the HubSpot helpline. Uh, 10:15 central until 11:00 AM.

[03:06] Speaker Chris Carolan: Uh, George again on vacation, but we'll be with Kyle and, uh, Rob to, uh, do some live problem solving in HubSpot. Casey will have her, uh, tips of the week and updates of the week. And, uh, talk usually talk about some inbound stuff. Um, and yeah, join us on LinkedIn Live later today.

[03:43] **Number One Favorite Thing** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Our favorite thing is when people comment a question. So, that could be you today.

[03:48] Speaker Chris Carolan: That is our number one favorite thing. Whatever the question is probably, uh, make it about HubSpot if you can, but you know.

[03:56] Speaker Casey Hawkins: About life.

[03:58] Speaker Chris Carolan: We're even willing to go anywhere you want us to go. So, Including, adding line items to deals via workflow actions. A lot of people excited about this one when it dropped. Uh, what is it? You now have access to a new workflow action that lets you automatically add line items to a deal within a workflow. You can select a specific product from your product library, set a quantity, and automatically attach that line item to the deal when the workflow runs. This brings product and pricing logic directly into your automations. No manual deal updates required.

[05:03] **Why Does This Matter** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Nice. Why does this matter? Before this, adding products to deals required manual work or post automation cleanup. Now, you can fully automate deal setup the moment a trigger fires. Ensure consistent products and quantities are applied every time. Reduce human error and save time for sales and ops teams. Build more advanced revenue workflows, for example, auto adding onboarding fees, setup packages or standard bundles. This is a huge unlock for automation, especially for teams standardizing how deals are created.

[05:55] Speaker Chris Carolan: Uh. Some of that, some of that for sure. I'm not sure automation comes to mind as one of those things. Uh. But yeah, sorry, you were saying.

[06:04] Speaker Casey Hawkins: You, well, you are, you are Commerce Hub person, famously. Um, yeah, what is do you have a use case? Have you already tested this? Do you have a use case? a top use case that you're excited about?

[06:30] **Order Management** Speaker Chris Carolan: Um, Well, luckily I work with a very talented individual named Ryan Ginsberg and we do a lot of this kind of activity um, using UI extensions. Uh, But I started doing this um, as it relates to order management and this should replace a lot of reasons uh, related to line items that people use custom coded workflow actions for. So, I would imagine in most of those cases, uh, we could probably build new native workflow actions now without the custom code. Um. But any I think another immediate use case comes to mind like if you've built deal templates like records that you just have for cloning. Just because there's a bunch of line items on them or you need to start with a specific set of line items, like maybe you don't have to have those records around anymore. Um. So, those are the first two, two use cases that come to mind for sure. Okay. And really, I think like probably uh, sky is the limit in terms of what kind of triggers you could start with to like make things on line items happen. Um, yeah, Commerce Hub team making a lot of progress related to contracts and in line items everywhere. Uh, Great ones to watch. Just be careful with the line items everywhere. None of those line items talk to each other in the different objects. So be careful you're not creating too many line item islands. Um, especially if you're gonna start using workflow actions. Because just because it's moving around over here doesn't mean it's automatically moving around over here.

[09:23] **Different Islands** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Yeah, I think that that's something I get a little confused about. I was just explaining this to a client the other day, the difference between like products and line items and I'm like, they're related but not.

[09:40] **Product Vs Line Item** Speaker Chris Carolan: Yeah. Product, the way I explain it, product is the planned thing that we wanna offer or deliver. Line items is the version of that that gets built out during the process. So, but they are meant to be separately edited. And that can confuse a lot of people. Yeah. You also don't need a product library entry to build out a line item. Important.

[10:23] **Improved Users Table** Speaker Chris Carolan: Number two today, improved users table and page. What is it? The user's page has been redesigned with modern data table functionality to streamline admin workflows and reduce friction in user management. Admins can now leverage bulk operations to update user properties directly from the table without navigating away. The redesign introduces customizable and movable columns, saved custom views and optimized default views with total user counts for quick reference. Enhanced quick filters and exported filter views.

[11:14] **Editing Columns** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Admins report that the prior user page was slow, required deep navigation to complete simple tasks and lacked editable columns, save views and bulk workflows needed for scaled organization. Basic tasks such as updating user properties, adjusting permissions or filtering to monitor inactive or pending users often required dozens of repetitive clicks, leading to frustration and operational inefficiency. The redesign focuses on reducing administrative overhead and introducing predictable modern table experiences that already exist elsewhere in the CRM.

[12:08] **Make It Easier** Speaker Chris Carolan: Making it easier day by day to manage the complexity of your user base. Just try to understand, you know, that complexity and map it out a little bit before you, you go ham inside of all this, uh, all these very granular permission structures that you can create now. Uh, number three, improved notifications for workflow issues.

[12:50] Speaker Casey Hawkins: I like the words.

