Run Workflows on Demand, Revenue Reporting Built on Contracts, and a Breeze Prompt That Needed a Second Turn

Another Orange Morning Recap: Friday, November 13, 2026

It was Friday the 13th, and the room was Chris, me and Madelyn Donovan as our Friend of the show. I was less than twelve hours from leaving for the airport, so this one had a little extra energy on my side. We picked up with the news we spent most of yesterday's show on, got Madelyn's reaction to it, and then went to a comment one of the people in our chat left.

Here is what we got into: Madelyn's reaction, Duncan Lennox's talk at UNBOUND and a comment from Paul on the Universal record, and my session with Trisha on how data gets into a portal. Then five updates: Run Workflow on Demand for a Set of Records, Partner Portability, Revenue Reporting from Contracts, Visible Payment Methods on the Invoice Page, and Pay an Invoice with a Stored Payment Method API. Madelyn's Friday horoscope was on audit logs, and Will It Breeze took the Marketing lens and an ABM prompt that needed a second try.

Picking Up From Yesterday

Chris opened by asking how everyone was doing, and Madelyn had a plan for that. "I think we should just skip that question. That's how I'll best center myself."  Chris took it in stride. "I don't know that that's how that works, [Madelyn]. But I'll roll with it."  I told the room where I was. "I leave for the airport in less than twelve hours and I will be in Aruba tomorrow and that will be nice for me."  I will miss next Friday, and my plan is to be back on the show Tuesday and Wednesday. "I'm planning to be on the show Tuesday, Wednesday."  That depends on the internet, and there is a world where I say good luck, everyone.

Then Chris turned to Madelyn, since yesterday it had been just him and me with the news. "We would love to hear from somebody else live. What do you think?"  Her answer was open about where she is with it. "I don't know that I've fully figured out what I think about it from a business perspective, but I will say that I loved Yamini. And I think she did a lot of great things during her time at HubSpot, but I'm also excited to see just kind of what's next."  She went on to describe where she thinks we are. "I feel like we are in a new era of HubSpot and how we use our CRM or use HubSpot, whatever HubSpot is, now that it's a headless horseman."

Chris added that this keeps happening in different places. "But at some point we're ripping the Band-Aid off in lots of different places."  He is also watching what comes next week. "I am very interested in how this might relate to the planned announcement or whatever was going to be talked about next week."  I will say it plainly, that one has me a little nervous. "I'm a little stressed about that, to be honest."

Duncan Lennox's Talk and Paul's Comment

Chris wanted to give a nod to a talk from UNBOUND. "I really enjoyed Duncan Lennox's talk at Unbound, the way he talked about the harness that they've been building."  He said the talk is hard to find information on, and that the diagram Duncan showed is worth having. "I've started using the trust layer for our own frameworks, but the whole diagram I think is super important."  His point was that you do not need to know every component, only what some of them mean, because different people will care about different parts of the system.

From there he read a comment Paul left in the chat after the admin HUG and the Universal record redesign. "Having just attended the admin HUG and universal record redesign, I'm feeling a bit confused on where the user experience will be in the future."  Paul swapped in a better word, uncertain, and Chris liked that. Then he gave his answer to the question. "The user experience is going to be in a conversation with AI. That's it."

He tied it back to how people worked before software, and why so many systems never got fully adopted. We are heading back to working that way "because we're humans and we like talking to things. We like thinking about things out loud."  His note for admins was about what that means for the people who built the old way. "Hey, you never liked entering data anyways. And now you might have to."  That lands differently when you know what I had been doing the day before.

How Data Gets Into a Portal

Chris asked how my session with Trisha went. We do these in thirty minutes because an hour gets to be a lot, but we went long. "I did go long because we were talking about all the ways the data gets into your HubSpot portal."  The part that stayed with me is the one anyone inheriting a portal runs into first. "How do you know if you can trust those data sources?"  I had also talked with Chris the morning before, and I got a little fixated on how many ways data gets created beyond records themselves, and how activity in particular can mislead. "I've had a ton of conversations around, how do we know when we last talked to this human?"  We might have that information, or we might not, depending on whether everyone is set up and the data is flowing. There are a lot of ways, so it is going to be "just one little bite at a time."

