Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Intro (00:01):
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
heroes as we help you educate,empower, and execute. Hub
(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Max Cohen (00:52):
I feel so activated right now, dude. I'm educated.
Me too. I'm educated.
George B. Thomas (00:58):
Yeah. Hibernated and educated.
Together. Oh, hibernated,acticated. Wow.
Dude, you
Max Cohen (01:06):
know how you got into
Uh-oh. Last week?
George B. Thomas (01:08):
Is this first of all, is this g rated, p g
rated?
Liz Moorehead (01:11):
Adjudicated is a legal term.
George B. Thomas (01:13):
Sure. No. I mean, Max Max said, do you know
what I got into? Right?
Max Cohen (01:17):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (01:18):
Oh. So I was asking you, is
that PG or G rated?
Max Cohen (01:22):
It's rated. Oh.
Oh. It's rated a level.
Liz Moorehead (01:27):
Sure. That's a rated level. Thank
George B. Thomas (01:28):
you, Max. It is. Mhmm.
Max Cohen (01:31):
It's an answer.
George B. Thomas (01:31):
What'd you get into?
Max Cohen (01:33):
I'm getting into a little bit of a game dev.
George B. Thomas (01:35):
Oh. Nice.
Max Cohen (01:36):
I'm learning a platform called Godot.
George B. Thomas (01:40):
Wait. Godot. What's it called? Godot.
Max Cohen (01:44):
It's French.
Liz Moorehead (01:45):
No. Let's see.
Max Cohen (01:45):
G o d o t. Godot. Yeah. Godot.
George B. Thomas (01:48):
Yeah. I got some tissues for that.
Max Cohen (01:50):
Yeah. Oh. I haven't learned how to make tissues yet,
but I did make a table andboxes.
George B. Thomas (01:55):
Oh, nice.
Max Cohen (01:56):
And I put the box on the table.
George B. Thomas (01:58):
So is this like kind of like a is it like
really high definition or is itmore like the eight pixel type
game?
Max Cohen (02:06):
It's three d.
George B. Thomas (02:07):
Oh, three d.
Max Cohen (02:08):
It's three d. Oh. I I made some low poly textures if
that's what you're asking me.Wow. I'd be up in I do be
up in that block bench. You know what I mean?
Painting some
Liz Moorehead (02:16):
pixels. Right there.
Max Cohen (02:17):
16 bits.
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:19):
Yeah. Yeah.
Max Cohen (02:20):
Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:21):
I'm not sure how this relates to sandboxes in
HubSpot at all, but hey.
Max Cohen (02:26):
Because it's like I'm playing in
a sandbox. Oh,
George B. Thomas (02:29):
the sandbox. You made boxes. And
Max Cohen (02:31):
he made a box.
George B. Thomas (02:32):
Table. Just Looks like I got my
Max Cohen (02:35):
own virtual sandbox and playing in is what I'm
saying.
George B. Thomas (02:37):
Wow. You just started real sandboxing?
Liz Moorehead (02:40):
Sandboxing. No sandboxing this weekend. I have
been binge watching Game ofThrones, and I had a really good
omelet. So I'm looking to get myfill of sandboxes
Max Cohen (02:49):
Wow.
Liz Moorehead (02:49):
This morning. So, George, I actually wanna tee you
up for today's conversation ifwe're ready to dig into it. So
Yeah. You got a ping from one ofour favorite friends of the pod,
Chris Carillan, who is askingfor this episode. Talk to me
about what he was asking for.
George B. Thomas (03:08):
We were talking about customer platform
updates. And I do believe thatwe ran across a product update
that is the new standard sandboxwith improved production
metadata and deploy toproduction supported assets.
That is the longest name of anupdate to But a HubSpot we were
(03:33):
going over that and Chrisreferenced like, Hey, you know,
it'd be great to have Chad, heliterally named Chad wax nerdy
because Chris really loves whenChad wax nerdy on things on the
show. We should see if Chad canwax nerdy and Max can wax nerdy
(03:53):
on sandboxes. And I think thatthat would be a useful episode.
And I said, Chris, I thinkyou're right, because one thing
that I don't do a lot of inHubSpot over the last eons and
some of the grandpa of Inboundand grandpa of HubSpot,
sandboxes. Most of my clientsare small to medium sized
(04:14):
businesses. They have marketingor sales pro or less, which by
the way, we'll get to why that'simportant to why I don't really
do sandboxes a lot. And so herewe are, we're having an episode,
we're talking about sandboxes.If you've ever been curious if
you should have
Max Cohen (04:31):
a
George B. Thomas (04:31):
sandbox environment, what a sandbox
environment is, maybe some ofthe cool things that Chad or Max
have done with sandboxes, wellthen buckle up because we're
playing in the sand today. Nowalso my beginning joke might
make a little more sense or usrambling about boxes might make
a little more sense too. We
Max Cohen (04:53):
got there.
Liz Moorehead (04:53):
We there guys. We got there. No, I personally am
excited about this episodebecause again, I play in very
specific parts of HubSpot and Idon't often get to learn or hear
about these more technicalareas. Let's start with that
kind of obvious question, right?Like I've heard of sandbox
environments in HubSpot.
(05:15):
Sandbox environments are notnecessarily a new HubSpot
specific concept, But when we'retalking about HubSpot sandbox
for today's conversation, whatspecifically are we talking
about? The nerd and make it useraccessible. What are we talking
about?
Max Cohen (05:34):
So, like, imagine if you could take your HubSpot
account and duplicate it so youcould go play with it and test
stuff without breaking the realstuff.
George B. Thomas (05:47):
Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. Before Chad goes, I I
actually I'll be completelyhonest with everybody listening
to this. I took thisconversation and these questions
to my clone.
And I asked my clone, what theheck is a HubSpot sandbox? And
my clone said, the HubSpotsandbox is like your personal
testing laboratory. Max, that'sliterally what you just said
(06:10):
inside It's of a safe, isolatedenvironment where you can
experiment, test, and refinechanges without messing up your
live customer facing data. Thinkof it as a practice field. One
of the things we love to do iswe can go down to South Carolina
and we can watch the Pantherspractice before they actually
(06:33):
hit the big so it says, think ofit as a practice field where you
can try out new plays beforetaking them to the big game.
I was like, that's a pretty cooloverview. That's a cool
overview. Chad, where where doesyour brain
Max Cohen (06:44):
go?
Yeah. Well, just, in general, like to break it down
when it comes to development asa whole, like, if you're gonna
be developing anything, whichlet's be real, like, why you
know, people may call, oh, hey.We're CRM super admins or
whatever. But at the end of theday, what you're doing is you're
building, you're developing somesort of process or some sort of
(07:05):
new thing for somebody to use alot of times when you're adding
any kind of functionality orfeature to HubSpot. Just in
general software development,typically, you want to have a
few environments, actually.
You wanna have a productionenvironment, you wanna have a
test environment, and you wannahave a dev environment for the
developers to go play around in.Now I used to work at a company.
(07:26):
We used to call our devenvironment the trash can. And
then when we'd wanna go in anddo this little bit of testing on
a new build, they'd like, yeah.Get out of my trash can.
You know?
George B. Thomas (07:36):
Like That's funny.
Max Cohen (07:37):
I'd like wanna go in early to see new features before
they're ready. Like, get out ofmy trash can. It's not working.
You know? And then they likepush it up to test once it was
ready for somebody to like makesure that it's not really gonna
mess up everybody's world.
Right?
Yeah.
Now we don't have that here in HubSpot sandbox. We
have two separate isolatedenvironments, but what we do
(08:00):
have is the ability to duplicatethat live environment into what
I would probably call a testenvironment. Right?
Yeah. And I think also it's important to kinda
like explain the differencebetween this and other ways that
you can just kind of like playaround with stuff. So like, if
you just wanna if like you'resomeone who just wants to like
futz around with HubSpot, youcan go create a developer
(08:23):
account and create what's calleda test account, which is
essentially a, a blank slateeverything enterprise HubSpot
account. The only difference isyou can't send emails to people.
Right?
So it renders it functionallyuseless for anyone who wants to,
like, do what he can Yeah.Really Yeah. So that's a
developer sandbox that or orsorry. A test portal. We don't
(08:46):
wanna call those sandboxes.
Sandbox specifically, the bigdifference is that it's gonna
duplicate the way that yourportal's already set up. So,
like, imagine your layouts, yourrecords, your custom objects,
your properties, and then youcould even bring in, I think
what is it now?
