Auto-summarize your next step using HubSpot’s OpenAI workflow action

HubSpot recently launched a new OpenAI app in public beta, and it includes a new workflow action that lets you send deal data to GPT-4 and use the response however you want: write to a property, post to Slack, trigger follow-ups, create a task, and more.

This post walks through how to build a workflow that generates a short summary of the buyer’s next step in the sales process based on recent deal activity. You can use this summary in pipeline reviews to reduce time spent scanning timelines and guessing about next steps.

This setup takes about 20 minutes, requires no process changes, and works surprisingly well right out of the box.

💡 Note: HubSpot’s OpenAI app is currently in public beta and only available only on Enterprise tiers (Sales, Service, Marketing, or Ops).

Pre-work:

1. Enroll in the OpenAI beta

→ In your HubSpot account, go to Product Updates and search for “OpenAI.”
→ Enroll your portal in the public beta if you haven’t already.

2. Connect your OpenAI account

You can read HubSpot's knowledge base article for deeper instructions on the OpenAI setup.

3. Install the OpenAI app from the HubSpot marketplace

4. Create a "Buyer next step" text property for your deal record

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HubSpot workflow setup:

‍1. Create a new deal-based workflow

Set the enrollment trigger to:

• Last activity date is less than 1 day ago
• Deal stage is any active pipeline stage (optional, depending on your process)

This ensures the workflow runs only on open deals with recent activity.

💡 Note: make sure re-enrollment for this workflow is ON so that your deals can re-enroll any time a new activity happens!

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2. Add the "Ask OpenAI" workflow action

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3. Write your AI prompt

Here's the exact prompt we used:

Read the attached sales activity. Summarize the buyer’s current step in the deal in under 10 words, using a clear sentence fragment (not a full sentence).

No filler. No background. Just the current status.

Use the buyer’s name if known.

Examples:
“Sarah testing with team”
“Internal review after demo”
“Waiting on legal”
“Budget approval in progress”

Do not say “the prospect.”

Do not include past steps - only what’s happening now.

Do not use full sentences. Just direct fragments.

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4. Connect your most recent deal notes and emails activity to the OpenAI prompt

→ Inside the OpenAi workflow action, click into the prompt editor, and inside the right sidebar select "Edit available data"

→ Click on "Add records"

→ Name your data source. In this example, I created two and named them "Most recent note" and "Most recent email"

→ For the most recent note example, in the "Choose a record type" dropdown, select "Note"

→ In the "Choose a condition to filter notes" dropdown, select "If associated to the enrolled deal"

→ In the "Choose a condition to filter notes down to one" dropdown, select "Most recently updated"

→ Do the same for any other data sources you want to reference (Emails in this example)

→ Go back to the "Choose data variable" sidebar within the OpenAI prompt editor, and under the "View properties or action outputs from" dropdown, select the "Most recent note" source we just created

→ Click on "Text properties" → "Note body"

→ Again, follow the same steps for adding the "Most recent email" source.

→ Make sure both properties are added to your prompt!

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5. Configure the advanced settings in the OpenAI workflow action

Since this is a fairly simple prompt with a short and concise output, these are the advanced settings we used:

Model selection: gpt-4o
Reasoning effort: Low
Temperature: 0.0

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6. Set the "Buyer next step" property based on the AI output

→ Add a new step in your workflow with the "Edit record" action

→ Select your "Buyer next step" property to edit

→ When it asks you to "Choose a value", click into the "View properties or action outputs from" dropdown and select "Action outputs"

→ Select "Response" and this will include the output of your AI response as the property value

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You're all set! 🥳

Just review and publish your workflow, and the "Buyer next step" property value should automatically update any time a new activity happens on the deal!