25 HubSpot Updates in 2025
It's Thanksgiving week so here are the HubSpot updates I'm thankful for on behalf of franchisors using HubSpot for frandev.
In This Lab Report
In a year where there have been too many HubSpot updates to keep track of, I’m taking this Thanksgiving week to note 25 I’m thankful for because they’ve made managing HubSpot for franchisors better in some meaningful way, large and small.
The 25 HubSpot Updates to be thankful for:
1. Time Since and Time Until Properties
What it is: New calculated property types that count days between today and a date property—either in the past (Time Since) or future (Time Until).
How I use it: I create Time Until properties for tracking days until Close Date, franchise agreement expirations, and onboarding deadlines. Time Since properties track days elapsed since FDD signing, territory selection, or last broker contact. These power aging deal reports, workflow triggers, and executive dashboards showing how long deals have been stuck at critical milestones.
2. SmartCRM Enterprise…for $75/mo!
What it is: HubSpot made some great enterprise features—Sandbox, Custom Events, Custom Objects, and Field-level permissions—available at $75/month instead of requiring full Enterprise Hub licenses.
How I use it: FranDev Lab upgraded immediately. I recommend this to every client who doesn’t have Enterprise Hubs yet. The Sandbox (for building and testing without touching live data) and Field permissions are two immediately useful features for protecting your Franchise data.
3. New Workflow Trigger Picker
What it is: Redesigned workflow enrollment trigger interface with unified search and an explore view that surfaces available trigger options.
How I use it: Some people in the HubSpot community didn’t like this. I love it. It makes finding triggers faster and there are a lot of powerful approaches to triggering workflows that were previously harder to find and that many admins overlooked.
4. Custom Properties on Meeting Records
What it is: Ability to create custom properties directly on Meeting records, treating them more like a standard object.
How I use it: FranDev Lab’s Call Catalyst AI uses these custom properties to store Scoring data for diligence calls, whether a meeting needs to be reviewed, and lots of other data.
5. Data Studio and Datasets Updates
What it is: Major improvements to HubSpot’s reporting infrastructure, with Datasets being the standout feature for creating curated, safe reporting data sources. The power of these updates is hard to overstate.
How I use it: I create pre-filtered Datasets with custom metrics that franchises can use for reporting. It makes building sophisticated reporting faster and far less error prone because it doesn’t require everyone to be experts at filters and data models.
6. Board View on More Index Pages
What it is: Kanban-style board views available on Contact and Company Index Pages, grouped by dropdown properties.
How I use it: Any dropdown properties that you want to see either as a process (Discovery Day registration, Lead Status, etc.) or as “category buckets” like leads by FDD Status (”Not Sent, “FDD Sent”, “FDD Executed”, “Cooling Off”, “Blackout”, etc.) can be visualized as a board and not just a list.
7. Meetings Index Page
What it is: A dedicated Index Page for viewing, filtering, and managing all Meeting records in one place.
How I use it: Admins can use this for reviewing problems with Meeting records or data. Dales/Development leaders can you use it for quick overview of their team’s meetings (Today, last week, etc). Combine with Outcomes and custom properties like the Call Catalyst AI Score for a meeting and you get a powerful way to stay on top of diligence meetings.
8. Breeze Assistants and Knowledge Vaults
What it is: Custom AI assistants that can reference uploaded business knowledge through Knowledge Vaults, making them contextually aware of your specific processes and information.
How I use it: I create franchise-specific Breeze Assistants using knowledge vaults loaded up with process documentation and policies to give teams on-demand sidekicks to help them with their day-to-day tasks and answer questions.
9. The New Theme
What it is: Visual design refresh of the HubSpot interface with improved contrast and cleaner aesthetics.
How I use it: It’s a great design refresh and the increased contrast is easier on the eyes.
10. New Segment Filter Builder
What it is: Redesigned interface for building Segment (List) filters.
How I use it: The new builder and preview make building complex Segments easier. And building Segments is a major part of making HubSpot work for Franchisors.
11. Index Page Report View
What it is: Ability to switch any filtered Index Page view to Report View, instantly creating visualizations of the filtered records.