George B. Thomas (09:03):
Like,
Max Cohen (09:03):
5,000 contacts.
Thousand of your most recent records or
something like objects or
something like that. Exactly. And you can bring those
in. So you can play with, like,real data, right, which is
great, but you're not gonnascrew up the original stuff. So,
like Yeah.
This is really, really good ifyou wanna test a new workflow
that you build so you can seehow it interacts with like
(09:24):
stuff. Or if you wanna like ifyou're doing any sort of like
big data restructuring exercise,right, this is a great place to
do it because you can kinda seehow it'll all work without
messing up your data structurein your regular portal. Right?
So there's a million reasons whyyou might want to use the
sandbox.
George B. Thomas (09:41):
I think too,
I'm just I have a jump clarifying question.
For
Liz Moorehead (09:44):
Oh, yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:44):
Yep. Yeah. So let me jump in for one second.
One of the things too, becauseMax, you did say development
sandbox. And then also what youguys kind of backed up and then
alluded to was a standardsandbox.
And like right now, you, and itmay be because I have this beta
on, or it may have been that wayhistorically. Again, remember, I
(10:06):
don't do a lot with sandboxes,but I just want everybody to
know the experience now. If yougo in and you create a new
sandbox, you actually have theability to pick one or the
other. You can pick a standardsandbox, which again, is kind of
that extensive copy ofproduction idea for like the
robust testing. It's the, youknow, the 5,000 contacts, the
production objects, the forms,the workflows, the emails, all
(10:28):
of that.
Or there is the developmentsandbox, which is like a minimal
copy of production for rapidtesting. So this is like when
you're gonna just test proofconcepts, test proof custom
cards, things like that. Goahead, Max.
Max Cohen (10:41):
But let me clarify something. I was referring to
developer test accounts, whichare a separate idea. So like,
but that's a good distinctiontoo. Right? In in when you make
a sand like when you have anenterprise HubSpot account, you
can make a sandbox and eitherhave it be a standard or a
developer sandbox.
(11:02):
And like a developer sandbox isgreat if you're trying to, like,
test an integration or some APIsor some, like, whatever stuff
that you're trying to like
Or you're trying to build a UI. Right?
Yep. Something like that. Yeah. Some sort of
extension. Right?
But you have to have anenterprise account in order to
build those. A developer testaccount, any random Joe Schmo
(11:23):
can go get a HubSpot developeraccount and spit up test
portals.
George B. Thomas (11:29):
Yeah. Yep.
Max Cohen (11:29):
Right? So like bucket that outside of this
conversation for anybodylistening. Right? Like, I know
there's like a lot of peoplelike, Oh, I don't have
enterprise. I can't a sandbox.
Nothing's stopping you fromgoing and building like proof of
concept stuff in a developertest account.
Yeah. 100%.
Literally nothing. Right? It just won't copy
anything from your portalbecause it's a disconnected idea
(11:53):
completely from like, you know,being related to your portal in
any way shape
or form.
George B. Thomas (11:58):
One thing I wanna double click on before I
then shut up and let Lizcontinue us down the path that
we're supposed to go down,because I find this very
interesting. As somebody who hasbeen helping train humans in
HubSpot for years and know thatthere are portals that have test
dash training for forms andthis, that, and the other thing
that have to go back and cleanup. If you have the enterprise
(12:20):
version and can't do a sandbox,one of the things that they have
as a bullet point is train newusers and explore features and
tools. In other words, it couldbecome the trash can of
training. You could do adevelopment sandbox, but it be
your training sandbox.
That's where you go and justtrain people in and all the
stuff could be littered aroundit and it not impact your actual
(12:45):
HubSpot portal where you're dayin, out. And people are like,
why is this test dash trainingworkflow in here? Anyway, I'll
shut up. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (12:52):
So I only had one clarifying question before we
moved on. Because George, I youand I have done a lot of work
together in HubSpot. Is thesandbox environment we're
talking about different fromcontent staging?
George B. Thomas (13:03):
Oh, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question. Yeah.
So completely different becausecontent staging is part of like
CMS or what is now Content Hub.And so if you want to deploy
website pages, landing pages,but be able to work on pages
that are already live, makeadjustments without anybody
seeing them, but be able to haveinternal teams preview them and
(13:25):
then push those pages live tothe same URL.
That's what content staging isfor. Very much just content
driven. By the way, not whywe're here, but I wish you could
actually do content stage blogs.But again, totally different
conversation. HubSpotdevelopment team, hopefully
you're listening to this orsomebody that knows the
(13:46):
development team.
Who knows? Maybe your mom'slistening to this and they'll
pass it on to you. Butcompletely different than like a
sandbox environment.
Max Cohen (13:54):
Hi. Yeah. That's like like, content sandbox, basically
Yeah.
In a way.
George B. Thomas (13:59):
But I love I love It's like content
Max Cohen (14:02):
test, probably. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (14:03):
But Yeah.
Max Cohen (14:04):
Or pre prod, maybe, and then maybe you'll call it.
Liz Moorehead (14:08):
Perfect.
Max Cohen (14:08):
Yeah. But anyway Alright.
Liz Moorehead (14:10):
Let's throw this out there, guys. What has
changed with HubSpot sandboxthat we're excited about? What's
the four one one?
George B. Thomas (14:16):
What's the scoop? Well
Max Cohen (14:18):
Yeah. So they had legacy sandbox before. Right?
And that's what they're callednow. So if you have an older
style sandbox, it's referred tonow as a legacy sandbox.
And then they have a new versionof the standard sandbox, which
essentially does a one timeimport of your current HubSpot
account. But there is a bit of adistinction between the old and
(14:44):
the new. Right? The old sandbox,it could continually get
refreshed like the legacy onewhere you could update it with
whatever the current structureof your current production
portal is now. That feature hasnot been added to the new
standard sandbox, but they addeda big one that people have been
(15:05):
wanting for a long time.
And this is killer for anybodywho is a standard, like is
managing one portal. Like ifyou're a HubSpot super admin of
one portal, this is like prettypretty epic, because you don't
have to pay for extra tools tosolve some of these problems.
And what it allows you to do isbasically reverse sync or they
(15:30):
call it a deploy to production
Yep.
From your sandbox. And it supports like five things
right now. Right now it supportsthe ability to like basically
clone your portal, add forms,lists, marketing emails,
objects, and propertystructures, and then workflows
(15:51):
that involve any of thosethings. I don't know for certain
though. I don't believe it'llpull up any workflow.
Like if you put custom code inthe workflow, it might not pull
it over or if you put you know,so there's a couple things that
it still won't do as far asreverse sync and those are the
(16:12):
main things that are supported.But when you're talking about
like, okay, well, what I'm gonnado is create an integration,
like, or add a new feature.Right? Like I was working with a
company and we added a contractmanagement system, RadAI. And so
we're doing this contractmanagement system and I was able
to install the integration, addadditional properties as to the
(16:37):
whole thing in sandbox and pushall of those property changes
back up to production.
Right? And all of the the therewas no new objects, but if there
was a new object, it would do itproperty groups. The it didn't
manipulate the, user interface,unfortunately. So that's also
something that it still doesn'tdo. But and, you know, we can
(17:00):
maybe double click on that laterwhen we're going into some more
of Luisa's questions.
But it's it's amazing now thatat least minimum you have a
baseline and this is the theworst this feature is ever gonna
be as we often say, right?
Yeah.
And they're only gonna be adding more and they're
looking for feedback on, youknow, what what's missing,
right? Well, what's missing isfor me, you know, user
(17:21):
interface, Right? Update theuser interface along with it
because often you wanna build agood user experience, not just,
oh, I don't know. Put the bitsand bobs in the back end and
then they'll all figure it outin production. You're gonna have
to redo whatever you did over insandbox and production.
Right?
Yeah. And also like a little bit of historical context
(17:41):
here too. Like sandboxes havebeen around for a while, but
they've never had the ability topush stuff back into the main
production portal. Right?
Yeah. And so that's what a lot of big enterprise
CRMs often have. Like, you know,if you get Dynamics three sixty
five, I mean, you have like Ithink you have because it's made
by Microsoft. Right? So theyhave like three layers.
Like, you can do the whole devtest prod thing that I described
(18:06):
basically in Dynamics, but alsoDynamics is a giant beast of a
system that's like basically,you have to be a developer to
use it.
Yeah. Now something important to note, as of the day
we're recording, this is August18 or no, not on eighteenth,
eleventh.
George B. Thomas (18:22):
The eleventh, man. Don't do that to us. Come
on.
