The Reports Are Getting Easier, Marketing Events Get a Pipeline, and Breeze Won't Pretend With Test Records

Another Orange Morning Recap: Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Wednesday was Chris, Zach Hussion and me, with Zach as our Friend of the show. We started somewhere I did not expect, with what it feels like to work with AI day to day, and it carried us into a conversation about reporting that I have been having with a client all week. Zach had to head to his next call before the end of the hour, so Will It Breeze was just Chris and me.

Here is what we got into: the AI coaching chat, the reporting conversation and what is on the events calendar, then four updates. Marketing Events Pipeline, custom objects in multi-account reporting, Buying Groups, and Buying Groups with Breeze. Will It Breeze closed the show with the All lens, and Breeze had something to say about our test records.

Saying "This Doesn't Feel Right" Out Loud

Chris asked how everyone was doing, and Zach said he was getting things tidied up for Q4 and had a new member on the team. I mentioned that I had joined George's Super Admin office hours on Friday, and how George has been using Claude with his clients. "He was explaining to me how he's been using Claude with his clients and it really unlocked some things for me."  Zach had his own version of the week, which was a lot of AI coaching with Chris. "If I had a sleep tracker, it would just show the couple days after I hang out with Chris for an hour. I toss and turn a lot because I just can't stop thinking of all the opportunities out there and things that we can do."

Chris brought up a story from working with me the day before, about how easy it is to start down one specific track with AI when you are asking for help with something you have never done. His advice for when you land somewhere you did not mean to go was to say it out loud. "The best skill right now for anybody to learn is just to say out loud, I don't even know what's going on right now. I don't even know what we're doing. This doesn't feel right."  He said it took Breeze, Claude Code and several agents on the team to get to the right place, and that the lesson stuck with him. "It takes a village even when it feels like it doesn't because you just did amazing things by yourself."

Zach added the part about the human side of the call. "If you bring the energy to the call, Chris will keep up with it and just keep you going. If you don't, then he'll tell you when to hit enter and we'll trudge through it together."  Chris pointed at my own switch as an example, from custom coded workflow actions that nobody understood to building apps in HubSpot on things I had never done before, and landed where the whole conversation had been heading. "It's still the human that has to care about it to drive AI in the right direction."

The Reporting Conversation, and What Is on the Calendar

Chris asked what was on the events calendar for the day, and I told him about Hubsessed Office Hours on Reporting and Dashboards, which I was planning to attend the first half of. That led me into something I had mentioned the day before. A client reached out this week and asked me to build new reports. "They can't get the insights they need out of HubSpot."  That was the whole ask, and it got me thinking about where that usually comes from. It tends to be one of three things. Either the data is not connected or does not exist, or the report is not built to surface it, or the report is built and people do not know how or where to access it.

Zach thought it was almost always the first one. "I think it's all number one."  His reasoning was that when the data is there, you can ask Breeze your question, or ask Breeze to build the report. "If you have a good data model and your data is flowing well and it's connected and you have that good context layer, reporting should be one of the easier things to start doing now."  My suspicion is that my client is not comfortable enough yet to do either, and Zach pointed out we have a lot of people at different stages of that, from build it for me to teach me how. So I told my client what I would do. "I'm going to ask you what questions you're trying to ask, and I'm going to ask those to Breeze, and then I'm going to ask Breeze to build the report, and then maybe I'll tweak it."  And then I offered the other option, which is that they could do that themselves.

Zach took it one step further, from the client's side of the table. He is working with a client migrating from Salesforce, with hundreds and hundreds of reports that have piled up over thirty years, and he told them he was not going to rebuild all of those for go-live. "Is that what you want to pay me for?"  He pulled up Breeze to show them how quickly it can build one, and the plan became ten reports each for marketing, sales and service from his team, so the client learns the rest. "Ultimately you need to learn how to do this stuff so you can go answer the questions that you have that happen today instead of waiting for me to go get it to you next week."  Zach's summary of the state of things was short. "Reporting's tough, but I think it's getting easier."

Chris rounded out the calendar from there. Tomorrow Trisha and I continue You Inherited a HubSpot Portal, and this week we are on where all the data came from, which is usually integrations, imports and things like that. Chris also reminded everyone that the Unified Revenue View office hours are tomorrow too.

Four Updates

Marketing Events Pipeline

Chris opened this one with a guessing game: which update on the board was he probably most excited about? Zach went with Buying Groups, I said maybe the combination, and Zach had the line of the segment. "Oh, we're starting to get you figured out, Chris."  The answer was pipelines. "Pipelines, y'all."  Chris said he is a fan of this exact kind of move. "I'm also a huge fan when not full parity objects in the CRM become full parity objects."