Chris also reminded everyone that Hubsessed Office Hours with George B. Thomas were later today at 11 a.m. Central.

Five Updates

Run Workflow on Demand for a Set of Records

Chris shared his screen and went first with this one. It looked to him like HubSpot had heard my call-out at the end of yesterday's show, so it moved to the top of the list. The update lets you manually trigger a workflow for a set of records in Agent Hub's workflow builder. You can use a workflow that only runs when someone clicks run and picks the records, or, for most triggers, choose to run it manually for a set of records from a segment or custom criteria. Before this, you could only run it for one record.

We spent a minute looking for Agents in the nav, which is a good snapshot of where HubSpot is right now. "This is a crazy time where there's people in old nav and new nav."

Why it matters: manually choosing when a workflow runs, and for which records, gives you more control, and it already exists in the legacy workflow tools. I mentioned the same pattern in passing yesterday. "I know HubSpot's been encouraging people to build first in the new builder. And I think along with that, people are probably hitting things like this where they are expecting it from the old builder."  Expect more of these parity gaps to close.

Madelyn asked about a gap that is still open. "I was working in a lot of workflows yesterday and realized, well, I'm curious, has anybody else noticed that you can't download a screenshot of the workflow in the new workflow builder yet?"  I had raised that with someone at HubSpot on the UNBOUND floor, and the old builder's version is not great either. Chris's workaround for now is a fun one. "Pull up a conversation with Breeze and tell it to make you a visual and just see what happens."

For more details: Run Workflow on Demand for a Set of Records.

Partner Portability

This was my pick, which Chris confirmed when he asked whose it was, and I will admit I read the title and had no idea what it meant. When Madelyn asked if there had been anything on portability yet, I was no help. "I don't know what that word means, so I don't think so."  Madelyn knew exactly what it was. "They hinted at it at Unbound."  And for her it is personal. "This has been my biggest wish list item coming out of Unbound, and I'm sure so many people's."

Chris read the update. It is asset portability, which lets solutions partners copy reusable assets directly into client HubSpot portals, and there are three changes based on partner feedback: you can copy assets from demo accounts, send assets to clients in any region, and control which users can view and copy assets.

I remembered this one from partner day. "That came up at partner day. And then I feel like I never heard about it again."  It had gotten cheers in the room. Madelyn wondered if it had been in testing the whole time. "Maybe it was a private, a super secret private beta or something."  Chris checked the board for us. "I just confirmed that we've never talked about it on the show."  Madelyn asked him to open the Knowledge Base article too, which is a habit I have picked up, because even if you cannot get into a beta you can at least read about it.

Why it matters: rebuilding the same configuration for every client is slow, raises delivery costs and invites manual errors, and the limits had kept some partners from adopting portability fully. Chris had a note for everyone who is not a partner, too. "If you are not a partner and seeing this update, make this reason number ten, that the build is not the hard part anymore. It's figuring out how to make it work for your business…"

For more details: Reuse Proven Assets Across Client Portals with Portability.

Revenue Reporting from Contracts

Madelyn picked this one, and Chris reminded her she could pick anything, since we used almost all of yesterday's show on the news. "I am curious about the revenue reporting from contracts, I guess."  The page said live in one spot and public beta in another, with an expected date of November, so Chris made the call. "We're going to go with live in my portal. Maybe not in yours."

With the contracts object, detailed revenue data can live in HubSpot, including what was booked and committed and how it changed through expansions, contractions and renewals. The reporting package sits on top with prebuilt reports in the analytics suite, custom reports in the report builder, and revenue event data you can pull through the API. Madelyn put it in her own words. "It sounds like most of the reporting and analytics that we could do before was pipeline related, like the status of the contract."  She also had a small complaint. "I hate that they used the word contractions, but maybe that's just me."

Chris went deeper on why the structure matters. "It's basically the union of managing line items in the way that you've always wanted to before inside of, dare I say, a contract harness that helps you get to this super complex reporting."  He tied it to a renewals conversation he and I had earlier in the week, and gave admins the push. "Find a way to get into the contracts object, folks, so that you can have all of this back-end reporting that you say that you want."