Max Cohen (18:24):
I don't know why I did that. It's August 11. The
way the deployed so the deployedproduction stuff is in beta.
Right? Yeah.
And it's interesting because thelimitations around it are that
you can only deploy back net newstuff you've created, it doesn't
(18:49):
let you edit existing assets,which is a little bit goofy, but
again, worse it's ever gonna beright now. Yeah. Right? The
logical first step to any ofthis is recreating that new
stuff. Right?
Editing stuff is worlds morecomplicated. Right? Yeah. So
(19:10):
keep that in mind, depending onwhen you're listening to this
episode is that like the thedeploy to production feature is
very new. Yeah.
Right? And it's Mhmm. Half bakedat the moment. But
George B. Thomas (19:19):
Well, I think I think this is where I jump in
and say, listen, we're talkingabout a public beta. It it is a
beta version. So when Chad andMax say it's half baked or it's
the worst it'll ever be, it'sbecause it's a beta that once it
goes live, I'm sure a lot of thethings that we're talking about,
you know, maybe the product teamwill actually like tune in and
(19:41):
check out this episode. But alot of the things that we're
talking about might actuallyjust be in the actual new
sandboxes once they deploy thelive version. Because smart
humans like Chad Maxx and othersout there, maybe even listening
to this podcast, are leveragingit and using it.
Second thing I want to is, throwit is right now for anybody who
(20:03):
signs up for the beta, but thenalso it's enterprise customer
platform, content enterprise,marketing enterprise, ops
enterprise, sales enterprise,service enterprise. If you have
any of those enterprises, youcan turn on the sandbox feature
that we're talking about. Here'sa question that I'm going to
ask, and again, kind of goingoff the rails for a second, but
when you guys talk about thisDeploy Wizard, if it got
(20:27):
smarter, because it might not benow, but let me ask you a
question because my brain wentthere. Are we entering a world
where if you have an enterpriseset up in HubSpot and you've got
a sandbox where marketing andpeople should actually maybe
even be working. Like forinstance, if I was going to
create an email, do I create theemail in the sandbox and then
(20:48):
deploy it to the real one andthen send it from there?
Or is that overkill? You'retalking more like nerdy stuff.
Max Cohen (20:55):
Yeah. Complete overkill. I mean, because, like,
that's the thing. You shouldn'tbe afraid to build stuff in your
main portal. It's more so, Iwould say, untested fundamental
structural changes to the wayyour portal operates.
You should test drive it in thein the in the sandbox first.
Right? You don't wanna bespinning up a sandbox to go
(21:19):
build an email just to push itinto the Gotcha. Into the the
main portal. Right?
Like, you could still draft.Like, that doesn't to me
Send preview send and all
that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You have all the functions with that. If
you were like, I mean, if youreally needed to do something
like, you know, one of thethings they push back is lists.
Right?
(21:39):
And so if you had like propertystructure changes that you need
to make to make your data clean,it may be worth attempting to
build all of the lists thatwould like you segment all of
your customers after all ofthose net new properties were
changed or something along thoselines so that you could really
(22:00):
understand your segmentation.And unfortunately reports don't
push back, but that would be anice thing too is like, you
know, now you can make yourreports and it all works and
your lists validate everything,then you can push that all back
up to production. Now at leastyou can push the lists and the,
you know, stuff like that, thelists and the property changes.
(22:23):
I'm thinking at some point,there may be a world where they
need, like it's almost like acode merge editor or, like,
where when you're viewingchanges in code and there's,
like, the green and the red thatshows you, like, oh, these lines
were added. These lines wereremoved in this place.
You know, it's it's not quitethat nerdy, but, like, they will
(22:47):
probably need something likethat when they allow edits for
conflicts pushing back up, like,hey, these properties already
exist. Do you want you know,obviously, you change this, but
between the last time we saw itand now this was edited and this
was edited, do you want the copythat's in production or that's
(23:09):
in sandbox, right? They're gonnaneed like some level of conflict
changes where it scans and scansboth sides, runs through a
checklist of however many thingsthat it wants to confirm. And,
you you know, I'm sure they'lllet you just say choose all or
whatever if you wanted, but thatcould be dangerous. But, you
know, again, I think there's aworld where that's gonna need to
(23:32):
happen to allow non net new andan edit of existing assets.
George B. Thomas (23:37):
So So let me ask one more question because my
brain is going all kinds of likesideways, left, up, down over
here. And then Liz, I promiseI'll shut up and you can
continue to herd cats the restof the way through the show that
we need to. Just getting Hey,started
Liz Moorehead (23:51):
just giving space for nerds to be nerds. Nerd
away.
George B. Thomas (23:54):
I'm just getting started with HubSpot. I
fire up a sandbox. Do I go inand actually go to data
management and go to data model?And do I build my data model in
the sandbox? And then once I'mhappy with it in the sandbox,
deploy it to them.
Again, I'm trying to figure outthese scenarios where is that
(24:16):
old?
Max Cohen (24:16):
Like if you're just, yeah, if you're brand new
HubSpot, empty HubSpot.
Yeah. It's building prod.
Yeah, building prod because it's you're not
affecting anybody and you don'thave your whole list of contacts
or, you know, you haven'tuploaded all of your data in
there. The only time I mightsuggest that is if you're
(24:37):
planning on doing like a megamega upload or something like
that. Maybe what I might do isbuild what I think is the right
data structure in sandbox, pushthat data structure up to prod,
do a mega import inside of mysandbox and make sure everything
(24:59):
checks out. Otherwise, then Ihave the opportunity to nuke the
sandbox and pull that copy backfrom prod Yeah. Into sandbox.
Yeah. But, again, remember thatyou only have those five assets
to work with right now.
Yeah. Yeah. Also, like, I don't think anyone
should, you know, overthinkthis. Like Yeah. You can test
(25:23):
stuff in prod.
Like, it's not a not an issue.You know what I mean? It's just
like, it depends on the size ofits impact. You know what I
mean? And like how detrimentalit could be if it if it goes
bad.
Yeah. Right? Like, don't beafraid to like experiment in
production. Like, there areplenty of ways to, like when
you're building a workflow,there's plenty of ways to
isolate the workflow so itdoesn't touch your other data.
(25:44):
Like when you're, you know, soit's one of those things where
it's like, unless it's a really,really big project, it probably
doesn't need a sandbox.
George B. Thomas (25:53):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (25:53):
Right? So, because again, it's like a process to
spin it up, get all the stuffimported, like maybe delete it.
Well, you know what I mean? It'sa thing, right? It's not
a Yeah. Another thing too is like when you do a
sandbox, all the workflows thatyou have are turned off as after
the sandbox is created. So,like, whatever you built in
(26:16):
prod, you basically have to go II think it also I don't if the
new sandbox has import your userinterface, but the old one
definitely didn't. Right?
The record the record The
record structure.
Yeah. Oh, jeez. That would make me not even use it.
That's crazy. The old one definitely didn't. I haven't
checked the new one. Actually, Idon't even remember because it's
(26:38):
been like a little bit since Icreated my I I went in and did a
whole bunch of stuff in thereand pushed it up for an
integration that I was building.So but it was missing some stuff
still, unfortunately.
So I used another tool to importmy record structure and a couple
other things. Yeah. Love it. Andyeah. So that I think that
(26:58):
that's one of those thingsthat's a little tricky, right,
is making that decision.
But what I what I what you askedearlier, George, like, do I
build it in Sandbox? Actually,gonna change my answer to, like,
app brand new portal, probablynever in Sandbox. And the reason
is because of the limitedassets. Now in the future, if it
is like a full, you know,forward reverse kind of a thing,
(27:22):
you know, then you could doeither way. It depends on what
you really prefer.
Right? Just extra work, though. You know what I
mean? Like, if
if there's
nothing going on in production, then
Yeah. If there's nothing in production, but I
think the thing about it is,like, when it comes to, like, an
actual development life cycleand actually building things,
(27:43):
like, from the perspective of,like, if you were doing it from,
a development perspective, you'dalways start in dev no matter
what. You always start in dev.If you're developing something,
you always start in dev. Right?
True. I just think yeah. I just think, you know,
like, for for us to get to thatplace, like, it's obviously this
(28:05):
the sandbox has a long way to goin terms of what it can push to
production.
Exactly. Yeah.
Rebuilding shit manually, you know.
Yeah. If we're at a place where you're not having to
rebuild anything manually, andyou have the ability to do,
like, reverts almost like, youknow, you're you're working your
git repo. Right? Like, oh, I'mgonna go back to this check-in.