How I use it: This is my go-to tool for quick pipeline diagnostics. Filter the Deal Index to Aging Deals and visualize the Deal Stage with Pie Graph, for example.
12. Brand Context for AI
What it is: Centralized location to define brand voice, positioning, and guidelines that AI features can reference when generating content.
How I use it: This is a “checklist” implementation item, but the more you use HubSpot for content, the more important this is. Its the foundation I hope to see HubSpot build on so we can provide even more context to tailor AI for franchisors using HubSpot.
13. Conditional Center Column Cards and Tabs
What it is: Ability to show or hide Record cards and tabs based on property values, creating dynamic layouts that adapt to record uses.
How I use it: The easy win here is to create different Contact and Deal record experiences not just for Teams (which was possible before) but for the state of record. If a Contact is a broker, show the “Broker” tab with data and reports about their leads and relationships. If a Deal has made it past Territory selection, show a card with their Territory data.
14. Create Properties with Breeze
What it is: AI-assisted property creation that can generate properties from natural language descriptions.
How I use it: Right now this works best with simple properties (eg not Rollups, Calculations, etc.) but I’m looking forward to this improving.
15. Phone Number Validation in Workflows
What it is: Built-in workflow actions to validate phone number format, set country codes, and standardize formatting without external tools.
How I use it: I set up workflows that validate phone (and mobile) number data any time it changes to minimize bad data and make sure the records are SMS-ready.
16. URL Property Type
What it is: New property type specifically for URLs, with proper formatting.
How I use it: No more unvalidated Single List Text props for URLs. I commonly create URL properties in HubSpot for mapping relationships to documents or records in other systems.
17. Highly Sensitive Data Properties
What it is: Enhanced security for properties containing highly sensitive data like tax IDs, this provides additional access controls and excluding them from certain features.
How I use it: HubSpot properties can store “normal” data, sensitive data, and highly sensitive data. It’s a violation of HubSpot terms and a big legal and security risk to store your data incorrectly.
18. Color Coded Dropdown Options
What it is: Visual color coding for dropdown property options, making them easier to scan and select.
How I use it: Color code dropdowns anywhere it makes sense. FDD Execution Status is a common one.
19. Meetings Data in Custom Report Builder
What it is: Meetings available as a data source in Custom Report Builder.
How I use it: This is an ideal way to build build reports on meetings: Meetings created this week, scheduled for this week, outcome by Rep, etc.
20. New Stage Properties: Date Entered Current Stage and Time in Current Stage
What it is: Automatic system properties tracking when a Deal record entered its current stage and how long it’s been there.
How I use it: These make aging deal identification and lot easier and give us a lot more flexibility for automation in Deal stages.
21. Generate Calculated Property Formulas with AI
What it is: Breeze assistant within calculated property creation that generates formulas based on natural language descriptions.
How I use it: It doesn’t always get it perfect (it is AI after all) but any time I need to create a new formula field I try this first. The most common error it makes on basic formulas is picking the wrong properties, which is easy to correct and faster the writing the entire formula from scratch.
22. Rename HubSpot Defined Objects
What it is: Ability to rename standard HubSpot objects using terminology that fits your business.
How I use it: Probably 75% of portals I work in renamed at least one object the week this was released. Aligning HubSpot with your internal terminology makes every conversation less confusing.
23. Deal Metrics Customization
What it is: The metrics appear on the Deal Index Page header can now, finally, be customized.
How I use it: Add metrics to see things like “Total Territories” in the pipeline at a glance.
24. Enroll Records in Workflows from a Card
What it is: One-click workflow enrollment to trigger specific automations without navigating to the workflows tool.
How I use it: Think about any automation that could or should be triggered by a User. It could be turned into a “quick action” like this. Creating a Deal, Disqualifying a Lead, Sending a Contact to Non-marketing status, etc.
25. Property Fill Rate in Settings
What it is: Visual indicator in property settings showing what percentage of records have values populated in that property.
How I use it: I use this constantly when auditing franchise portals or reviewing properties. Are they really being used? Is the data as complete as we think it is?