[12:55] **Workflow Notifications** Speaker Chris Carolan: Let's see if you like the the meaning. Uh, workflow notifications now alert users every time a unique workflow issue reappears with smart throttling to prevent notification overload from cascading errors.

[13:20] **Smart Throttling** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? Users often miss critical workflow errors because notifications only fired for the first error, leading to unnoticed problems and frustration. This change ensures users are promptly informed of recurring or new issues and prevents silent failures, making it easier to catch and resolve workflow problems without constantly checking the issues tab. Um, the one thing that relieved some, uh, anxiety for me was smart throttling because when I first heard that workflows now alert every time a unique workflow issue appears, I was like.

[14:12] **Smart Throttling: AI Instructions** Speaker Chris Carolan: Yeah. Uh, And that's where do we need to know how the smart throttling works? Do we need to be able to control that ourselves? Probably not. Uh, and if this happens and you do get an overload, just let the team know and they'll work on their smart throttling setup. Um, which means they'll provide better instructions to the AI that's handling that. Uh, imagine. Um, yeah. Very, uh, cool.

[14:52] **Line Items in Workflow?** Speaker Chris Carolan: Um, quick question here from Michelle, maybe we can get into it on the helpline. Line items in workflows, in my understanding that if my sales guy forgets to put in transport and disposal for field work, it would recognize that and automatically add it in. Um, It's all about the trigger here. And that's where usually, um, or I would need to learn a little bit more about what we can use, uh, to trigger, like if it can be based on like deals, like the existence or non-existence of line items on the deal. So like if it gets to a certain stage and it doesn't have this line item on it, then that can be the trigger for the workflow and then you add that line item. It could see being a thing, but that's where I'm not sure if you can trigger based on line item. So, good question.

[16:05] **Helpline Discussion** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Maybe we have a line item.

[16:07] Speaker Chris Carolan: And we'll have a couple hours to figure that out. Uh, if you wanna join us on the helpline. Uh, we will do our best to, to get you better answer that because I am interested, like highly interested in what the answer is there. Because a big part of line item management was like even when you could do stuff, it was only like the first one created or the last one created. Um, so we'll definitely look into that further. Uh.

[16:55] **Shopify App Update** Speaker Chris Carolan: Number four today, Shopify app update. Product variant sync. Whoa. What is it? Product variants from Shopify like different sizes or colors of the same item now sink into HubSpot as individual product records. Refer to this KB article to learn more. This is a big deal.

[17:31] **Sinking to HubSpot** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? If you sell products with multiple options in Spotify, in Shopify.

[17:37] Speaker Chris Carolan: I do that all the time.

[17:39] Speaker Casey Hawkins: Um, sinking only the base product to HubSpot limits accuracy and personalization. Without variant level data, your orders, carts and reports show only the parent product, not the specific skew your customer interacted with. With product variant sync, you can get cleaner data, orders, carts and reports reflect the exact skew your customer interacted with, avoid misleading analytics caused by variant activity rolling up to the base product and power more relevant automation like abandoned cart emails and product recommendations that match the variant shoppers actually viewed or purchased.

[18:46] **Biggest Pain** Speaker Chris Carolan: Uh, so if you noticed, I already clicked on the link, uh, to share it with with, um, with the client. Uh, This, yeah, it's just a big deal. Like it's been a huge pain. Um, in the asses of many. So, uh, if you have a Shopify integration, uh, be very surprised if you don't have product variants. Um, definitely take a look at this beta. Uh, we are not, uh, integrated with Shopify in this environment, so I'm not gonna click the beta button. But, uh, yeah, that team has done uh, a large amount of work to enable a lot of the other infrastructure in HubSpot as it relates to commerce and orders and carts and all that stuff. So, um uh, cool to see that. And that like takes us down the road of like product management and product lifecycle management inside of HubSpot, which is exciting to think about. Uh, it is important to note that it's still just individual product records in HubSpot. So, it will balloon that number. Um, if you're not careful, but again, if we can get that data into HubSpot, usually it's easier to manage it over here often than the systems that it's coming from. So.

[20:30] **Email Ease** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Yeah. I'm not a Shopify, I, I've never worked with a Shopify app. If someone asked me to, I would say meet my friend Chris Carolan. Um, but immediately reading that, I was like, oh, well, that would definitely make emails easier if you can show the actual color that was selected instead of like something else because oh, but you know, it's just gonna work way better from the user side at least there. So. I can see why this is such an important update.

[21:06] Speaker Chris Carolan: Well, they were doing stuff like take information from the order and products and then put it right in the emails. So there was, they've been doing like tokenizing of stuff like that direct into the communications, but it just wasn't being stored in HubSpot when you think about it.

[21:25] Speaker Casey Hawkins: Okay. Yeah.