(28:26):
And then sandbox is back towhatever I built five check ins
ago, and then I can push thatall back up, you know, or
whatever.
Right? Like, those sort ofthings, I think, are
theoretically possible. But itit is gonna increase the
complexity as well to allow thatlevel of functionality. Right?
Right now, it is very turnkey.
(28:47):
It's like if these things workfor you, you click a button and
she works. Right?
Chad, you think they'll ever bring it down to,
pro?
I could see it. I mean, a lot of things that you
know, like, for example, customdatasets were enterprise. Now
you get a cut down version.Right? But they're Pro now.
You can make custom datasetswith custom calculated
(29:07):
properties in Pro. You have lessproperties you can make, but,
like, in a pinch, it will allowyou to make a report that you
absolutely never could have madein HubSpot before.
Liz Moorehead (29:17):
Yeah. So let me ask you
George B. Thomas (29:20):
guys this.
Max Cohen (29:21):
Totally possible.
Liz Moorehead (29:22):
We've talked a lot about really interesting
updates here, but is thereanything that's still missing
for us? Anything we still wantto see? Chad, I see that smile.
Max Cohen (29:33):
Yeah. Always. I mean, definitely, like version control
will be one thing for sure. Sothat's huge. We were just
talking about that.
And then additional assets,like, you're gonna ultimately
like, and Max, I mean, you youmentioned the edit. Right? It's
only net new properties. So ifyou need to edit the description
(29:54):
of a property, for example,you're going in and doing a mega
overhaul, and you just aretaking your time in sandbox and
maybe deleting properties thatdon't need to exist anymore,
adding descriptions toproperties that somebody just
jumped up and didn't put namesin, but you can't push those
changes right now up toproduction. Right?
(30:15):
So I think that'd be reallykiller. You know? So both delete
and edit would be amazing tohave even just on the property
schema level.
Yeah. And I think also just like record layout
stuff is a really big I mean,layout stuff is one of the
biggest reasons. Like I feellike sandboxes would be useful,
(30:35):
right? Just because you have todo It's a lot of work to go in
and completely like restructurelike your UI and your your
record layouts and all that kindof stuff. And, like, it's also
something that can, like, stoppeople dead in their tracks from
working because they, like,can't find where a piece of data
went or they don't know how tonavigate the tabs on a certain
record or where to find the datathey need, stuff like that.
(30:58):
Right? So I think, like, movingto support that as fast as
possible is probably a reallyimportant thing. So that and
also, like, I wonder if there'slike anything creative they can
do around how to handle likeconnected integrations. You know
what I mean? Like when you do adeveloper portal, like you don't
(31:19):
have any of your integrationsstill hooked up.
And not a developer portal, asandbox. Right? Yeah. So like
you gotta go like reinstallapps, reconnect stuff. Like
sometimes that's not so easywith like, you know, like, you
know, for when we have customersthat wanna do, you know, an
event happily sandbox, weeffectively have to give them
(31:39):
like another license for free togo do that.
Right? Which is, like, kindagoofy. You know? And so I I and
I'm not sure, like, what theanswer is to that because, like,
the developers and how theirapps works is always gonna be,
like, a variable there. Right?
Maybe it's
you just find They have to give a framework on the
app partner side for Sandbox.They have to actually have a
(31:59):
supported, you know, dev s orsorry, prod test branch, where
all your URLs change and all ofyour database changes, because
you can't just connect upsomebody's prod data. So that
also means that whatever thatpartner is has to have a level
of sandbox functionality fortheir tool in the first place.
George B. Thomas (32:19):
Interesting. It's almost like my brain goes
to my simple mind goes to, like,in the future, if it was just
almost a mirrored version. Likeand it automatically kept up to
date, but then you could, like,make changes and push it over
and then, like Mhmm. Yeah.Interesting.
Max Cohen (32:37):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah. I mean, I I think,
ultimately, that's that's wherethey're moving. Right?
Mhmm. But I'm sure there's, youknow, drawbacks with doing, a
complete mirror also. You know?Like, there's I think sometimes
there's there's a benefit tohaving it be a snapshot just in
that it's not gonna startchanging while other people are
(33:00):
making changes in production.You know what I mean?
And screwing up what you'redoing in sandbox, Right?
Yeah.
But yeah.
Yeah. So I did double check the new version of the
sandbox. It does not pull in theUI structure. So it still has
the default HubSpot about thisdeal card. I can think the
(33:22):
reason is because the if youhave integrated apps and they're
not there or something, I mean,maybe they just omit those.
But if those possibly couldcause some sort of issue, or if
you've installed, like a UIextension, so you made a custom
(33:45):
HubSpot UI extension and it's inprod, but it's not connected to
your sandbox, obviously, becausethat doesn't have, like,
splitting. I could expect thatthe hard library that we now use
for the record editors. Right?You know, you have, like, the
side panel that comes up whenyou're editing the structure.
(34:07):
Those hard editors, would haveproperties in them that wouldn't
be able to exist in the sandboxtheoretically or stuff that
could theoretically not exist.
So right now, they're justcompletely omitting it rather
than like parsing out the stuffthat's missing or putting
placeholders in, you know, orsomething that will allow them
(34:27):
to still exist, you know, orsome way that it says this is in
production, but it's can't be insandbox. So you can still have
everything. Because here's thething is like when you build
something in sandbox and you adda record editor like that or a
property card or some sort ofstructure, for the user
interface of sandbox, then youhave to manually recreate it in
(34:51):
production. You also have thepossible missing out of making
it exactly the same or some sortof conditional logic that you
forgot to add. You know?
So I think a big piece would beadding that data in. And then
the last thing while we were wewere talking about the developer
sandbox in the enterpriseaccounts, one thing I wanted to
(35:13):
point out that's really, really,really, really helpful for your
developers outside of just themspooling up a free dev account
is the fact that it has yourHubSpot structure. So if they're
building a HubSpot userinterface extension, then they
already are gonna see all oflike your HubSpot portal
(35:33):
properties and associations andassociation type IDs if you have
custom objects. And often, like,you wanna interact with a custom
object when you end up dealingwith the user interface
extension. So that's, like, onereason that it's extremely
helpful for your developer towork out of your enterprise
developer sandbox rather thanjust the freebie developer
(35:54):
sandbox.
Also, they'll be constrained tothe limits of whatever your
subscription is. So if theywanna use some sort of fancy
technique, but it's a hub youdon't pay for for some reason,
they'll have to live withinwithin that world as well. So a
few few cup couple extra thingsas we round the corner here.
Liz Moorehead (36:11):
Yeah. Well, let's round the corner and land this
plane, shall we? George, what isthe between one and twenty three
things you want our listeners totake away from today's episode.
Just one?
George B. Thomas (36:22):
No. Just one thing. One thing. Was a word.
Think it was Max used this word.
I'm almost positive. Maybe itwas used by multiple people, but
the word is impact. So my onetakeaway is when you're thinking
about Sandbox and if you shoulduse a Sandbox or not use a
Sandbox or do something inSandbox if you're using Sandbox,
(36:45):
is impact. And I would suggestthat maybe you come up with a
small, medium, or large gaugearound impact to the team. Well,
actually, let's just say impactto the people, impact platform,
or impact to the process.
Right? So think about thosethree layers, the word impact
(37:06):
and small, medium, or large toknow where you should be
building or doing the thing thatyou're doing moving forward.
That's it. One thing. Okay, hubheroes.
We've reached the end of anotherepisode. Will Lord Lack continue
to loom over the community orwill we be able to defeat him in
the next episode of the hubheroes podcast? Make sure you
(37:29):
tune in and find out in the nextepisode. Make sure you head over
to the hubheroes.com to get thelatest episodes and become part
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Make sure you share this podcastwith a friend. Leave a review if
(37:52):
you like what you're listeningto and use the hashtag hashtag
hub heroes podcast on any of thesocials and let us know what
strategy conversation you'd liketo listen into next. Until next
time, when we meet and combineour forces, remember to be a
happy, helpful, humble human,and of course, always be looking
for a way to be someone's hero.
Do you live in a world filled with corporate data? Are
you plagued by siloedapartments? Are your lackluster
growth strategies demolishingyour chances for success? Are
you held captive by the evilmenace, lord lack, lack of time,
lack of strategy, and lack ofthe most important and powerful
(00:22):
tool in your superhero toolbelt? Knowledge.
Never fear hub heroes. Get readyto don your cape and mask, move
into action, and become the hubhero your organization needs.
