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A Closer Look at the CRM Development Tools for HubSpot Developers (Beta)

If you’d like to hear more about what’s coming for HubSpot developers, make sure to sign up for the HubSpot.Extend() event on October 27th, our flagship event for developers! 

We hope you were able to attend INBOUND 2022, either digitally or in person! If you missed it, be sure to watch the online sessions, and especially check out Chief Product Officer, Steph Cuthbertson, who presented the Product Spotlight focused on Building a Connected Customer Experience, highlighting some of HubSpot’s recent product updates and releases. 

One of the more exciting product announcements featured was deeper CRM customization. In addition to new activity types and configurable activity buttons, there were considerable improvements to the customization of the right sidebar as well as the ability to create a custom tab directly on the record, and create custom cards to display information. 

In order to help developers build these customizations quickly and effectively, HubSpot is rolling out a suite of development tools for Sales and Service Hub Enterprise developers. Under the CRM Development menu item, you’ll have quick access to projects, private apps, sandboxes, and other resources from right within your HubSpot account. 

Today, get a closer look at:

  • CRM Development tools
  • Record Custom Tab and Custom CRM Cards
  • Projects GitHub integration
  • and Development Sandboxes.

*Note: While these features and toolsets are currently only available for Sales or Service Hub Enterprise customers, we wanted to give HubSpot developers, partners, and customers a closer look at the features and functionality the teams have built to accelerate HubSpot CRM customization. If eligible, you can enroll in the beta under Product Updates in the app. If you’re in the HubSpot Solutions Partner program, you should be able to view/see these features in your partner HubSpot Demo Account. 

CRM Development Tools

Here’s an overview of each development tool mentioned above and what they will enable HubSpot developers to build, from Brooke Fisher, HubSpot Academy Developer Instructor.

Record Custom Tab and Custom CRM Cards, powered by CRM Card Builder and Projects

For Sales and Service Hub Enterprise customers, we’ve launched the ability to create a custom tab to bring more data and information across your systems into one central place on the record, using custom cards. Create custom cards to interact with internal or external data: a button to trigger a HubSpot workflow, property list of external ERP data, or statistics with market trends.

You can use the CRM card builder under the CRM Development menu item to lay out your card and generate the JSON payload that you can include in your card’s JavaScript file.

Ben Brophy, HubSpot Academy Developer Instructor, walks through how to use HubSpot Projects to build and deploy CRM cards. 

To get started check out how to create custom CRM cards with projects, our quickstart guide for developing with projects and the Github Repository with Examples of HubSpot UI Extensions

If you’re building interesting solutions for HubSpot customers with CRM cards and the custom tab, we want to hear about it!  

HubSpot Projects GitHub Integration

Using HubSpot projects, you can package, build, and deploy your private apps to HubSpot locally using the CLI. With private apps, extend HubSpot using custom CRM cards that appear on record pages in the middle pane. Leverage the power of serverless functions to interact with data both within and outside of HubSpot.

Enable the GitHub integration to easily store and track your HubSpot project’s codebase. Connect and create with your team using familiar GitHub tools and workflows, plus trigger project builds by pushing code to their repositories. Link a GitHub repository to a project.

More about HubSpot projects GitHub integration: 

Development Sandboxes

We know when you’re building and testing a project, development environments are a must. And sometimes you need your own environment, separate from other users', where you can't impact their work, and they can't impact yours. HubSpot now makes this easy with development sandboxes, which allow you to build and test your work for customizing the CRM in isolation.

More on development sandboxes as part of the CRM development tools:  

To join the beta as a Sales or Service Hub Enterprise customer, you can enroll in the beta under Product Updates in the app. Once you've joined the beta, you can join the dedicated forum for the beta in the HubSpot Community

This is just a small sampling of what was announced at INBOUND. To see other product updates from INBOUND 2022, read The Complete List of INBOUND 2022 Updates on the community forums, and feel free to ask questions on the HubSpot Community forum for Developers

Be sure to register for HubSpot.Extend() event on October 27th, our flagship event for HubSpot developers, to hear more about what we're building to help you customize and extend HubSpot. Get the latest news in our Developer Newsletter