Playbook: HubSpot Custom Objects
Complete flexibility and control to match your CRM data to your business. Because every business is unique.
If your company’s data can’t be bucketed under conventional HubSpot objects - eg: Contacts, Companies, Deals, Tickets or Products - custom objects allow you to organize the exact information you need inside your HubSpot CRM.
HubSpot Custom Objects work just like standard objects so you can run reports, trigger workflows, personalize website content and more, based on custom object data.
This is our playbook
The information below outlines the process we go through when planning and developing custom objects for HubSpot Customers.
Step 1. Qualify the object
The first step is creating custom objects is about deciding if you actually need Custom Objects in the first place!
Before any custom object planning or development takes place, we work with our clients to rule out the possibility of leveraging one of HubSpot’s native objects to ensure that creating a custom object is in fact the best course of action.
Step 2. Data planning
What data is being stored and how will it interact with the rest of the customer’s HubSpot tools eg: Lists, Email Sequences, Workflows & Automations, Reports and Dashboards.
2.1 Define object schema or properties
To create a custom object, we first need to define the object schema. The schema includes the object name, properties, and associations to other CRM objects.
2.2 Define naming convention
The name of the custom object can not be changed once created so careful consideration is applied to ensure the custom object’s naming conventions are meaningful to all parties who interact with them as they are used throughout the customer's account.
2.3 Define object associations
HubSpot will automatically associate the custom object with the emails, meetings, notes, tasks, calls, and conversations objects, and we can further associate your custom object with standard HubSpot objects and even other Custom Objects.
During this stage of planning, we generally create an Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD) to define relationships of your HubSpot data and determine how the Custom Objects will fit into your CRM.
Step 3. Creating the custom object
💡 The only way to define a custom object is via HubSpot's API so this step requires a developer.
Now that the custom object has been designed and planned, it’s time to create the custom object in the HubSpot customer’s Portal.
To create the custom object schema we make POST requests to the HubSpot API using Postman, a platform designed specifically for working with APIs.
For more information of using HubSpot API to create custom objects please refer to HubSpot API docs.
Step 4. Integrating the custom object with other HubSpot tools
At the point the custom object should be live in the customer’s Portal. Depending on the goals of the customer, we will connect the custom object data to the rest of HubSpot tools enabling usage of the custom object with HubSpot Lists, Email Sequences, Workflows & Automations, Reports and Dashboards.
Step 5. Testing
As will all data stores, testing is a critical component of the job. During this final stage we will test the HubSpot tools which interact with the custom objects to ensure everything is connected and working properly.
Related Resources
For more information on HubSpot custom objects please refer to the following items
HubSpot Academy: Custom Objects and Other Tools
- Lesson: Introduction to the HubSpot APIs
- Dev Docs: Custom objects
- Documentation: Create Custom Properties in HubSpot
- Documentation: Custom Objects API documentation
- Knowledge base: Use custom objects
- Tool: Entity Relationship Diagram (ERD)