Tune in each week to join theleague of extraordinary inbound
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(00:46):
Heroes, it's time to unite andactivate your powers.
Max Cohen (00:52):
I feel so activated right now, dude. I'm educated.
Me too. I'm educated.
George B. Thomas (00:58):
Yeah. Hibernated and educated.
Together. Oh, hibernated,acticated. Wow.
Dude, you
Max Cohen (01:06):
know how you got into
Uh-oh. Last week?
George B. Thomas (01:08):
Is this first of all, is this g rated, p g
rated?
Liz Moorehead (01:11):
Adjudicated is a legal term.
George B. Thomas (01:13):
Sure. No. I mean, Max Max said, do you know
what I got into? Right?
Max Cohen (01:17):
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (01:18):
Oh. So I was asking you, is
that PG or G rated?
Max Cohen (01:22):
It's rated. Oh.
Oh. It's rated a level.
Liz Moorehead (01:27):
Sure. That's a rated level. Thank
George B. Thomas (01:28):
you, Max. It is. Mhmm.
Max Cohen (01:31):
It's an answer.
George B. Thomas (01:31):
What'd you get into?
Max Cohen (01:33):
I'm getting into a little bit of a game dev.
George B. Thomas (01:35):
Oh. Nice.
Max Cohen (01:36):
I'm learning a platform called Godot.
George B. Thomas (01:40):
Wait. Godot. What's it called? Godot.
Max Cohen (01:44):
It's French.
Liz Moorehead (01:45):
No. Let's see.
Max Cohen (01:45):
G o d o t. Godot. Yeah. Godot.
George B. Thomas (01:48):
Yeah. I got some tissues for that.
Max Cohen (01:50):
Yeah. Oh. I haven't learned how to make tissues yet,
but I did make a table andboxes.
George B. Thomas (01:55):
Oh, nice.
Max Cohen (01:56):
And I put the box on the table.
George B. Thomas (01:58):
So is this like kind of like a is it like
really high definition or is itmore like the eight pixel type
game?
Max Cohen (02:06):
It's three d.
George B. Thomas (02:07):
Oh, three d.
Max Cohen (02:08):
It's three d. Oh. I I made some low poly textures if
that's what you're asking me.Wow. I'd be up in I do be
up in that block bench. You know what I mean?
Painting some
Liz Moorehead (02:16):
pixels. Right there.
Max Cohen (02:17):
16 bits.
Yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:19):
Yeah. Yeah.
Max Cohen (02:20):
Yeah. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (02:21):
I'm not sure how this relates to sandboxes in
HubSpot at all, but hey.
Max Cohen (02:26):
Because it's like I'm playing in
a sandbox. Oh,
George B. Thomas (02:29):
the sandbox. You made boxes. And
Max Cohen (02:31):
he made a box.
George B. Thomas (02:32):
Table. Just Looks like I got my
Max Cohen (02:35):
own virtual sandbox and playing in is what I'm
saying.
George B. Thomas (02:37):
Wow. You just started real sandboxing?
Liz Moorehead (02:40):
Sandboxing. No sandboxing this weekend. I have
been binge watching Game ofThrones, and I had a really good
omelet. So I'm looking to get myfill of sandboxes
Max Cohen (02:49):
Wow.
Liz Moorehead (02:49):
This morning. So, George, I actually wanna tee you
up for today's conversation ifwe're ready to dig into it. So
Yeah. You got a ping from one ofour favorite friends of the pod,
Chris Carillan, who is askingfor this episode. Talk to me
about what he was asking for.
George B. Thomas (03:08):
We were talking about customer platform
updates. And I do believe thatwe ran across a product update
that is the new standard sandboxwith improved production
metadata and deploy toproduction supported assets.
That is the longest name of anupdate to But a HubSpot we were
(03:33):
going over that and Chrisreferenced like, Hey, you know,
it'd be great to have Chad, heliterally named Chad wax nerdy
because Chris really loves whenChad wax nerdy on things on the
show. We should see if Chad canwax nerdy and Max can wax nerdy
(03:53):
on sandboxes. And I think thatthat would be a useful episode.
And I said, Chris, I thinkyou're right, because one thing
that I don't do a lot of inHubSpot over the last eons and
some of the grandpa of Inboundand grandpa of HubSpot,
sandboxes. Most of my clientsare small to medium sized
(04:14):
businesses. They have marketingor sales pro or less, which by
the way, we'll get to why that'simportant to why I don't really
do sandboxes a lot. And so herewe are, we're having an episode,
we're talking about sandboxes.If you've ever been curious if
you should have
Max Cohen (04:31):
a
George B. Thomas (04:31):
sandbox environment, what a sandbox
environment is, maybe some ofthe cool things that Chad or Max
have done with sandboxes, wellthen buckle up because we're
playing in the sand today. Nowalso my beginning joke might
make a little more sense or usrambling about boxes might make
a little more sense too. We
Max Cohen (04:53):
got there.
Liz Moorehead (04:53):
We there guys. We got there. No, I personally am
excited about this episodebecause again, I play in very
specific parts of HubSpot and Idon't often get to learn or hear
about these more technicalareas. Let's start with that
kind of obvious question, right?Like I've heard of sandbox
environments in HubSpot.
(05:15):
Sandbox environments are notnecessarily a new HubSpot
specific concept, But when we'retalking about HubSpot sandbox
for today's conversation, whatspecifically are we talking
about? The nerd and make it useraccessible. What are we talking
about?
Max Cohen (05:34):
So, like, imagine if you could take your HubSpot
account and duplicate it so youcould go play with it and test
stuff without breaking the realstuff.
George B. Thomas (05:47):
Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. Before Chad goes, I I
actually I'll be completelyhonest with everybody listening
to this. I took thisconversation and these questions
to my clone.
And I asked my clone, what theheck is a HubSpot sandbox? And
my clone said, the HubSpotsandbox is like your personal
testing laboratory. Max, that'sliterally what you just said
(06:10):
inside It's of a safe, isolatedenvironment where you can
experiment, test, and refinechanges without messing up your
live customer facing data. Thinkof it as a practice field. One
of the things we love to do iswe can go down to South Carolina
and we can watch the Pantherspractice before they actually
(06:33):
hit the big so it says, think ofit as a practice field where you
can try out new plays beforetaking them to the big game.
I was like, that's a pretty cooloverview. That's a cool
overview. Chad, where where doesyour brain
Max Cohen (06:44):
go?
Yeah. Well, just, in general, like to break it down
when it comes to development asa whole, like, if you're gonna
be developing anything, whichlet's be real, like, why you
know, people may call, oh, hey.We're CRM super admins or
whatever. But at the end of theday, what you're doing is you're
building, you're developing somesort of process or some sort of
(07:05):
new thing for somebody to use alot of times when you're adding
any kind of functionality orfeature to HubSpot. Just in
general software development,typically, you want to have a
few environments, actually.
You wanna have a productionenvironment, you wanna have a
test environment, and you wannahave a dev environment for the
developers to go play around in.Now I used to work at a company.
(07:26):
We used to call our devenvironment the trash can. And
then when we'd wanna go in anddo this little bit of testing on
a new build, they'd like, yeah.Get out of my trash can.
You know?
George B. Thomas (07:36):
Like That's funny.
Max Cohen (07:37):
I'd like wanna go in early to see new features before
they're ready. Like, get out ofmy trash can. It's not working.
You know? And then they likepush it up to test once it was
ready for somebody to like makesure that it's not really gonna
mess up everybody's world.
Right?
Yeah.
Now we don't have that here in HubSpot sandbox. We
have two separate isolatedenvironments, but what we do
(08:00):
have is the ability to duplicatethat live environment into what
I would probably call a testenvironment. Right?
Yeah. And I think also it's important to kinda
like explain the differencebetween this and other ways that
you can just kind of like playaround with stuff. So like, if
you just wanna if like you'resomeone who just wants to like
futz around with HubSpot, youcan go create a developer
(08:23):
account and create what's calleda test account, which is
essentially a, a blank slateeverything enterprise HubSpot
account. The only difference isyou can't send emails to people.
Right?
So it renders it functionallyuseless for anyone who wants to,
like, do what he can Yeah.Really Yeah. So that's a
developer sandbox that or orsorry. A test portal. We don't
(08:46):
wanna call those sandboxes.
Sandbox specifically, the bigdifference is that it's gonna
duplicate the way that yourportal's already set up. So,
like, imagine your layouts, yourrecords, your custom objects,
your properties, and then youcould even bring in, I think
what is it now?