[21:26] Speaker Chris Carolan: Uh, so yeah, this is a natural next step at some point. Um. Okay. Thank you Sarah. Uh, working on uh, working on the new setup and it's glad you liked the background.

[21:49] Speaker Casey Hawkins: Chris was feeling self-conscious that he was blocking me yesterday, so he repositioned himself to block himself.

[21:56] **Value First Data** Speaker Chris Carolan: Yeah. There was two shows in a row like when it was the case on Value First data, like you were in the middle again, I was like, all right, I gotta move. There's a for. Um.

[22:24] **Report With AI** Speaker Chris Carolan: Number five, create report with AI option in reporting. In public beta. What is it? Users can now select create report with AI from the reporting page to open Breeze Assistant and generate reports via chat. They will have the ability to open this report in the builder at any point as well.

[22:56] **AI Reporting** Speaker Casey Hawkins: Why does it matter? This change provides a much more powerful AI reporting option available to users in the form of creating a report in the latest Breeze Assistant. This should also be more useful usable and consistent experience with the rest of the products and make it more discoverable to our users as well as provide more simple and easy to use way ways to create reports. Um, I'm I was excited reading through the list of updates today for this one. I I have created AI reports before, um, using Breeze. Um, so excited to excited to see the updates that they're making to this.

[23:55] Speaker Chris Carolan: Yeah, and I was I think I was several reading it because like, Kevin, we been doing this?

[23:59] Speaker Casey Hawkins: Yes, I I also was like, wait, we that existed. Um, but to be transparent, it wasn't perfect.

[24:12] **How Does It Work** Speaker Chris Carolan: Right. And so because of that, and just to unravel, help people open their minds to maybe this is going to be a different experience now. I'm gonna run through the how does it work because there's a lot of new nuance in the words being used and the way that they're put together. Uh, so accessing the feature, visit the reporting page and click create. Choose the new option, create report with AI, uh, labeled in beta. Using Breeze Assistant, Breeze Assistant opens in a side panel with the new chat. The initial prompt is prefilled as create report with AI and the initial response will tell you what you can you can and cannot do in terms of report creation while also giving you some sample prompts. Use natural language to build single object reports and soon multi object reports as well. Any single object report can be opened and saved in the single object report builder by clicking Edit in report builder. Once multi object reporting support is added, you'll be able to create and then open the multi object reports in the custom report builder by clicking Edit in report builder. Deprecation notes, the previous quote AI generated report options are removed for users in the new beta. So this is removed both from create report flow and in the single object report builder flow. If you need to access the old experience, you can leave the beta to back to go back to the old experience. Note, eventually the existing experience will be deprecated though with this new create report with AI option taking its place. So, the nuance of the phrasing, the difference between an AI generated report where you expect to just click a button and then everything happens for you perfectly. We're moving away from that because that was not the case. Uh, we're moving to create report with AI and the difference of starting point between AI generated report and jumping into assistant where it already has stuff loaded and is already telling you what you can and can't do. Like a massive difference in the starting point here. So, I would just that alone probably just 10X is the experience that people are gonna have here. Um, both in getting to the outcome that you want or even just learning about how how the stuff is working. Right? Yeah. So the black boxy moments are are going away in many parts of the portal, uh, which is important to to building the trust that we need to be able to work with AI to do this stuff. Uh, you said you had a sixth one today? Is it one we've already hit on?

[27:57] **Notion Integration** Speaker Casey Hawkins: New Notion integration?

[28:00] Speaker Chris Carolan: Okay. Yeah. Um is that I wonder if that went from beta to live. Uh.

[28:07] Speaker Casey Hawkins: I feel like we've talked about it, yeah.

[28:10] Speaker Chris Carolan: We have. Uh, definitely. Uh, a big deal from data sync and Data Studio finally connecting with Notion. And this one specifically, we're excited about the the Data Studio part where you can just do all of the stuff basically with with your Notion data in HubSpot without having do it all without having to re-architect your HubSpot to support it. I think is the important part.

[28:56] Speaker Casey Hawkins: Yes, yeah.

[28:57] Speaker Chris Carolan: But as always, you still need to document, uh, and understand your data flow in order to, to make that kind of complexity work. Um. So, remember, folks, you probably already own the solution you're looking for in HubSpot. Sometimes you just need to wake up to it. Uh, join us later today on the HubSpot helpline at 10:15 AM central. We'll Casey and I will be with Kyle and Kyle's absent and and Rob Jones to answer questions live. Uh, and 7:30 AM tomorrow, central, uh, we'll be back here or you can 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.

[29:56] Speaker Casey Hawkins: I'm Casey Hawkins.

[29:58] **Wake Up Customer Platform!** Speaker Chris Carolan: And this has been Wake Up Customer Platform. Now go build something amazing. Have a great day everybody.

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[30:40] **Wake Up Customer Platform** Speaker: Music.