New: Multiple labels for Contacts 🗂️

Manuel Oliveira

Hello, fellow community members! The Multiple Labels for contacts feature is coming out of beta and is being released to companies in all regions.

What:
You can assign many labels to the same person or organization. Learn more about using contact labels from our Knowledge Base article here.

For whom:
All plans.

When:
Available now.

Iain Ashley

Hi Manuel,

When using the current API, a Label update trashes all except the one being updated. I have tried a number of structures to pass to the label parameter, but can't get it to accept anything but a single value. Is this supported in the API yet, and if not, is it planned?

Thanks

Iain Ashley

I have worked it out - there is a new, undocumented endpoint "label_ids" which holds an array of the ids. To update, PUT an array with all label ids that you want. It will overwrite all existing entries so ensure that existing labels you want to retain are in the list.

Paul von Kessel

I have several automations based on new labels added to a company. When updating with that endpoint "label_ids" are they all triggering the automation?

Andreia Costa

Hey 👋

I'm hoping I can offer some clarity here :D

Iain, this new field was actually announced here: https://developers.pipedrive.com/changelog/post/introducing-a-new-labels-field-and-modifying-the-behavior-of-the-existing-label-field back on the 11th of March. To add more than 1 label, that needs to be used

Paul, yes yes they do! We tested this on our side and updating an item using the "label_ids" option triggered our test automation - keep that in mind in case you have any unwanted triggers.

Hope this helps!

Nikolai Sokolov

@Andreia Costa quick follow up question: what's the behavior thru workflow automation, when a label is assigned? Does it replace all previously assigned labels?

Andreia Costa

Hey @Nikolai Sokolov

If the automation has an action to add labels then yes, it will replace the ones it already has. It would be great to have a condition for "add" or even "replace" and basically give users the power to pick the action, but as it stands it will just replace the labels that person has. I'd say this is good feedback, feel free to share it in the "ideas and feedback" section!

Boppa

Oh my God, this is a disaster. We've been using PD for over a month and presumed that automations were adding labels to existing ones when, as mentioned above, it looks like they are replacing them.

We are using these labels heaps as we used them in Shipstation and a few other CRMs and they are vital for adding conditions to a deal that span multiple deal stages.

Is there any workaound for this? Anybody?

Iain Ashley

Hi @Boppa

The workaround is undocumented (except for release notes which don't count if you are coming in fresh). There is a labels field that allows you to read and overwrite (no insert), the existing labels. Essentially, you'll need to read, parse and adjust the list in code before putting it back. It works, just wish it was in the main API documentation.

https://developers.pipedrive.com/changelog/post/introducing-a-new-labels-field-and-modifying-the-behavior-of-the-existing-label-field

MBrown

@Iain Ashley This is not really a workaround or a solution. What @Boppa is referring to is the automations that overwrite the label in the new labels field, it does not allow you to add another label to the existing labels. The only "workaround" is to manually add the label, which is painful and cumbersome.

MBrown

Maybe there is something in that webpage that fixes the issue, but unless you are a programmer/coder it's not very clear how to do it.

Iain Ashley

@MBrown - My bad, I was assuming externally triggered automations for which there are quite a few codeless options such as Make, Zapier, whatever Microsoft is calling theirs this week, amongst others. For us, PD automations are very limited, so we don't use them for anything except to do basic filtering before triggering an external service. This is the workaround for us.

Martin Miersch

Hi @Boppa,
here’s a little trick: You’ll need two contact updates. In the first one, you add your new label. In the second update, you access your old label and add the new one you just added. Under steps, you can select multiple options. Should you need any further assistance, we're happy to help (kapio.eu). 👋🏻

Nikolai Sokolov

Hi @Boppa when working with zapier or make, similar worklfow should be applied as outlined by @Martin Miersch - grab the current values of labels, concatenate with new ones, write concatenated version in the update step.

Boppa

Hi guys, and thanks to @Martin Miersch and @Nikolai Sokolov for your indepth responses that has got us the result we were after (along with some great help with the brilliant people in Pipedrive Support).

As described above vt @Martin Miersch, it's pretty simple actually. All I had to do was in the last step when I apply the action, go into Step Options and select labels (which preserves all the original labels) - here's a screenshot:

And then click back to the Field Options in the same Drop Down and select the new label I want to add as well. Here's a screenshot of the end result:

For those wondering why I have a 5 minute delay, I actually need to apply 7 different potential labels to each new deal coming in, and to stop them crashing into each other at the same time (which is what was happening), I then put a 1 minute delay between each automation. Yes, I have to wait 8 minutes for all possible labels to apply, but I'm not complaining.

Obviously, if you have coding skills or are good with Zapier, then @Nikolai Sokolov 's solution of concatenation of old labels and new would be a much faster and more elegant solution.

Thanks again everybody! I can't believe how far we've come with this software in just 30 days of use.