George B. Thomas (09:03):
Like,
Max Cohen (09:03):
5,000 contacts.
Thousand of your most recent records or
something like objects or
something like that. Exactly. And you can bring those
in. So you can play with, like,real data, right, which is
great, but you're not gonnascrew up the original stuff. So,
like Yeah.
This is really, really good ifyou wanna test a new workflow
that you build so you can seehow it interacts with like
(09:24):
stuff. Or if you wanna like ifyou're doing any sort of like
big data restructuring exercise,right, this is a great place to
do it because you can kinda seehow it'll all work without
messing up your data structurein your regular portal. Right?
So there's a million reasons whyyou might want to use the
sandbox.
George B. Thomas (09:41):
I think too,
I'm just I have a jump clarifying question.
For
Liz Moorehead (09:44):
Oh, yeah.
George B. Thomas (09:44):
Yep. Yeah. So let me jump in for one second.
One of the things too, becauseMax, you did say development
sandbox. And then also what youguys kind of backed up and then
alluded to was a standardsandbox.
And like right now, you, and itmay be because I have this beta
on, or it may have been that wayhistorically. Again, remember, I
(10:06):
don't do a lot with sandboxes,but I just want everybody to
know the experience now. If yougo in and you create a new
sandbox, you actually have theability to pick one or the
other. You can pick a standardsandbox, which again, is kind of
that extensive copy ofproduction idea for like the
robust testing. It's the, youknow, the 5,000 contacts, the
production objects, the forms,the workflows, the emails, all
(10:28):
of that.
Or there is the developmentsandbox, which is like a minimal
copy of production for rapidtesting. So this is like when
you're gonna just test proofconcepts, test proof custom
cards, things like that. Goahead, Max.
Max Cohen (10:41):
But let me clarify something. I was referring to
developer test accounts, whichare a separate idea. So like,
but that's a good distinctiontoo. Right? In in when you make
a sand like when you have anenterprise HubSpot account, you
can make a sandbox and eitherhave it be a standard or a
developer sandbox.
(11:02):
And like a developer sandbox isgreat if you're trying to, like,
test an integration or some APIsor some, like, whatever stuff
that you're trying to like
Or you're trying to build a UI. Right?
Yep. Something like that. Yeah. Some sort of
extension. Right?
But you have to have anenterprise account in order to
build those. A developer testaccount, any random Joe Schmo
(11:23):
can go get a HubSpot developeraccount and spit up test
portals.
George B. Thomas (11:29):
Yeah. Yep.
Max Cohen (11:29):
Right? So like bucket that outside of this
conversation for anybodylistening. Right? Like, I know
there's like a lot of peoplelike, Oh, I don't have
enterprise. I can't a sandbox.
Nothing's stopping you fromgoing and building like proof of
concept stuff in a developertest account.
Yeah. 100%.
Literally nothing. Right? It just won't copy
anything from your portalbecause it's a disconnected idea
(11:53):
completely from like, you know,being related to your portal in
any way shape
or form.
George B. Thomas (11:58):
One thing I wanna double click on before I
then shut up and let Lizcontinue us down the path that
we're supposed to go down,because I find this very
interesting. As somebody who hasbeen helping train humans in
HubSpot for years and know thatthere are portals that have test
dash training for forms andthis, that, and the other thing
that have to go back and cleanup. If you have the enterprise
(12:20):
version and can't do a sandbox,one of the things that they have
as a bullet point is train newusers and explore features and
tools. In other words, it couldbecome the trash can of
training. You could do adevelopment sandbox, but it be
your training sandbox.
That's where you go and justtrain people in and all the
stuff could be littered aroundit and it not impact your actual
(12:45):
HubSpot portal where you're dayin, out. And people are like,
why is this test dash trainingworkflow in here? Anyway, I'll
shut up. Yeah.
Liz Moorehead (12:52):
So I only had one clarifying question before we
moved on. Because George, I youand I have done a lot of work
together in HubSpot. Is thesandbox environment we're
talking about different fromcontent staging?
George B. Thomas (13:03):
Oh, Yeah, yeah, yeah. Good question. Yeah.
So completely different becausecontent staging is part of like
CMS or what is now Content Hub.And so if you want to deploy
website pages, landing pages,but be able to work on pages
that are already live, makeadjustments without anybody
seeing them, but be able to haveinternal teams preview them and
(13:25):
then push those pages live tothe same URL.
That's what content staging isfor. Very much just content
driven. By the way, not whywe're here, but I wish you could
actually do content stage blogs.But again, totally different
conversation. HubSpotdevelopment team, hopefully
you're listening to this orsomebody that knows the
(13:46):
development team.
Who knows? Maybe your mom'slistening to this and they'll
pass it on to you. Butcompletely different than like a
sandbox environment.
Max Cohen (13:54):
Hi. Yeah. That's like like, content sandbox, basically
Yeah.
In a way.
George B. Thomas (13:59):
But I love I love It's like content
Max Cohen (14:02):
test, probably. Yeah.
George B. Thomas (14:03):
But Yeah.
Max Cohen (14:04):
Or pre prod, maybe, and then maybe you'll call it.
Liz Moorehead (14:08):
Perfect.
Max Cohen (14:08):
Yeah. But anyway Alright.
Liz Moorehead (14:10):
Let's throw this out there, guys. What has
changed with HubSpot sandboxthat we're excited about? What's
the four one one?
George B. Thomas (14:16):
What's the scoop? Well
Max Cohen (14:18):
Yeah. So they had legacy sandbox before. Right?
And that's what they're callednow. So if you have an older
style sandbox, it's referred tonow as a legacy sandbox.
And then they have a new versionof the standard sandbox, which
essentially does a one timeimport of your current HubSpot
account. But there is a bit of adistinction between the old and
(14:44):
the new. Right? The old sandbox,it could continually get
refreshed like the legacy onewhere you could update it with
whatever the current structureof your current production
portal is now. That feature hasnot been added to the new
standard sandbox, but they addeda big one that people have been
(15:05):
wanting for a long time.
And this is killer for anybodywho is a standard, like is
managing one portal. Like ifyou're a HubSpot super admin of
one portal, this is like prettypretty epic, because you don't
have to pay for extra tools tosolve some of these problems.
And what it allows you to do isbasically reverse sync or they
(15:30):
call it a deploy to production
Yep.
From your sandbox. And it supports like five things
right now. Right now it supportsthe ability to like basically
clone your portal, add forms,lists, marketing emails,
objects, and propertystructures, and then workflows
(15:51):
that involve any of thosethings. I don't know for certain
though. I don't believe it'llpull up any workflow.
Like if you put custom code inthe workflow, it might not pull
it over or if you put you know,so there's a couple things that
it still won't do as far asreverse sync and those are the
(16:12):
main things that are supported.But when you're talking about
like, okay, well, what I'm gonnado is create an integration,
like, or add a new feature.Right? Like I was working with a
company and we added a contractmanagement system, RadAI. And so
we're doing this contractmanagement system and I was able
to install the integration, addadditional properties as to the
(16:37):
whole thing in sandbox and pushall of those property changes
back up to production.
Right? And all of the the therewas no new objects, but if there
was a new object, it would do itproperty groups. The it didn't
manipulate the, user interface,unfortunately. So that's also
something that it still doesn'tdo. But and, you know, we can
(17:00):
maybe double click on that laterwhen we're going into some more
of Luisa's questions.
But it's it's amazing now thatat least minimum you have a
baseline and this is the theworst this feature is ever gonna
be as we often say, right?
Yeah.
And they're only gonna be adding more and they're
looking for feedback on, youknow, what what's missing,
right? Well, what's missing isfor me, you know, user
(17:21):
interface, Right? Update theuser interface along with it
because often you wanna build agood user experience, not just,
oh, I don't know. Put the bitsand bobs in the back end and
then they'll all figure it outin production. You're gonna have
to redo whatever you did over insandbox and production.
Right?
Yeah. And also like a little bit of historical context
(17:41):
here too. Like sandboxes havebeen around for a while, but
they've never had the ability topush stuff back into the main
production portal. Right?
Yeah. And so that's what a lot of big enterprise
CRMs often have. Like, you know,if you get Dynamics three sixty
five, I mean, you have like Ithink you have because it's made
by Microsoft. Right? So theyhave like three layers.
Like, you can do the whole devtest prod thing that I described
(18:06):
basically in Dynamics, but alsoDynamics is a giant beast of a
system that's like basically,you have to be a developer to
use it.