Madelyn wondered how many people we know have made the move. "I'm curious how many people… people that I know personally that have switched over or started migrating to the contracts object. Because it's exciting. I haven't done it yet and I'm jealous."  Chris's count was short. "It's single digits."  Madelyn's reason for waiting is one I recognize. "I think it's also one of those things where I value it so much, it's so important that I get it right in my eyes that I keep procrastinating setting it up."  I have a couple of clients setting it up, and one that probably needs to, though we are doing something temporary for now. "But we're kind of putting a bandaid on it through the end of the year, at least, if not longer. We'll see how long that bandaid holds."

That led Madelyn and me into something personal, which is that we both think of ourselves as marketers and here we are in rev ops and sales ops territory. "I've been having a lot of similar thoughts lately, reflections on what these updates kind of mean for me personally, my career, my business."  Chris answered with the big picture. "Quote to Cash as a use case has been one of the hardest use cases to solve for with technology."  He said it was our first topic in the Unified Revenue View office hours, and that the real change is to the data model people are used to. "Up to now, the entire revenue reporting, if you said those words and it was HubSpot, then it's deals."

Why it matters: revenue is the clearest signal of how a business is doing, but only if you can see it, and this puts one-time and recurring revenue in the same place where marketing, sales, service and finance can all work from the same number. The catch is the one Madelyn named. It brings in everything that is hard about HubSpot usage and change management, inside the most important process in the company, so the setup is where the effort goes.

For more details: Revenue Reporting from Contracts.

Visible Payment Methods on the Invoice Page

Chris went with the next one, and Madelyn said it was her second highest pick. Your public invoice page now shows which payment methods are available for that invoice, from cards and ACH to a few acronyms that sent Madelyn looking. "So many payment methods. I don't even know them all."  Chris had the same reaction. "All of those acronyms."

He asked me why it matters, and I read it. Buyers only see a Pay Now button, so they do not know which payment options you accept until checkout, and showing them up front can reduce drop-off, build confidence the moment someone opens an invoice and get more invoices paid. "I think this is pretty solid."  Madelyn agreed it is a small thing that is not small. "It is a huge, I don't know, psychology thing, I guess. Just makes it easier."

Chris went through the limits. The block does not appear on PDF versions of the invoice, and it does not appear if only one payment method is available, which are both reasonable. Madelyn wondered about the next step. "I'm curious if your stored payment method is also identified on the invoice. That would be even better."

Why it matters: it is a tiny change with real effect. The person paying gets to know what they can do before they have to find out, and the team sending the invoice does not have to answer the question.

For more details: Visible Payment Methods on the Invoice Page.

Pay an Invoice with a Stored Payment Method API

That was the update Madelyn had in mind, and Chris said he would request it. The update lets sellers, partners and workflows charge a buyer's stored payment method against an invoice through a public API, with no manual click-through. Today every charge on a stored payment method needs a human admin to click through the HubSpot interface, which leaves billing automations without a way to finish the job, including automated dunning, usage-based billing close and agentic AR.

I read the Why and then I had to laugh at myself. "Just laughing at all those accounting words that I certainly know."  Chris's read on it was about the bigger picture. "All I can say is I think we're experiencing why it's been more difficult than you think to build e-commerce inside of HubSpot."  He wants each of those scenarios to be easy for the user, and he knows what that takes. "I want every one of those pieces to be easy. There's a lot of complexity behind the scenes."

Why it matters: if you are thinking about billing automation in HubSpot, this is the last step that was missing, charging without a person in the middle. It is early. "Both of those are in private beta, we should note."

For more details: Pay an Invoice with a Stored Payment Method API.

The Friday Horoscope: Audit Logs

Chris pointed out that it was Friday the 13th and we should do something horoscope related. "I think Friday the thirteenth, we should associate horoscope stuff."  Madelyn's standing Friday segment was ready for it. She pulled up Scorpio, which is still Scorpio season, and read us a reading on audit logs. Audit logs have been redesigned in public beta on every hub and tier, with separate tabs for security activity and CRM data changes, and clear labels showing whether a person or an agent made each change. On Enterprise the property editor has an audit section, and what a user can access now shows right on their user record.

