HubSpot released 30 platform updates following a week-long break, with nine updates covered in the January 9th episode of Wake Up Customer Platform. The updates span improvements to property customization, customer agent testing, event visualization, marketplace integrations, and help desk functionality.
This article details each update discussed on the show, including availability status and implementation guidance.
The email testing feature allows users to preview how customer agents respond to email inquiries without connecting an active email channel. Users can view the complete email conversation thread, from the customer's initial question through the agent's response, exactly as it would appear in a real inbox.
Why It Matters: Email communication differs significantly from chat interactions—customers expect thorough, professionally written responses, and there is no opportunity for real-time follow-up questions. Previously, organizations faced two options: activate email and hope for the best, or test in chat and attempt to extrapolate how responses would translate to email format. This testing capability ensures agents provide appropriate tone, complete answers, and proper formatting before going live.
For more details, visit: Improved experience to test your Customer Agent on email
Users can now add a middle panel card to contact and company records to visualize custom and app event occurrences over a selected timeframe. The new Event Data card displays event patterns and trends without requiring multiple tools or manual data compilation.
Why It Matters: Understanding how contacts and companies interact with products or content previously required switching between multiple tools or performing manual analysis. The middle panel visualization enables teams to identify behavioral trends quickly, contextualize customer actions, and make informed decisions about next steps. The visual format helps support, sales, and customer success teams spot patterns that might otherwise go unnoticed in raw event data.
For more details, visit: Visualize Custom and App Events on Contact and Company Records
HubSpot added 76 new applications to its marketplace in Q4, along with significant feature updates to 22 existing apps. Notable updates include bidirectional sync for the HubSpot connector for Claude, context-rich record unfurling in Slack, support for 16 additional CRM objects in Zapier (including invoices, subscriptions, leads, and projects), and bidirectional conversation history sync between HubSpot and Zendesk.
Why It Matters: The HubSpot marketplace now contains over 2,000 applications, with new integrations and improvements releasing daily. These updates expand automation possibilities and enable teams to build workflows across their entire tech stack. The Zapier expansion is particularly significant for organizations using custom objects or newer CRM features like invoices and projects, as it eliminates the need for custom API development to sync data between systems.
For more details, visit: 76+ new and 22+ featured updated apps in the HubSpot Marketplace
Custom assistants now support a rich text editor for welcome messages, providing formatting tools including bold, italic, lists, links, and emojis. A live preview displays exactly how the message will appear to users before publishing.
Why It Matters: Welcome messages establish the initial tone for user interactions with custom assistants. Professional formatting signals that the assistant is thoughtfully designed and trustworthy. The rich text editor enables teams to improve readability through formatted text and lists, direct users to resources through clickable links, and emphasize important information—all without requiring knowledge of code or markup syntax.
For more details, visit: Rich Text Editor for Welcome Messages in Custom Assistants
HubSpot now offers light color variants for all existing property option colors, plus a new teal color. Users can apply light variations for cleaner, more subtle labeling on properties like category or stage, while dark variations draw attention to high-impact values such as urgent, blocked, or ready to close.
Why It Matters: Color-coded property options improve the speed of scanning index tables and record pages. The expanded color palette gives teams more control over visual prioritization, allowing important information to remain visible without dominating the interface. Light variations suit properties that need to be present but not prominent, while dark variations signal items requiring immediate attention.
For more details, visit: New colors available for property options
HubSpot phone number acquisition is now available in five additional countries: Netherlands, Finland, Poland, Belgium, and Thailand. Users can submit required business documentation through an in-platform flow and acquire local phone numbers for inbound and outbound calling, team calling, and help desk IVR systems.
Why It Matters: Organizations with global operations must acquire phone numbers in their local markets to comply with regional telecommunications regulations. Many countries are increasing enforcement of telecom regulations, including requirements to verify legitimate phone number users and validate business locations. HubSpot's integrated documentation submission process streamlines compliance and enables businesses to establish local presence in these markets.
For more details, visit: New HubSpot Numbers Available in Finland, Poland, and more
Users can now configure call recording based on call direction, choosing to record inbound calls, outbound calls, or both. This setting provides selective recording capabilities to support compliance with regional and industry-specific regulations.
Why It Matters: Call recording requirements vary significantly by jurisdiction and use case. This feature allows organizations to adhere to legal requirements while still capturing important conversations. For example, teams can record only inbound support calls for quality assurance purposes, or limit recording of outbound sales calls to training scenarios. The directional control gives organizations flexibility to balance compliance requirements with operational needs.
For more details, visit: Enable Call Recording Settings by Call Direction
HubSpot's skill-based routing now includes a configurable delay before the first assignment, ranging from 0 to 10 minutes. This delay ensures that ticket associations, CRM data, property values set by inbox automation or integrations, and detected attributes are fully loaded before routing rules evaluate the ticket.
Why It Matters: In many support operations, critical ticket information becomes available shortly after ticket creation. When routing executes before this data is ready, skill-based routing lacks full context, leading to incorrect initial assignments and subsequent reassignments. The delay setting helps skill-based routing evaluate tickets with complete information, resulting in more accurate first assignments, fewer bounces between owners, and better performance of skill-based rules. Most teams will benefit from a delay of one to three minutes, though the setting is customizable based on specific workflow requirements.
For more details, visit: Skill-based Routing: Delay Before First Assignment
Users can now edit a ticket's assigned teams directly within the help desk workspace. Assigned teams can be changed from the About This Ticket panel, inline from help desk table views, or through workflows using the rotate record to owner/team action (note: this is not available via the edit record action). Only teams with at least one main team member holding a service seat will appear as available options.
Why It Matters: Assigned teams determine where a ticket appears in spaces, which views display the ticket, and which teams are expected to take action. Previously, this value could only be set automatically through routing, which meant tickets could appear in incorrect spaces, ownership and team visibility could fall out of sync, and administrators had limited ability to correct or reassign responsibility. With assigned teams now editable, support managers can correct misrouted tickets, reassign work between teams as priorities shift, ensure tickets appear in appropriate spaces for visibility and collaboration, and maintain alignment of team workflows as operations scale.
For more details, visit: Assigned Teams Are Now Editable in Help Desk
Property Customization: The expanded color palette for property options provides immediate visual organization improvements across all CRM objects, with no configuration required.
Customer Agent Testing: Organizations can now validate email agent responses before connecting live channels, reducing risk and improving response quality.
Event Visualization: The new Event Data card eliminates the need for external tools to understand customer behavioral patterns on contact and company records.
Marketplace Expansion: Recent app updates significantly expand automation capabilities, particularly for organizations using Zapier, Slack, Claude, and Zendesk integrations.
Help Desk Improvements: Editable team assignments and configurable routing delays give support operations more control over ticket distribution and resolution workflows.
For organizations managing global operations, the expansion of phone number acquisition to five new countries enables local presence establishment while maintaining regulatory compliance. Teams should review the skill-based routing delay setting to determine if a short delay would improve assignment accuracy in their specific workflows.