Users can now create and manage pipelines for marketing events, define custom stages, and move events between them. I read the why: marketing events previously had only a status property that could not be edited, which limited how teams could organize them. Zach's reaction was the practical one. "This is cool because really all you had was attended, registered, canceled."  Chris's version was about the shift in how you can treat the object. "You can manage the marketing project that is a marketing event."  He also said this is the kind of change that is a little maddening for people who see the value, because the event now has a full record view and you want everything the other objects can do.

Why it matters: if your team runs events through HubSpot, you can now track each one from planning onward in stages that match how you actually work, instead of a status that only tells you who showed up.

For more details: Marketing Events Pipeline.

Custom Objects in Multi-Account Reporting

Zach turned to me and said Chris would be all over anything pipeline related, and I said I had been worried this was the one because Chris also likes custom objects. Then came the funny part. None of us knew what MAM stood for, and Zach was the one who worked it out. It is multi-account reporting, and the update lets you include custom objects in cross-account reports that combine custom object data from multiple HubSpot accounts. Zach reacted right away. "This is like perfect timing."

I read the why, that if you use custom objects to model unique business data and processes you now get greater visibility across your organization, and asked Zach why it matters to him. "This matters to me because I'm working with a private equity firm. One of their portfolio companies has six business units underneath it, all acquired companies that all operate independently."  The ask is to bring all six teams onto HubSpot next year and roll the reporting up to the parent portal. "I knew that custom objects was going to be a limitation for that."  That is why this one landed for him. "This is great because now you can do it."

Why it matters: if you manage several accounts, or a group of acquired companies that each run their own portal, custom object data can now be part of the rollup instead of the thing that blocks it.

For more details: Custom Objects in Multi-Account Reporting.

Buying Groups

Chris took us to Buying Groups. "It's true that I am a fan of buying groups as well."  Buying groups and account maps now support customizable, editable contact and company cards, so you can choose and update key properties right on the cards. Chris read through what the feature is for, a clear visual of the stakeholders your team is prospecting, selling to and managing, plus an account map that shows how the company is structured. Then he asked Zach and me whether any of our portals are using it.

Zach's answer was an honest one. "I don't believe that we have any clients using buying groups today."  He thinks it is a great fit for a lot of them, especially in manufacturing, where a sale can be in the millions and no one person makes the decision. But the timing is the thing. His way of describing where it falls in a client's first year of work was a house. "…you're building a house, this is picking out the wallpaper for some of these clients."  Chris winced, and Zach finished the thought with the backsplash. Zach's point on maturity was plain. "Some of these things are really cool, but they're big asks when you're in your first ninety days of rolling out a portal or something like that."

Chris came at it from the other side. "I agree that folks don't come anywhere close to prioritizing it in the way that they should, even though they're already doing it outside of the system."  The example in the account map video is Amazon, with a lot of subsidiaries, and Chris's point was that once those all have records in your system you can build the map, but until then sales keeps it in a slide deck that doesn't have the parent-child relationships HubSpot does. The slide deck is easy to start with because you cannot mess up anything else in the system with it. His point as we moved on was that if you have been doing this in slide decks, you can do it right in HubSpot, where Breeze can help.

Why it matters: buying groups are worth knowing about now even if they are not your priority this quarter. If you are mapping stakeholders in slides today, you already know the work matters, and the work can eventually live where the rest of your context lives.

For more details: Buying Groups.

Buying Groups with Breeze

Chris tied this one to the admin HUG the day before, where HubSpot was collecting feedback on the new Universal record for CRM and change management was the major concern. His take on how to get through that is the part I keep coming back to. "Literally the conversations with Breeze are the only thing that make any kind of logical sense to me to kind of cut through that."  For admins who have wanted to use buying groups but had the things he and Zach just went through in the way, he sees a bonus. "At the end of the conversation, you can end up with documentation."

The update itself is that Breeze can map, review and manage your buying groups. Open any buying group and Breeze is in the sidebar with full access to your customer context, deal history, emails, calls, transcripts and meetings, and you can also ask about key stakeholders from any page in HubSpot. Chris's example was pointing Breeze at the company's LinkedIn page or domain to find who is missing, then bringing those records into the system to fill out the map.

The why is long, so I told the room I was going to freestyle first. I also have no clients using buying groups, though I just signed one up. "I think this solves two of the reasons why I haven't prioritized it."  I gave Zach's wallpaper line a nod. The first reason is setup. "It has been kind of hard to set up."  Anyone with terrible parent-child relationships knows why. The second reason is where it lived, off to the side in its own card, where if you did not know about it you did not know about it, and if you did, you probably opened it, thought it looked incomplete and went somewhere else. "I think it's a very powerful tool, but I think this update specifically helps make it actionable."