Madelyn said it was not very Friday the 13th coded, but it did what the segment does for her. "As I always do, I found out about some product updates that I didn't know about before."  The one she keeps coming back to is permissions on the user record. "I love the idea of being able to pull up permissions, not in settings."

Chris took it somewhere I think is true. "The visibility is coming in all the places that we've always wanted it."  The challenge is that you have to go to the new place to find it, and the old places have to keep existing for a while. His answer was the one he keeps landing on. "Again, when you can talk to Breeze, Breeze knows about the new places, and that's probably the most likely path for most to understand that they even exist in the first place."

For more details: Audit Log Redesign.

Will It Breeze: Marketing Lens, ABM Tools and a Second Turn

Chris called it, and this time Will It Breeze ran on his screen. I asked which lens we were on. "What's the most Friday the Thirteenth coded job?"  Chris picked Marketing, spun the wheel, and the reels landed on this HubSpot portal, ABM tools, and flag anything that looks wrong. The prompt that came out of them was this one, and Chris read it. "As our head of marketing using ABM tools, can you flag anything that looks wrong across this HubSpot portal?"

Before it ran, we stopped on the phrase. "I have not seen ABM tools as a named app or whatever tool, I guess."  I was guessing along with her. "I'm thinking target accounts. There's also some page personalizations and things like that."  Breeze took a little over a minute, ran through steps like account coverage and readiness, and came back with an ABM audit.

It was not what we hoped for, and my reaction on the show was that it was a little disappointing. "But you know, it ebbs and flows. That's how it goes."  Madelyn thought that rhymed and wanted a clip. "Wow, that rhymed. I loved that. We should clip that."  Chris saw the other side of it. "Even though I don't like it, it's indicative of how recognizable the words were. This is a better prompt overall than we would usually get."

What we got back was a table of properties we did not recognize, and I said so. "This isn't that helpful. I think we need to work with Breeze a little bit. My advice, if you did this and got this back, is maybe talking to Breeze a little bit more about make this better."  Chris felt it too, and he spoke to Breeze directly. "You said you were going to flag stuff. And you gave me a row. A row with numbers of properties that I don't recognize. And I'm going to have to click into each one."

So Chris typed a second turn, asking Breeze to make it more visual and tell him the story. It built the visual live, and he noticed that too. "If you haven't seen this yet, folks, building it live, real time, Breeze is doing that. They're continuing to bring in experiences that you're used to."  The difference was clear to him right away. "I'd say this is immediately much more valuable than the other thing."  I agreed. "This is immediately better than the first round, and you didn't have to say that much, which is a good starting place."

The lesson Chris took from it is the one I am taking with me. "Nobody's … ask for the story. That's the problem. You want to know the story. Just tell me what's going on over there is usually what is behind the request, right?"  He added what that means for how we ask. "When you get specific like that, you're going to drive Breeze in a very specific direction, right?"  And his personal takeaway made us laugh. "We're getting used to Breeze being super awesome out of the gate."  And now, he said, he has learned he is done using the phrase ABM tools.

Madelyn had a reason it may have been confused. "Not many people even know what ABM tools means, even as a marketer. So I think that's probably part of why it doesn't know immediately what we want."  And she did the thing every transcript needs. "At least for the transcript, if we haven't said it already, ABM means account-based marketing."  Chris wrapped it. "We got there on the second turn. That's not so bad."

See the prompt and more: Will It Breeze: ABM Tools and a Second Turn.

The Close

With a few minutes left, the conversation went to the Wikipedia game, which I have been watching on TikTok. "I've been watching a lot of the TikTok videos on people in Wikipedia and see how quickly they can get from… trying to think of a non-controversial thing and nothing's coming."  The version I wanted to try is a click count. "How many clicks does it get you to go on Wikipedia from the Unbound Wikipedia page to My Little Pony?"  Madelyn thought it should have a HubSpot version. "We should do it like a HubSpot knowledge base version of that."  Chris had the last word on it. "We either just learned why Casey needs a vacation for what she will be doing on her vacation. One of those."

Hubsessed Office Hours with George B. Thomas are later today at 11 a.m. Central, and 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 on the next show.