Yeah. Now something important to note, as of the day
we're recording, this is August18 or no, not on eighteenth,
eleventh.
George B. Thomas (18:22):
The eleventh, man. Don't do that to us. Come
on.
Max Cohen (18:24):
I don't know why I did that. It's August 11. The
way the deployed so the deployedproduction stuff is in beta.
Right? Yeah.
And it's interesting because thelimitations around it are that
you can only deploy back net newstuff you've created, it doesn't
(18:49):
let you edit existing assets,which is a little bit goofy, but
again, worse it's ever gonna beright now. Yeah. Right? The
logical first step to any ofthis is recreating that new
stuff. Right?
Editing stuff is worlds morecomplicated. Right? Yeah. So
(19:10):
keep that in mind, depending onwhen you're listening to this
episode is that like the thedeploy to production feature is
very new. Yeah.
Right? And it's Mhmm. Half bakedat the moment. But
George B. Thomas (19:19):
Well, I think I think this is where I jump in
and say, listen, we're talkingabout a public beta. It it is a
beta version. So when Chad andMax say it's half baked or it's
the worst it'll ever be, it'sbecause it's a beta that once it
goes live, I'm sure a lot of thethings that we're talking about,
you know, maybe the product teamwill actually like tune in and
(19:41):
check out this episode. But alot of the things that we're
talking about might actuallyjust be in the actual new
sandboxes once they deploy thelive version. Because smart
humans like Chad Maxx and othersout there, maybe even listening
to this podcast, are leveragingit and using it.
Second thing I want to is, throwit is right now for anybody who
(20:03):
signs up for the beta, but thenalso it's enterprise customer
platform, content enterprise,marketing enterprise, ops
enterprise, sales enterprise,service enterprise. If you have
any of those enterprises, youcan turn on the sandbox feature
that we're talking about. Here'sa question that I'm going to
ask, and again, kind of goingoff the rails for a second, but
when you guys talk about thisDeploy Wizard, if it got
(20:27):
smarter, because it might not benow, but let me ask you a
question because my brain wentthere. Are we entering a world
where if you have an enterpriseset up in HubSpot and you've got
a sandbox where marketing andpeople should actually maybe
even be working. Like forinstance, if I was going to
create an email, do I create theemail in the sandbox and then
(20:48):
deploy it to the real one andthen send it from there?
Or is that overkill? You'retalking more like nerdy stuff.
Max Cohen (20:55):
Yeah. Complete overkill. I mean, because, like,
that's the thing. You shouldn'tbe afraid to build stuff in your
main portal. It's more so, Iwould say, untested fundamental
structural changes to the wayyour portal operates.
You should test drive it in thein the in the sandbox first.
Right? You don't wanna bespinning up a sandbox to go
(21:19):
build an email just to push itinto the Gotcha. Into the the
main portal. Right?
Like, you could still draft.Like, that doesn't to me
Send preview send and all
that. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. You have all the functions with that. If
you were like, I mean, if youreally needed to do something
like, you know, one of thethings they push back is lists.
Right?
(21:39):
And so if you had like propertystructure changes that you need
to make to make your data clean,it may be worth attempting to
build all of the lists thatwould like you segment all of
your customers after all ofthose net new properties were
changed or something along thoselines so that you could really
(22:00):
understand your segmentation.And unfortunately reports don't
push back, but that would be anice thing too is like, you
know, now you can make yourreports and it all works and
your lists validate everything,then you can push that all back
up to production. Now at leastyou can push the lists and the,
you know, stuff like that, thelists and the property changes.
(22:23):
I'm thinking at some point,there may be a world where they
need, like it's almost like acode merge editor or, like,
where when you're viewingchanges in code and there's,
like, the green and the red thatshows you, like, oh, these lines
were added. These lines wereremoved in this place.
You know, it's it's not quitethat nerdy, but, like, they will
(22:47):
probably need something likethat when they allow edits for
conflicts pushing back up, like,hey, these properties already
exist. Do you want you know,obviously, you change this, but
between the last time we saw itand now this was edited and this
was edited, do you want the copythat's in production or that's
(23:09):
in sandbox, right? They're gonnaneed like some level of conflict
changes where it scans and scansboth sides, runs through a
checklist of however many thingsthat it wants to confirm. And,
you you know, I'm sure they'lllet you just say choose all or
whatever if you wanted, but thatcould be dangerous. But, you
know, again, I think there's aworld where that's gonna need to
(23:32):
happen to allow non net new andan edit of existing assets.
George B. Thomas (23:37):
So So let me ask one more question because my
brain is going all kinds of likesideways, left, up, down over
here. And then Liz, I promiseI'll shut up and you can
continue to herd cats the restof the way through the show that
we need to. Just getting Hey,started
Liz Moorehead (23:51):
just giving space for nerds to be nerds. Nerd
away.
George B. Thomas (23:54):
I'm just getting started with HubSpot. I
fire up a sandbox. Do I go inand actually go to data
management and go to data model?And do I build my data model in
the sandbox? And then once I'mhappy with it in the sandbox,
deploy it to them.
Again, I'm trying to figure outthese scenarios where is that
(24:16):
old?
Max Cohen (24:16):
Like if you're just, yeah, if you're brand new
HubSpot, empty HubSpot.
Yeah. It's building prod.
Yeah, building prod because it's you're not
affecting anybody and you don'thave your whole list of contacts
or, you know, you haven'tuploaded all of your data in
there. The only time I mightsuggest that is if you're
(24:37):
planning on doing like a megamega upload or something like
that. Maybe what I might do isbuild what I think is the right
data structure in sandbox, pushthat data structure up to prod,
do a mega import inside of mysandbox and make sure everything
(24:59):
checks out. Otherwise, then Ihave the opportunity to nuke the
sandbox and pull that copy backfrom prod Yeah. Into sandbox.
Yeah. But, again, remember thatyou only have those five assets
to work with right now.
Yeah. Yeah. Also, like, I don't think anyone
should, you know, overthinkthis. Like Yeah. You can test
(25:23):
stuff in prod.
Like, it's not a not an issue.You know what I mean? It's just
like, it depends on the size ofits impact. You know what I
mean? And like how detrimentalit could be if it if it goes
bad.
Yeah. Right? Like, don't beafraid to like experiment in
production. Like, there areplenty of ways to, like when
you're building a workflow,there's plenty of ways to
isolate the workflow so itdoesn't touch your other data.
(25:44):
Like when you're, you know, soit's one of those things where
it's like, unless it's a really,really big project, it probably
doesn't need a sandbox.
George B. Thomas (25:53):
Yeah.
Max Cohen (25:53):
Right? So, because again, it's like a process to
spin it up, get all the stuffimported, like maybe delete it.
Well, you know what I mean? It'sa thing, right? It's not
a Yeah. Another thing too is like when you do a
sandbox, all the workflows thatyou have are turned off as after
the sandbox is created. So,like, whatever you built in
(26:16):
prod, you basically have to go II think it also I don't if the
new sandbox has import your userinterface, but the old one
definitely didn't. Right?
The record the record The
record structure.
Yeah. Oh, jeez. That would make me not even use it.
That's crazy. The old one definitely didn't. I haven't
checked the new one. Actually, Idon't even remember because it's
(26:38):
been like a little bit since Icreated my I I went in and did a
whole bunch of stuff in thereand pushed it up for an
integration that I was building.So but it was missing some stuff
still, unfortunately.
So I used another tool to importmy record structure and a couple
other things. Yeah. Love it. Andyeah. So that I think that
(26:58):
that's one of those thingsthat's a little tricky, right,
is making that decision.
But what I what I what you askedearlier, George, like, do I
build it in Sandbox? Actually,gonna change my answer to, like,
app brand new portal, probablynever in Sandbox. And the reason
is because of the limitedassets. Now in the future, if it
is like a full, you know,forward reverse kind of a thing,
(27:22):
you know, then you could doeither way. It depends on what
you really prefer.
Right? Just extra work, though. You know what I
mean? Like, if
if there's
nothing going on in production, then
Yeah. If there's nothing in production, but I
think the thing about it is,like, when it comes to, like, an
actual development life cycleand actually building things,
(27:43):
like, from the perspective of,like, if you were doing it from,
a development perspective, you'dalways start in dev no matter
what. You always start in dev.If you're developing something,
you always start in dev. Right?
True. I just think yeah. I just think, you know,
like, for for us to get to thatplace, like, it's obviously this
(28:05):
the sandbox has a long way to goin terms of what it can push to
production.
