Using the right tools to limit access to data, assets, and tools in HubSpot can be confusing. Your boss gave you a list of requirements your HubSpot portal needs to fulfill, but you’re a bit lost in the maze of tools and settings. This guide will help you organize your next steps, based on the common use cases the onboarding team at Lynton typically uncovers with our clients.
Limiting Who Can View, Edit, or Delete Contacts or Companies
Not sure if everyone in your company should have access to edit or delete a contact? What about a company? This is a common concern with larger team structures. A couple of use cases where you may need to consider this limitation:
- Your organization has competing sales teams who fight over prospects
- Your organization wants to restrict editing permissions for users in a certain role (accounting) who simply need visibility into records, not edit or delete access
The following tools should be considered if you meet either criteria.
Teams & Permission Sets
Your team can configure permission sets (Enterprise) as seen in this screenshot below:
Set up unique permission sets to apply to your HubSpot back-end users by their role or core purpose in HubSpot. For example, marketing operations might be setting up data early in a lead’s lifecycle vs. supporting roles to the process such as accounting, who might be modifying company records in specific ways later in the customer lifecycle.
If you are planning to use “Owned Only” or “Team Only,” consider whether unassigned records (individual contacts and companies) should be viewable by the user with that permission set. For “Team Only,” you’ll want to organize those who should see each other’s records in a Team structure.
A word of caution: Restricting access to contact and company records does not prevent these records from showing up in lists, becoming eligible for workflows, or eligible for reports. Read on for more ideas on how to restrict these items.
Limiting Who Can View, Edit, or Delete Deals or Tickets
Another issue that arises with larger companies, or ones with complex sales structures resolves around access to deals and tickets. This is particularly common with teams using HubSpot’s Sales Hub to manage multiple sales processes. You may want to consider limiting access if you check yes to one or more of these use cases:
- Your organization needs to protect pricing details on deals
- Your organization allows vendors or partners CRM access and wants to protect sensitive information
- Your organization has multiple pipelines that serve different teams (e-commerce deal pipeline vs. a B2B deal pipeline vs. website support ticket pipeline)
The following tools should be considered if you fall into one of these use case categories.
Teams & Permission Sets
Similar to contacts and companies, your team can configure permission sets (Enterprise) as seen in this screenshot below:
You’ll want to set up unique permission sets to apply to your HubSpot back-end users based on their role or core purpose in HubSpot. Examples include accounting user vs. sales manager vs. sales rep user.
Are you considering “Owned Only” or “Team Only”? You’ll want to consider whether unassigned records (individual deals) should be viewable by all. For “Team Only” you’ll want to arrange those who should see each other’s records in a Team structure.
Pipeline Settings
If you’d like your permission sets to be a bit broader in scope, but want to lock down a pipeline, simply navigate to the Pipeline settings. When creating a pipeline, simply navigate to the board view, “Edit Stages.”
You can also access this from Settings > Objects > Deals > Pipelines
From here, you can manage access under “Actions,” click “Manage Access,” and assign access to teams and/or individuals. Consider using teams to avoid a lengthy update process as your team’s roster changes.
Also, on the pipeline settings page, you can modify who can edit deals per stage. Your options are “Limited to super admins” and “Users with access to deals.”
Limiting Who Can See and Edit Properties
Properties is another HubSpot functionality you should carefully consider who has access to. Not sure if you fit the bill? This use case is common in organizations that bring multiple teams into the platform to manage prospecting, sales, and onboarding processes. A couple other examples of when you may need to start considering limiting properties:
- Your organization has fields that only Marketing, Sales, or Service teams should be able to edit, based on where that contact resides in a process
- Your organization has fields you want to be hidden from view as they do not apply for most back-end HubSpot users
The following tools should be considered if you meet the criteria above.
Property Settings (Enterprise only)
If you have any Enterprise Hub, you’re able to partition properties within HubSpot. Simply navigate to the property or properties you wish to edit based on the object (contact, company, deal, ticket, etc.) where it exists.
You can then assign view and/or edit access based on teams or users. Consider teams to avoid a lengthy update process as your team’s roster changes.
Take note: Properties will still display when creating lists, workflows, and reports.