Chris picked up the last line of the update, about reviewing the group, spotting risks and opportunities and updating who is involved without breaking your workflow. "Admins, figure out how to explain this to your sales team, it's never been easier to cover all your bases, to close all your gaps, to handle all the risk to your deals."  And then, on the phrase itself, "Just don't sleep on that phrase."

Why it matters: the setup and the visibility were what kept buying groups on the shelf. Managing the group in a conversation, from the page you are already on, addresses both, and that is what makes it something a team can use.

For more details: Buying Groups with Breeze.

Will It Breeze: All Lens, Companies, Customer Success and a Follow-Up

This is where Zach left us for his next call. "I'm gonna let you guys spin the wheel of death."  Chris asked whether we had ever selected the All lens. "What is all? Have we ever selected all?"  I had a few minutes, I spun, and the three reels landed on Companies, Customer Success and draft the follow-up worth sending. I read the prompt out loud a little differently than it appeared on my screen. "Using customer success, can you draft the follow-up we're sending across companies?"  The prompt on screen says worth sending, and I said we're sending. I added that I was not sure about that last piece, and Chris explained why it reads oddly. "That's a little bit different from, which accounts do I need to follow up with today?"

Before we ran it, I asked Chris whether he had seen something in Breeze, an option to import your memories from another AI assistant so Breeze knows your preferences from day one. It is not on the release list, so there is no update page for it. Chris had not seen it. "I did not see it. Do I like it? I'm not sure."  My own reaction was mixed, and I think I understand why they did it. "I imagine a reason that people do not use Breeze is, I already have a tool I'm working with. It already knows me. It already has my context."  I added that moving from Claude to somewhere else right now would be hard for me. "It's impossible I feel like for me to move from Claude to somewhere else right now."

Then we got back to the prompt. Breeze asked whether I meant the Customer Success workspace or an agent, and whether I wanted a reusable follow-up email or a company-specific draft based on each account's recent activity and open issues. Chris dictated the answers and I typed them in. He noticed Breeze put one more option on the table than it had the day before. "It gave us one more option that was missing."  That option was the team, so we went with team and the suggestion. Chris answered my worry about the wording. "We're trying to show how much that doesn't matter when you just ask the question in the right place because then Breeze does the work."  He then shared what he had learned at the admin HUG. "I got the HubSpot team to confirm that it's very important and it's very intentional that Breeze is starting to be more strategic and coach-like at the beginning of these conversations."  His reason for sharing it: "If you know that that's a thing, all of a sudden, a lot of the scarier change management stuff gets a lot easier."

Breeze then told us it could not ground company-specific follow-ups reliably. As Chris read it out, no companies matched the customer success association or customer status filters, and the company-linked conversations it returned were fictional test activity. Chris's reply was to Breeze directly. "Can you just pretend with the test records? We're on a live show here. Come on, Breeze."  I had asked Nico to set up test records so that this would work better, and it was not going to play along. "I asked Nico to set up test records so that this would work better, and he did. And then Breeze is like, those are tests."  Breeze's answer, as we read it, was that this is a business platform, and it offered clearly labeled test files instead. Chris took the lesson from it. "I've had issues where it doesn't differentiate between the test records because you make test records that kind of sound like real records. And then it's like, man, your pipeline's crazy."  I liked how it labeled its own answer. "I like how it says demo only."

What I took from the output is that the activity was real for me even if the demo account wasn't. "I have Claude connected to my Gmail. And one of the things I do on my morning walk is I asked Claude to look at my Gmail, is there anything I should be replying to?"  Claude wrote drafts for two emails. "I wouldn't frame it quite like this, but I do think the actual activity is something I literally do this every day."

Chris went back to the word companies, and it was a good note to end on. "That prompt gets a lot more comfortable if the word is accounts, and not companies, right, which is why you might consider the company record being renamed to accounts."  His reason for the rename: "Making all of this stuff line up from a very natural language perspective has huge dividends."  And what he wants people to do with that is simple. "Just ask Breeze at the beginning of the day. If it doesn't already have it ready for you, right, on the homepage, which you probably never see or go to."  Chris closed it out. "Will It Breeze strikes again."

See the prompt and more: Will It Breeze: Companies, Customer Success and the Follow-Up.

The Close

Chris sent everyone to Hubsessed Office Hours on Reporting and Dashboards later this morning, at 11 a.m. Central and noon Eastern, with Madelyn and Oakes. Everything coming up is on the events calendar.

The Sign-Off

You probably already own the value you are looking for in HubSpot. You just need to wake up to it. We will see you tomorrow morning.