Exactly. Yeah.
Rebuilding shit manually, you know.
Yeah. If we're at a place where you're not having to
rebuild anything manually, andyou have the ability to do,
like, reverts almost like, youknow, you're you're working your
git repo. Right? Like, oh, I'mgonna go back to this check-in.
(28:26):
And then sandbox is back towhatever I built five check ins
ago, and then I can push thatall back up, you know, or
whatever.
Right? Like, those sort ofthings, I think, are
theoretically possible. But itit is gonna increase the
complexity as well to allow thatlevel of functionality. Right?
Right now, it is very turnkey.
(28:47):
It's like if these things workfor you, you click a button and
she works. Right?
Chad, you think they'll ever bring it down to,
pro?
I could see it. I mean, a lot of things that you
know, like, for example, customdatasets were enterprise. Now
you get a cut down version.Right? But they're Pro now.
You can make custom datasetswith custom calculated
(29:07):
properties in Pro. You have lessproperties you can make, but,
like, in a pinch, it will allowyou to make a report that you
absolutely never could have madein HubSpot before.
Liz Moorehead (29:17):
Yeah. So let me ask you
George B. Thomas (29:20):
guys this.
Max Cohen (29:21):
Totally possible.
Liz Moorehead (29:22):
We've talked a lot about really interesting
updates here, but is thereanything that's still missing
for us? Anything we still wantto see? Chad, I see that smile.
Max Cohen (29:33):
Yeah. Always. I mean, definitely, like version control
will be one thing for sure. Sothat's huge. We were just
talking about that.
And then additional assets,like, you're gonna ultimately
like, and Max, I mean, you youmentioned the edit. Right? It's
only net new properties. So ifyou need to edit the description
(29:54):
of a property, for example,you're going in and doing a mega
overhaul, and you just aretaking your time in sandbox and
maybe deleting properties thatdon't need to exist anymore,
adding descriptions toproperties that somebody just
jumped up and didn't put namesin, but you can't push those
changes right now up toproduction. Right?
(30:15):
So I think that'd be reallykiller. You know? So both delete
and edit would be amazing tohave even just on the property
schema level.
Yeah. And I think also just like record layout
stuff is a really big I mean,layout stuff is one of the
biggest reasons. Like I feellike sandboxes would be useful,
(30:35):
right? Just because you have todo It's a lot of work to go in
and completely like restructurelike your UI and your your
record layouts and all that kindof stuff. And, like, it's also
something that can, like, stoppeople dead in their tracks from
working because they, like,can't find where a piece of data
went or they don't know how tonavigate the tabs on a certain
record or where to find the datathey need, stuff like that.
(30:58):
Right? So I think, like, movingto support that as fast as
possible is probably a reallyimportant thing. So that and
also, like, I wonder if there'slike anything creative they can
do around how to handle likeconnected integrations. You know
what I mean? Like when you do adeveloper portal, like you don't
(31:19):
have any of your integrationsstill hooked up.
And not a developer portal, asandbox. Right? Yeah. So like
you gotta go like reinstallapps, reconnect stuff. Like
sometimes that's not so easywith like, you know, like, you
know, for when we have customersthat wanna do, you know, an
event happily sandbox, weeffectively have to give them
(31:39):
like another license for free togo do that.
Right? Which is, like, kindagoofy. You know? And so I I and
I'm not sure, like, what theanswer is to that because, like,
the developers and how theirapps works is always gonna be,
like, a variable there. Right?
Maybe it's
you just find They have to give a framework on the
app partner side for Sandbox.They have to actually have a
(31:59):
supported, you know, dev s orsorry, prod test branch, where
all your URLs change and all ofyour database changes, because
you can't just connect upsomebody's prod data. So that
also means that whatever thatpartner is has to have a level
of sandbox functionality fortheir tool in the first place.
George B. Thomas (32:19):
Interesting. It's almost like my brain goes
to my simple mind goes to, like,in the future, if it was just
almost a mirrored version. Likeand it automatically kept up to
date, but then you could, like,make changes and push it over
and then, like Mhmm. Yeah.Interesting.
Max Cohen (32:37):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean yeah. I mean, I I think,
ultimately, that's that's wherethey're moving. Right?
Mhmm. But I'm sure there's, youknow, drawbacks with doing, a
complete mirror also. You know?Like, there's I think sometimes
there's there's a benefit tohaving it be a snapshot just in
that it's not gonna startchanging while other people are
(33:00):
making changes in production.You know what I mean?
And screwing up what you'redoing in sandbox, Right?
Yeah.
But yeah.
Yeah. So I did double check the new version of the
sandbox. It does not pull in theUI structure. So it still has
the default HubSpot about thisdeal card. I can think the
(33:22):
reason is because the if youhave integrated apps and they're
not there or something, I mean,maybe they just omit those.
But if those possibly couldcause some sort of issue, or if
you've installed, like a UIextension, so you made a custom
(33:45):
HubSpot UI extension and it's inprod, but it's not connected to
your sandbox, obviously, becausethat doesn't have, like,
splitting. I could expect thatthe hard library that we now use
for the record editors. Right?You know, you have, like, the
side panel that comes up whenyou're editing the structure.
(34:07):
Those hard editors, would haveproperties in them that wouldn't
be able to exist in the sandboxtheoretically or stuff that
could theoretically not exist.
So right now, they're justcompletely omitting it rather
than like parsing out the stuffthat's missing or putting
placeholders in, you know, orsomething that will allow them
(34:27):
to still exist, you know, orsome way that it says this is in
production, but it's can't be insandbox. So you can still have
everything. Because here's thething is like when you build
something in sandbox and you adda record editor like that or a
property card or some sort ofstructure, for the user
interface of sandbox, then youhave to manually recreate it in
(34:51):
production. You also have thepossible missing out of making
it exactly the same or some sortof conditional logic that you
forgot to add. You know?
So I think a big piece would beadding that data in. And then
the last thing while we were wewere talking about the developer
sandbox in the enterpriseaccounts, one thing I wanted to
(35:13):
point out that's really, really,really, really helpful for your
developers outside of just themspooling up a free dev account
is the fact that it has yourHubSpot structure. So if they're
building a HubSpot userinterface extension, then they
already are gonna see all oflike your HubSpot portal
(35:33):
properties and associations andassociation type IDs if you have
custom objects. And often, like,you wanna interact with a custom
object when you end up dealingwith the user interface
extension. So that's, like, onereason that it's extremely
helpful for your developer towork out of your enterprise
developer sandbox rather thanjust the freebie developer
(35:54):
sandbox.
Also, they'll be constrained tothe limits of whatever your
subscription is. So if theywanna use some sort of fancy
technique, but it's a hub youdon't pay for for some reason,
they'll have to live withinwithin that world as well. So a
few few cup couple extra thingsas we round the corner here.
Liz Moorehead (36:11):
Yeah. Well, let's round the corner and land this
plane, shall we? George, what isthe between one and twenty three
things you want our listeners totake away from today's episode.
Just one?
George B. Thomas (36:22):
No. Just one thing. One thing. Was a word.
Think it was Max used this word.
I'm almost positive. Maybe itwas used by multiple people, but
the word is impact. So my onetakeaway is when you're thinking
about Sandbox and if you shoulduse a Sandbox or not use a
Sandbox or do something inSandbox if you're using Sandbox,
(36:45):
is impact. And I would suggestthat maybe you come up with a
small, medium, or large gaugearound impact to the team. Well,
actually, let's just say impactto the people, impact platform,
or impact to the process.
Right? So think about thosethree layers, the word impact
(37:06):
and small, medium, or large toknow where you should be
building or doing the thing thatyou're doing moving forward.
That's it. One thing. Okay, hubheroes.
We've reached the end of anotherepisode. Will Lord Lack continue
to loom over the community orwill we be able to defeat him in
the next episode of the hubheroes podcast? Make sure you
(37:29):
tune in and find out in the nextepisode. Make sure you head over
to the hubheroes.com to get thelatest episodes and become part
of the league of heroes. FYI, ifyou're part of the league of
heroes, you'll get the shownotes right in your inbox and
they come with some hidden powerup potential as well.
Make sure you share this podcastwith a friend. Leave a review if
(37:52):
you like what you're listeningto and use the hashtag hashtag
hub heroes podcast on any of thesocials and let us know what
strategy conversation you'd liketo listen into next. Until next
time, when we meet and combineour forces, remember to be a
happy, helpful, humble human,and of course, always be looking
for a way to be someone's hero.
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