Sidebars
Does your team want to hide properties that are irrelevant to a certain team or based on other criteria? Did you know you can modify what appears on the left panel of a record (contact, company, deal, ticket, etc.) en masse for your teams? Consider creating team or dynamic sidebars. A few ideas to consider:
- A universal sidebar for all contacts with dynamic sections that only display based on conditions like lifecycle stage (customer information) or contact type (e-commerce customer section)
- A team sidebar for accounting team users that hides all irrelevant properties
To create sidebars for each object, go to Settings > Objects > (Choose your Record) > Record Customization tab > Either create a team sidebar or customize the default sidebar.
Limiting Who Can Create or Use Lists
Lists are great in HubSpot, but unchecked, they could potentially get out of hand. In fact, your team may be close to running up against your total list count or they may want to prevent list clutter.
First things first, if you want to see a list of contacts, companies, deals, tickets, etc., consider using a custom view instead. Then use the following tools to limit who can create or use a list to keep yours nice and tidy.
Permission Sets
Using permission sets, you can create user groups based on their functional role and restrict access to the list tool itself.
Individual List Partitioning (Private Beta)
Do you want your users to be able to create lists for marketing, but you want to create lists that show only the contacts their team owns? There is a private beta available for this use case. Reach out to your HubSpot CSM for more information.
Limiting Who Can See and Interact With Workflows
What would HubSpot be without its powerful workflow tools? Workflow automation can be used for a variety of purposes. It can:
- Manage, modify, and create records
- Send email
- Enroll contacts into sales nurture sequences
- Interface with third-party tools
- And more
With great power comes great responsibility — your team may want to restrict who can view, edit, and delete workflows. If you don't, you may end up with workflows that are working against you — not with you.
Take a look at how to limit who in your company can see and use workflows.
Permission Sets
Using permission sets, you can create user groups based on their functional role and restrict access to the workflow tool itself.
Individual Workflow Partitioning
If your team has particularly sensitive workflows you want to hide from all other teams, click “Manage access” on the workflow(s) you want to restrict access to by team after you’ve created it.
Limiting Who Can Modify and Use Sales Enablement Tools
The Sales Hub enablement tools offer functionality to speed up your team’s day-to-day sales management tasks:
- Playbooks to serve as call scripts with editable properties (Enterprise only)
- Sequences to run automated 1:1 email, calls, and tasks
- And more
However, when multiple teams come together in HubSpot, you may want to limit who can use, see, or edit these assets to prevent "too many cooks in the kitchen." Here's how you can do that.
Permission Sets - Sales Licenses
When creating individual permission sets, it’s wise to create a group of users who will need a sales license. With a sales license, these users can then view, edit, publish, or gain access to some of these tools.
Users who need access to create these materials will also need a sales license, such as sales operations or managers.
Individual Sales Enablement Asset Partitioning
If your team wants to open access to the tools, but wants to limit what gets distributed to teams based on certain processes being relevant, consider gating individual assets as you create them.
For playbooks, for example, from the main playbooks screen click “Manage sharing” from the dropdown to share with particular users or teams.
Partitioning Your Brands
If your team intends to manage multiple brands in HubSpot, there are special considerations:
- Your organization wants to offer content on two or more domains (offers.website.com and offers.example.com)
- Your organization has teams representing more than one brand (logo, colors, fonts) and want sales meeting links to reflect those brands
- Your organization wants to be able to distinguish contacts, companies, deals, etc., based on their brand affiliation and originating source
You’ll want to pay close attention to your options as you’ll want to take advantage of these in combination based on your use cases.
Business Units Add-on
The business units add-on can also help if you are managing multiple brands. The tool allows your organization to:
- Set up another brand domain to host content on multiple domains
- Set up another brand’s apps and portal settings (not all settings)
- Set up another brand’s logo, colors, fonts for use in various tools
- Partition contact records using a multi-select property “Business Units”
- Partition individual assets (marketing email, for example) by brand for more accurate attribution reporting
But there are certain things to consider with this functionality. The business unit add-on does not automatically mean that what your brand teams see and can have access to from the back end of HubSpot have changed.
If you are managing multiple brand teams, consider the instructions above to partition records based on each brand team and users within those teams.
Get Help with HubSpot Partitioning
HubSpot is an excellent tool for many organizations. Still, if your company is large, has multiple brands, or has various team structures that require certain people to have access, it can get messy. Fortunately, there are several ways to limit access to data, assets, and tools in HubSpot, so the right person is in control of the proper functionality. Hopefully, this blog highlighted various use cases for partitioning access in HubSpot and simple ways to get started with it.
Don't see your unique use case? Curious how you may solve it and get your HubSpot portal working for your team and not against it? Reach out! We're here to help you optimize your portal for your specific business need.
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