Use delays in your workflows

When creating a workflow, use delays to space out workflow actions, time your email sends, and create a more personalized experience for your prospects and customers. 

Add delays to workflows

Add delays to your workflow depending on how you would like to pause your workflow actions. There are six types of delays:

• Calendar date: delays enrolled records until a specific date. Use this delay when you want an action to execute only on a specific date. 
• Date or datetime property: delays enrolled records until a specific date in a date property or datetime in a datetime property. Use this delay when you want an action to execute only on the date based on a specific date property. 
• Event occurrence: delays enrolled records until they complete an event, such as a form submission or website page visit. Use this delay when you want to pause enrolled records until a specific action is taken. You can also base this delay on internal events, such as task completions.
• Set amount of time: delays enrolled records for a specific amount of days, hours, and minutes. Use this delay when you want to pause all enrolled records for the same amount of time between workflow actions.
• Day of the week: delays enrolled records until specific days of the week. Use this delay when you want an action to execute only on the specified days. 
• Time of day: delays enrolled records until a specific time. Use this delay when you want an action to execute only at certain times. 

Please note: the above delay types aren't available in Specific date and Contact date property workflows. Instead, delay actions are set relative to the central date or date property. Learn more about scheduling actions in date-based workflows.

Delay until a calendar date

Use the Delay until a calendar date action to pause records until a specific date. If a date has already passed when a record enters the delay, the record will immediately proceed to the next action which will execute immediately. After, the record will continue moving through the workflow.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Workflows.
• Click the name of a workflow.
• In the workflow editor, click the + plus icon.
• In the left panel, click Delay.
• Click the Delay type dropdown menu and select Until a calendar date.
• Select the specific date and time of day.
• Select which timezone the delay should be based on:
  
  • To base the selected time on your HubSpot account timezone, select Use account time zone.
  • To base the selected time on the contact's time zone, select Use contact time zone.
    • If the contact has a value in their IP time zone property, HubSpot will use that time zone.
    • If the contact doesn't have a value for that property, the account's time zone will be used instead.

• To execute different actions based on whether or not the set date has passed, select the Yes, add a branch checkbox.
  
  • The branch will contain two branches: On the date and After the date. For example, you can create a workflow that delays until August 31st at 10 AM. At which point, it sends an email containing a webinar link. After the date, you can direct any subsequent contacts who enroll in the workflow to receive a different email that informs them the original webinar is over and provides a list of upcoming webinars they can attend instead. 
  • If you did not select the checkbox, enrolled records will immediately proceed to the next action after your configured delay.
• At the top, click Save.
  
  

Delay until a date or datetime property 

Use this delay to pause records until a date or datetime from a property. For example, you can use the On date option to delay the sending of an email based on the contact's birthday property. 

The action can be performed on the date, before the date, or after the date. If a date has already passed when a record enters the delay, the actions associated with the delay will be skipped. The object will then move to the actions after the delay and continue moving through the workflow.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Workflows.
• Click the name of a workflow.
• In the workflow editor, click the + plus icon.
• In the left panel, click Delay.
• Click the Delay type dropdown menu and select Until a date property. The next action will be delayed until a specific date property of the enrolled object meets the criteria you configure.
• Click the Property dropdown menu and select a property.
• Under Perform this action, select the On date, Before date, or After date ciradio button.
  • If you select Before date or After date, enter the number of days, hours, or minutes before or after the date property you selected.
• In the Time of day section, configure when you'd like the action to execute:
  • Use the time from the date property: use the time value from a datetime property. This option will only appear with compatible datetime properties. If not, the option will be greyed out. 

• • Choose a custom time: set a custom time for your action to execute. You can choose to use your account's timezone or your contact's timezone. 

• To execute different actions based on whether or not the set date has passed, select the Yes, add a branch checkbox.
  
  • The branch will contain three branches: On the date, After the date, and Date property unknown.
  • If you did not select the checkbox, enrolled records will immediately proceed to the next action after your configured delay.
• At the top, click Save.
   

Delay until event occurrence

Use this delay to pause records until a specified event occurs. For example, delay a contact until they visit a page or fill out a form. If an event has already happened when a record enters the delay, it will not immediately exit the delay. Records will only exit the delay if the event occurs while the record is in the delay. 

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Workflows.
• Click the name of a workflow.
• In the workflow editor, click the + plus icon to add a workflow action.
• In the left panel, click Delay.
• Click the Delay type dropdown menu and select Until an event occurs.
• To base the delay on an event that happens to enrolled records in the workflow, such as a contact's form submission or email open: 
  • Click the Data source dropdown menu and select [Object] in this workflow.
  • Click the Event dropdown menu and select an event.
  • Scroll or type to search, then select a property to filter by.
  • Select an option, then set your criteria.
  • Once you've set your criteria, click Apply filter. Records that meet the criteria will exit the delay. 
     

• To base the delay on an event that happens in relation to an output from an earlier action in the workflow, such as until a previously created task is marked as complete: 
  • Click the Data source dropdown menu and select Output from earlier action in this workflow.
  • If you have more than one action, click Choose action and select a prior action from the workflow, such as a previous Create task or Create record action. Actions that cannot be used will be grayed out. 
  • Click the Event dropdown menu and select an event.
  • Scroll or type to search, then select a property to filter by.
  • Select an option, then set your criteria.
  • Once you've set your criteria, click Apply filter. When the associated output has met the criteria, the enrolled record will exit the delay. 
     

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• After setting the delay event, set the amount of time that a contact will wait until being released from the delay:
• To execute different actions based on whether or not the event criteria has been met after the set date has passed, select the Yes, add a branch checkbox. If you did not select the checkbox, enrolled records will immediately proceed to the next action after your configured delay.

• At the top, click Save.

Delay for a set amount of time

Use this delay to pause records for a specified number of days, hours, and minutes.

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Workflows.
• Click the name of a workflow.
• In the workflow editor, click the + plus icon.
• In the left panel, click Delay.
• Click the Delay dropdown menu and select SFor a set amount of time.
• Set how long the delay will last by using the Days, Hours, and Minutes fields. 
• Click Save. 
  
  

Delay until a day or time

Use these delay types to pause your workflow until specific days of the week or time of day. For example, if you're using a workflow to send promotional emails, you can add this type of delay before the email send action to pause delayed contacts until Tuesday at 11:00 AM.

When using this type of delay, please be aware of the below:

• If you add multiple days to the delay, records will exit the delay on the soonest available day. For example, if your delay includes Monday and Thursday, any contact who enters the delay on Tuesday will be released on Thursday.
• If you only add a time to the delay with no days selected, records will exit the delay at the next selected time. For example, if the delay is set to 2:00 PM and a contact enters the delay on Monday at 9:50 PM, they'll exit the delay on Tuesday at 2:00 PM.
• If you don't add a time of day to the delay, records will exit the delay on the selected day at the same time they entered it. For example, if your delay is set to Wednesday and a contact enters the delay on Monday at 9:50 PM, they will exit the delay on Wednesday at 9:50 PM.

To add this type of delay:

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Workflows.
• Click the name of a workflow.
• In the workflow editor, click the + plus icon.
• In the left panel, click Delay.
• Click the Delay dropdown menu and select Until a day of the week or Until a specific time of day. 
• To add which days of the week to the delay, click the Delay until dropdown menu and select the checkbox next to the days you want to add. 
• In the Time of day section, you can select from the following:
• Use the same time of day the delay started:
• Choose a custom time: 
  
  • To base the selected time on your HubSpot account timezone, select Use account time zone.
  • To base the selected time on the contact's time zone, select Use contact time zone. If the contact has a value in their IP time zone property, HubSpot will use that time zone. If the contact doesn't have a value for that property, the account's time zone will be used instead.
• At the top, click Save.
   

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View records waiting in a delay

• In your HubSpot account, navigate to Automations > Workflows.
• Click the name of a workflow.
• In the workflow editor, click Active [records] in this action in the delay action.
   
  
  
• In the left panel, review the records waiting in the delay and the time remaining for each record. 
  
  

Edit a delay

Editing a delay will affect any records that are currently waiting in the delay.

• When you delete a delay, records waiting in the delay will immediately proceed to the next action.
• When editing a Delay until a day or time delay, the delay will be recalculated to be in the future. Records waiting in the delay will continue to delay until that future day or time. However, if you edit the delay to be the current day with no specific time, delayed records will exit the delay immediately.

• When you edit a Delay for a set amount of time delay, the records waiting at the delay will immediately be rescheduled. Rescheduling will take into account the amount of time that has already passed in the original delay.
  • If you make a delay longer, delayed records will be rescheduled to complete the remainder of the new delay length. For example, if you adjust a delay from one hour to two hours, records that have already waited 30 minutes will wait for an additional hour and 30 minutes.
  • If you make a delay shorter, records will either be rescheduled to the new length, or exit the delay. For example, if you adjust a delay from two hours to one hour, a record that's waited for 30 minutes will wait for an additional 30 minutes. A record that's waited an hour and 30 minutes will exit the delay immediately.
• Editing the property value or set date associated with a Delay until a date delay will affect the delay for all records waiting in the delay:
  
  • If the property value or Calendar date is changed to a date further in the future, the delay will extend accordingly.
  • If the property value or Calendar date is changed to an earlier date, the delay will shorten accordingly.
  • If the property value or Calendar date is changed to a date in the past, the delay will end and the record will automatically move on to the next action.